In my imagination, the paperwork for an official License to Fangirl includes this question: which of the actor’s lesser-known and/or lesser-appreciated works have you seen?
I have an answer for that question now. I’d never heard of Swallow the Sun, but it stars Ji Sung. Naturally I had to watch it.
I hope someday to be able to return to a normal life that includes a healthy mix of dramas that don’t star Ji Sung. But in the meantime, I have my work cut out for me. In the past 15 years, Ji Sung has made 19 dramas and half a dozen movies. He plays a leading role in most of them, including a few sageuks (historical epics) that run to more than 30 episodes. For the truly foolhardy, his earliest appearances were on daily ensemble dramas with years’ worth of episodes. And many of the older things aren’t subtitled or licensed.
Ji Sung Fandom is not for the faint-hearted.
Swallow the Sun is my first dive into the lesser-discussed works on Ji Sung’s CV. This 25-part melodrama fits into the sub-genre I call “sweeping multi-generational saga.” It makes use of standard makjang “shockers” like birth secrets and first love. Fate is a big theme. Events in the parents’ lives echo a generation later in the lives of their children.
The multi-generational saga isn’t heavy on comedy or romance, so it took me awhile to discover this sub-genre. But I enjoy a good MGS as much as a good romantic comedy. I love dramatic twists and turns. I love characters weighed down by past misdeeds or painful memories. Also, lifelong friends estranged by betrayal—I like that one. And enemies who save each other’s lives, that’s really good. Separated lovers meeting again on a distant continent? Storytelling gold.
Basically, I get my kicks from the formulas of the nineteenth-century picaresque novel—anything by Alexandre Dumas or Charles Dickens. (See also: A. Conan Doyle, Sir Percival Wren, Rafael Sabatini, Anthony Hope.) And Swallow the Sun presents this kind of episodic adventure story with energy and heart.
Because the hero is a poor but resourceful orphan, you can safely assume the plot includes a birth secret and a young man’s struggle to rise in the world. But the story starts in an unlikely place—a combat zone in Africa—and leads toward a conclusion less sunny than we might expect. The last few episodes are a surprisingly taut thriller. One important question remains unanswered until ten minutes before the final credits roll—and then resolves with satisfying finality.
In other important matters, Ji Sung looks really cool, despite a few dubious hair styles. He can’t not look good. He brings a ton of charisma to this role, and that ability to convey lots of emotion with small gestures.
Swallow the Sun has more depth, sophistication and surprises than a similar makjang saga, 2010’s highly-rated Baker King Kim Tak Gu. (Besides reaching a peak rating just over 50 percent, Baker King is also memorable for giving Yoon Shi-Yoon and Joo Won their breakout roles.) Of course one could argue even a rigged Egyptian election has more surprises than Baker King. But the bread saga is a good comparison to illustrate what Swallow the Sun does well.
Both series follow an illegitimate son fighting to succeed in his father’s industry. Both feature a rivalry between half-brothers and star Jeon Kwang-Ryul as the rich patriarch. And their background music even sounds suspiciously similar.
The resemblance to Baker King is superficial, though, because Swallow the Sun has three-dimensional characters, and the story is driven by human desires, not plot contrivances. Compare, for instance, the businessman father in the two dramas, played by Jeon Kwang-Ryul. In Baker King, the talented actor does his best, but the father is a one-dimensional character manipulated by one-dimensional villains. The most interesting thing he does may be to spend a few weeks in bed faking a coma. (Yes, faking a coma. I am not making this up.)
But in Swallow the Sun, Jeon Kwang-Ryul plays the dynamic Jang Min-Ho, the kind of overambitious psychopath Shakespeare would have loved to write about. The first time he encounters our hero Kim Jung-Woo (Ji Sung), he takes a couple shots at him with a rifle (below). He’s a mean and dangerous villain trying to dominate Jeju Island’s profitable hotel and casino industry. He’s also very human. He has regrets about the past. He worries about his son’s short-comings. And we never know when he’s going to act nice or nasty.
Hero Kim Jung-Woo is also complicated. Jung-Woo starts out looking happy-go-lucky. He’s an orphan who grew up in a charitable home on beautiful, remote Jeju Island. He has a couple close friends, a smile on his face, and a lot of enthusiasm and confidence. The local police detective helps him out as a kind of surrogate father despite his record of petty crime. He seems like a fundamentally nice lad.
But Jung-Woo has ambitions. He wants to succeed for good Confucian reasons—he wants to help his friends get legitimate jobs and stay out of jail. As the years pass, though, and he faces setbacks and difficult truths, he’s increasingly motivated by an old-fashioned desire for revenge.
Jung-Woo takes every opportunity to pull himself up, which at times means harassing political protesters or working for blood diamonds. When he’s in action, he’s calm and collected—a guy who knows how to calculate the odds, even when he’s “gambling with his life.” The role demands subtlety and Ji Sung delivers. Early in the series, Jung-Woo smiles a lot, but not with his eyes, as if he’s smiling simply to disarm others. And as he begins to succeed, his smiles become rare.
