Episode 3 Synopsis and Analysis

Synopsis

The first love of Ko Dong-Man, Park Hye-Ran appears, and Choi Ae-Ra is nervous and warns Hye-Ran to stay away from Dong-Man.

On the other hand, Baek Sul-Hee works with Kim Joo-Man. They work together to shoot video images of eating cherries. However, Cherry was caught in the throat of Baek Sul-Hee and she began choking. Kim Joo-Man, who saw it, jumps and saves her.

Choi Ae-Ra is delighted to have an in-house broadcast of the department store by chance. And she wants to record this glorious moment. So she calls Ko Dong-Man to come to the department store to record her broadcasting. By seeing Choi Ae-Ra’s love and happiness of doing what she always wanted to do, Ko dong-Man began to think about the days he wanted to become a Taekwondo national player.

Ko Dong-Man goes to an old coach and asks if he can earn a lot of money by playing RFC(Fighting Challenge). But Coach Hwang gets angry because Ko Dong-Man only thinks about the money.

The next day, Choi Ae-Ra arrives at the department store and finds that someone other than her own is broadcasting. Eventually, Choi Ae-Ra gets a chance to have the interview for the in-house broadcast announcer but the competitor’s brother-in-law was the owner of the department store, so Choi Ae-Ra could not win over the competitor.

Ko Dong-Man suddenly visits Choi Ae-Ra. He hears about everything and tells Choi Ae-ra  “No one can’t see you crying if you are behind my back” to offer words of consolation.

That evening, Ko Dong-Man goes to see RFC(Fighting Challenge) game to make coach Hwang’s wish come true, and then he sees Kim Tak-Soo….

Episode 3 – Discussion, Yoo Jung Kim

This episode was very dynamic. Comparing with first two episodes, third episode had more characters showing up but still not telling much information about the character yet.

The drama is still hiding a lot. For example, why did Ko Dong-Man stop playing Taekwondo? But those hiding stories makes me feel very mysterious and wonder about the drama “Fight for My Way”. And I think it makes the viewer more interesting.

Also this episode provided a little more information about Ko Dong-Man and Choi Ae-Ra. In this episode, it explained why Choi Ae-Ra gives up her dream as a news announcer. She said, “I don’t want to be a prop. It says the school I attended and age aren’t of importance. But it is all a lie”. Also it gives little bit of information about how Ko Dong-Man feels about Taekwondo and why he gave up his dream as Taekwondo national player in the middle of episode three when he visits his family. There are a lot of new characters in this episode. Dong-Man and his father talked about Ko Dong-Man’s sister, Ko Dong-Hee. Also Ko Dong-Man’s ex-girlfriend, Park hye-Ran showed up in the beginning of Episode 3. It foreshadows conflicts with Ko Dong-Man. And at the end of the episode, new character Kim Tak-Soo appears. In this episode it does not tell much about Kim Tak-Soo Character but we can definitely tell something bad happened in the past. And Ko Dong-Man and Kim Tak-Soo are rivals. Episode three was the episode where the writer builds up the storyline. It provides more information about the future conflicts. Also shows and tells more characters in the drama so the viewer can understand more about the drama and anticipate the direction of the drama.

Money and Social Class – Lisa Wu

Workplace is one of the main themes of “Fight for My Way”, episode 3 particularly described the correlation between inequality of opportunities and social class. The retirement of formal announcer of the mall gave Ae-ra an opportunity to prove her ability in broadcasting service. However, the connection between the other candidate and the mall manager left her no choice but gave up her dream to be an announcer, even if this job is only for the mall. On the other hand, Ko Dong-man was facing the verbal abuse and slightly physical abuse of his manager, who both fabricate machine fault on Dong-man and forced Dong-man do all the work that half of it suppose to be his job. As Cho et. al stated in their article, social class (i.e., the indicators of the socioeconomic state) is negatively correlated with job insecurity and job strain, which means people in low social class suffered from higher insecure employment and job strain. Ae-ra and Dong-man, these two leading characters were not one of the high social class or even medium social class, which limited their job opportunities. With high sense of insecure, Ae-ra and Dong-man feared the possibilities of being fired by people from higher position, leading the results that Dong-man subjected to daily prosecutions by his manager and unfair treatment of Ae-ra. However, things for Ae-ra seemed far more serious than Dong-man. Gender inequality has alwasy been a issue in labour market. With study of Jung et. al, women generally fare more poorly in multidimensional approach (mainly are income, education, health, employment, social capital, leisure, work-family reconciliation, housing, and social security) than men in South Korea. From the chart showed in the article, the younger people experienced low income, but with the increase of the age, the possibility for new employments decreased. These explained Ae-ra’s difficult situations in the drama. She got limited amount of income, with a big dream far from her, also struggled to get a new job.