Swallow the Sun follows Jung-Woo’s story from his parents’ meeting in the first episode, through his many adventures trying to get ahead. It’s a story full of action. He starts as a hired thug for hotel magnate Chairman Jang, then moves to Seoul to work for Jang’s son Tae-Hyuk (played by Lee Wan). For a couple years, he makes his living as a bodyguard in Las Vegas and a mercenary in Africa. He serves some time in prison.
On his return to Jeju, he fights to be more than a mere hired hand in Jeju’s expanding casino business. He wants to be management—but that might mean managing thugs and hoodlums. Early in the series, he says he’s sold his soul. A big source of suspense is how he’ll get it back.
The story also includes a somewhat tepid love triangle between Jung-Woo, heroine Su-Hyun (Sung Yoo-Ri) and wealthy heir Jang Tae-Hyuk (Lee Wan). When Tae-Hyuk orders Jung-Woo to help him win over Su-Hyun, the plot takes a momentary turn towards Cyrano de Bergerac territory.
Su-Hyun is bland, but she has an interesting ambition—to work behind the scenes for the Cirque du Soleil. This career takes her to Las Vegas and around the world. It also makes for lively scenes of the Cirque du Soleil’s acrobatics shows, which are more entertaining than the usual K-drama product placements.
Jeon Kwang-Ryul (left) and Yoo Oh-Sung (right)
But the meat and bones of Swallow the Sun are the collisions between Jung-Woo and Chairman Jang. Jung-Woo is developing into Jang’s equal in the conniving department. The two men find a dozen ways to betray, trick and bamboozle each other and others on the island, for higher and higher stakes.
Through their rivalry, we see Jung-Woo transform from cute local boy to impassive businessman. His rise is a series of moral dilemmas. Will he kill for his goals? Betray others? The answer is yes—a qualified yes. He weighs each life carefully (with the notable exception of during his days in Africa).
The cast includes a horde of veteran character actors who make their scenes count. Along with the magnificent Jeon Kwang-Ryul, we have Jung Ho-Bin (Boys over Flowers, Gangnam Blues) as slick Secretary Park and Yoo Oh-Sung (Faith, Joseon Gunman) as a professional gambler and mercenary—looking as handsome and hard-bitten as young James Coburn in an old Western. Among Jung-Woo’s hometown acquaintances, we have a favorite of mine, Ma Dong-Suk (Shut Up Flower Boy Band, Bad Guys), and the sad-eyed Lee Jae-Young (of almost every historical K-drama ever).
Each character has a distinctive face—sarcastic, melancholy, merry—as if the director combed South Korea for the most unusual features on the peninsula. In shows with large casts, it’s sometimes hard to tell characters apart. Not here.
The small town slice-of-life atmosphere distinguishes “Swallow the Sun” from melodramas with less sense of place. Visible here, Ji Sung and Ma Song-Duk.
These guys bring energy and complexity to an ensemble of two-bit criminals, unlucky gamblers and soju-drinking locals. While the relationship between Jung-Woo and Chairman Jang is the story’s center, the relationships between Jung-Woo and his friends are also dynamic. As in one of my favorite Dumas novels, Twenty Years After, old friends are sometimes pitted against each other and have to negotiate conflicted loyalties.
Thanks to these great characters, the first half of the series occasionally feels like a slice-of-life drama, a portrait of Jeju Island during the economy’s shift from fishing toward tourism. We get to know the landscape well, better than in most K-dramas, where Jeju typically appears just for one or two hotel scenes. Because Swallow the Sun shows these scenes of daily life, the series initially doesn’t move as quickly as some may expect. With each episode we gather momentum, though.
The cast unfortunately isn’t uniformly strong. Sung Yoo-Ri, who plays female lead Su-Hyun, and Lee Wan, who plays Tae-Hyuk, don’t offer much besides pretty faces. They can’t keep up with Ji Sung’s intensity or ability to convey mixed emotions.
The romance storyline is okay, but lacks some chemistry. The lovers spend a lot of time apart, and Jung-Woo puts the romance on hold for a while to pursue revenge. (Admittedly, vengeance-seeking is a full-time job. Workaholics everywhere are behind you, Jung-Woo.) But the relationship is sweet when it has a chance. Su-Hyun is one of the few people Jung-Woo lets down his guard with. In their scenes we have a chance to see the human being underneath the stoic mask.
Lee Wan (left) and Sung Yoo-Ri (right)
Refreshingly, none of the five young female characters are bitchy or mean. A side romance between tough guy Jackson (Yoo Oh-Sung) and “Amy,” a chaebol-daughter-turned-exotic-Vegas-dancer (I’m not making this up), is particularly memorable. And humor enters into the story from time to time, especially during the episodes featuring a gambling addicted mobster who looks strangely like British comedian Steve Coogan impersonating a Korean mobster.
Swallow the Sun is at its weakest during the two episodes in Africa, far from the real villain of the series, Chairman Jang. But when it returns to Jeju Island, it shifts into high gear. The last third of the series is a thriller about cut-throat competition between hotel and casino owners. The story keeps its sense of place, however. We never forget who’s from the mainland and who’s local. In one nice detail, the hero’s darkest secrets spread quickly through the community of islanders, but the mainlanders on the island remain in the dark.
The ending piles up the dramatic ironies. The denouement is satisfying intellectually as well as emotionally, and leaves open to debate whether Jung-Woo’s fight was worth it.
The English word “melodrama” originally meant “a play with music,” and Swallow the Sun uses a lot of evocative tunes. Early episodes often use a piece resembling Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. The melancholy sound goes well with the shots of Jeju’s rugged coastline. It’s amusing how often the characters feel the necessity to stand in a picturesque spot and gaze out to sea, hair and clothing blowing in the wind, but these shots are beautiful and build a melancholy atmosphere. Less successful is that one Frank Sinatra track they keep playing, which made me want to scream. If you like his late career stuff, you’ll be okay.
“Swallow the Sun” specializes in artistic images of people staring out to sea. This is high-quality brooding at its best.
One major caveat: the first episode is lousy. I was tempted to give up the series almost before starting. Like so many multi-generational K-dramas, the opening throws us into the tribulations of the parents’ generation before we’ve even met our hero. In Swallow the Sun, this means we spend much of the first episode in a forced labor camp. We see a lot of beatings, blood and threats, but don’t learn much about the characters, except perhaps Mi-Yeon—Jung-Woo’s mother, one of Jeju’s famously tough shellfish divers.
The first five minutes of the first episode in particular are intriguing but overambitious. The series opens with a confusing montage of present-day action. We cut back and forth between a Cirque du Soleil performance and a gunfight on the African savannah. This opening creates suspense as to how these two things are connected, but doesn’t have any clear narrative purpose. I recommend watching the first few minutes for atmosphere, and then skipping to the second episode. You can always go back to the first episode later if you’re interested. (See a quick recap below.)
Swallow the Sun is an entertaining example of the sweeping episodic adventure. The charm of a “birth secret” narrative is to suggest how interconnected people are—even strangers and enemies. This theme comes out strongly here, as do themes of karma and fate.
Melodrama may rely on outrageous circumstances, but it actually presents a very orderly world, in which actions have consequences. We reap what we sow, according to the makers of melodrama. Things aren’t as random as they look, even on a changing island in unpredictable times when everything’s a gamble.
Chairman Jang in his convict days, arriving at the Jeju labor camp.
Full cast information at Asian Wiki and Drama Wiki.
Watching: For some mysterious reason, DramaFever’s version of Swallow the Sun isn’t in the correct aspect ratio. Viki has the proper widescreen, HD version, though a few episodes on Viki are only 99% subtitled.
Alternate titles: Taeyangeul Samkyeora (태양을 삼켜라), All In 2 (The 2001 K-drama hit, All In, shares the same writer and director with Swallow the Sun. In addition, Ji Sung played second lead in All In. Since both series concern gambling and have scenes filmed in Jeju and Las Vegas, the network touted Swallow the Sun as All In 2.)
See also: Everything with Ji Sung, naturally. Good recent stuff includes Secret, Protect the Boss, and Kill Me, Heal Me.
First episode essentials: First we see some footage from the middle of the series, showing a gunfight in Africa and a Cirque du Soleil performance.
We then go back in time three decades. A young woman (Mi-Yeon) is diving for abalone while a ship of convicts docks in the distance. One of the prisoners is Kim Il-Hwan. Officer Lee, in charge of the prisoners, singles him out for special abuse. Kim Il-Hwan escapes from the prison camp.
In the course of escaping, Kim points a gun at the abusive officer (Lee) but when the man begs for his life, Kim spares him. Soldiers pursue him to the edge of a cliff and he dives into the water below.
He’s washed up later near Mi-Yeon’s village. She figures out he’s the escapee that soldiers are looking for. She pities him. She hides him in a sea cave for a couple days and brings food and supplies. Supposedly they fall in love, or at least they’re really, really hot for each other.
They sleep together. He asks her if she’ll come with him to the mainland.
But someone has spotted Mi-Yeon going down to the beach at night and makes a report. Soldiers show up and re-arrest Kim, with more general brutality. They accuse Kim of holding Mi-Yeon hostage. Mi-Yeon’s grandmother and the young man with a crush on Mi-Yeon believe she was a hostage. Mi-Yeon screams that she wasn’t.
Afterwards, Mi-Yeon is depressed. Then it turns out she’s pregnant. Her grandmother hides her in a remote cottage until the baby is born. Then the grandmother takes the baby and leaves it at the gate of a small, local orphanage. She tells Mi-Yeon it was stillborn. The young man who likes Mi-Yeon—who has a new job as a policeman—has been looking for Mi-Yeon. He witnesses the grandmother abandoning the baby and figures out what happened.
The first episode is no fun to watch, but it introduces four important motifs: 1) Kim lets abusive officer Lee go, instead of shooting him, 2) Kim was often beaten brutally, and this influences his later behavior towards others, 3) Mi-Yeon’s village is a very simple, modest, old-fashioned place—no resorts here!—and 4) Mi-Yeon and Kim slept together out of desire, but everyone wants to believe Mi-Yeon was raped.
The most interesting thing in episode one is seeing life on Jeju four decades ago. But you can see that by watching a minute or two.
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