References:

Cho, Sung-II et. al. “Social Class, Job Security, and Job Strain in Korea.” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health. (2008): 60-65.

Jung, Hae-Sik, Kim, Soo-Wan, Ahn, Sang-Hoon. “Multidimensional Inequality in South Korea: An Empirical Analysis.” Asian Social Work and Policy Review. No. 8. (2014):170-191.

Ep 3 Money and Class – Daisy Zhu

In this episode, Ko Dong-man and Choi Ae-ra both experienced unfair treatments in their job. Then Ko Dong-man came to ask his coach that he wanted to be a boxer to make money. He thought people had to use money to achieve their dreams, and only money could support his family and his wishes. Hence, in contemporary Korean society, the traditional class system still exists. People from lower class must follow their leader’s direction and often receive less. For Dong-man, he did not make mistakes in his work but he still had to be responsible for his director’s fault. Upper class’s people always hold the authority to control the subordinates, and this order system is difficult to change. When people have their dreams, sometimes they are hard to achieve because they do not have money and authority to control even though they are more outstanding. Like the character Choi Ae-ra, she really strived to reach the announcer’s job position in her department store but she failed just because her competitor had closer relationship with the manager. Thus, the traditional class system still can be reflected in the contemporary Korea that to obstruct the lower class people to achieve their dreams.

Ep 3 Money and Class – Zhengyi Zhang

Ae-ra in ep03 gave up her dreamed work of being an announcer. She was treated unequally in the company when she was competing with another girl, who also wanted to do the job. Because she did not graduate from an academy that has an advanced degree, and she did not have any connections to the company, even though she had a higher ability to take this job, she was not chosen by the manager. We can see that the social status in Korea has been the main privilege of job seeking in the job market. In the film, the girl who did not have much work experience gained the job, because she knew someone who was related to the company or was the company’s executive. Due to the higher social status, she was more possible to get the job. The society divides people into different hierarchy, threatening lower social class people who suffered from job insecurity getting into the society. Job opportunities are privileged to the ones who were born in a higher social class family, and this may becomes the main issue in nowadays Korean society.

Fight for My Way Week 3 Discussion – Nicole Chan

Offering your seat to others – a blessing or a curse in South Korea?

In EP 3, Ae-ra successfully finishes her one-day position as the anchor of her mall. She gets on a bus for home and meets Dong-man, who is pretending to be asleep as he does not want to offer the seat to Ae-ra. Eventually he is forced by Ae-ra to offer his seat to her. We know in the reality that people seldom force others to offer their seats. However, in fact, offering seats to someone in need is a social norm to show your respect in South Korea.

Being strongly affected by Confucianism, the culture of South Korea places great emphasis on respecting the elderly. This also is reflected when Koreans must absolutely obey their seniors in family, school and workplace. The Korean put high value of the hierarchy system. There is a common Korean saying, “Offering your seat to the elderly or someone in need is a part of life, regardless of it is a tram, a train or a bus”.

In recent years, the Seoul Metro has set up priority seating for the elderly, and seat for pregnant women starting from last year. Even when the train is extra full in peak hours and everyone gets exhausted from a day of work, people still avoid taking those seats. One reason is because they want to make sure that people who are in need (but cannot be seen) can sit down easily. Another reason, is that they are possibly afraid of “Korean stank eye”.

However, such culture is said to be changing gradually. As mentioned in class by Dr. Saeji, the aging problem in South Korea is serious nowadays. Sometimes the amount of priority seats cannot satisfy the demand from the elderly. As a result, they have to go for regular seats, which are occupied by people who look down at their smartphones. They do not seem to be aware of their surroundings and realize the need to offer their seats. This implies a gradual change in social culture, and the apathy of the newer generation in South Korea.