Oh My Ghost Is Spook-tacular!!!

 

Promo pic with Sun-Woo, Bong-Sun, Soon-Ae, and Officer Choi!

K-Drama Pick: Oh My Ghost! is Oh heck YES. 

Scrolling through Netflix I saw Oh My Ghost and instantly after reading the synopsis I cued up the first episode and was hooked! Ghosts, hauntings and the paranormal are one of my favourite things so the idea of a mischievous twenty-something ghost girl body hopping while trying to get laid (she died a virgin, and absolutely haaaaates that) and resolve whatever other grudge is keeping her tied to the world caught my attention! After a run in with a middle-aged Shaman woman dead set on capturing her and exercising her for once and for all, Soon-Ae learns that her days as a happy haunt roaming South Korea are numbered. If she doesn’t move on soon, very soon she’ll be stuck as a vengeful spirit. That is, if she doesn’t inadvertently get stuck in a body of a woman she possesses if the other woman has the same spiritual frequency as she does.

Well, that’s exactly what happens. Our other protagonist is shy dishwasher Bong-Sun, a girl who’s been able to see ghosts since childhood, and does everything in her power to try to repel them away from her. Unlike Tae Gong-Sil in Master’s Sun who frantically wields talismans and charms and tries to bargain with the pesky poltergeists and ghosts trailing her, Bong-Sun takes a roll-over-and-play-dead approach, not just being hammered by their demands and spiritual energy, but suffering insomnia and facing the day to day grind at a hectic restaurant. Drained by all the chores heaped on her, and feeling at a loss about her dead end job, Bong-Sun is left vulnerable which opens her up. It’s at this moment that Soon-Ae flees from the Shaman, leaping into Bong-Sun. Realizing what a hot mess Bong-Sun is in, Soon-Ae tries to jump ship and finds that uh-oh, she’s trapped! Hellllooooo new life.

Talk about trying to catch a boo!

At the prestigious Sun Restaurant, Bong-Sun is at the bottom of the rung, working alongside a quartet of young chefs and under the employ of renowned chef Sun-Woo Kang who is something of a celebrity even though he’s just 33 years old. Pushed around by the gossipy sous chef Min-Soo by day, and shut up in shoebox sized windowless apartment room by night, friendless Bong-Sun harbors the secret desire to become a professional chef of her own. 

She writes a food blog where she shares the dishes that mean the most to her, but there’s still an aching sense of loneliness and futility that permeates Bong-Sun. From her pained expressions, hunched postures and profuse apologies it’s obvious this girl is not only depressed but she’s sorely lacking any kind of confidence. Only Sun-Woo’s wheelchair bound younger sister and restaurant maitre d’, Eun-Hee has a soft spot for Bong-Sun, because she recognizes the sensitivity and the weakness in her.

Well Soon-Ae may be Bong-Sun now, but she’s no doormat. Soon-Ae refuses to take up the submissive charade that defined Bong-Sun, and kept her trampled down. Her sudden shift in attitude throws the boys and head chef Sun-Woo into a tailspin, especially because prior to being possessed by Soon-Ae, Bong-Sun was on the verge of quitting, leaving the restaurant biz for good. Plus all her smack-talk and refusal to be the resident kitchen slave is a far cry from the teary-eyed, shaky-voiced girl Bong-Sun used to be. Prior to her possession of course!   

Before she merges with Bong-Sun, Soon-Ae a sassy ghost with her messy curly blonde hair and her saucer wide eyes and kooky body language is a real riot to watch on screen. Actress Seul-Gi Kim got her start on South Korea’s SNL, so comedy is her claim to fame and it REALLY shows. Her antics are hilarious and her internal snarky commentary combined with her unrestrained creeping sorry-but-not-sorry man-hunting is gold! The scene where she peeks in on her coworkers showering, and slowly, slowly, slowly, backs away from the cracked door grinning is beyond funny.

Soon-Aeeeeee! Before she jumps into Bong-Sun.

Soon-Ae has no recollection of her death or her former life… and what memories do resurface are fragmented until a chance interaction at the end of episode 3 jarringly wakes her up, and all that knowledge comes pouuuuring back in! The mystery behind Soon-Ae’s grudge keeping her tied to this world, has yet to be revealed, and it’s quite prominent in the storyline. Oh My Ghost may be billed as a rom-com, but this k-drama isn’t all about the love! 

Sure, some of the dialogue is over the top and not exactly the words you’d heard coming out of the mouths of just any flesh-and-blood male you run into on the street-- but some of that may stem from the translations. I’m an American girl watching this with English subtitles, so I can see some of the context being lost or some of the word choices coming across a bit strangely. And if that’s really how many of the conversations are supposed to sound? Well it is a drama after all! One that is most definitely escapist TV. Which happens to be juuuust how I like it.

In line with the typical k-drama formula there’s an abundance of unrequited love -- namely in Soon-Ae being reunited with her one-sided cop crush, Officer Choi, only to find out he’s married to Chef Sun’s younger sister Eun-Hee -- yowwwch-- as well as the feelings it’s been hinted at that Bong-Sun has for said Chef, Sun-Woo himself. If her scrapbook pasted with newspaper articles about him, covered in cartoon hearts is any indication, the girl was hooked on him. But her puppy love was never able to bloom into anything because of Bong-Sun’s chronic over apologizing and insecurity. Something that went bye-bye once Soon-Ae jumped in and seized the controls.  There’s also family drama that shows itself in Sun-Woo’s strained reactions with his mother (or omma). She had him when she was only 19 and put her education first, and to this day, even with Sun-Woo grown, there’s a chill and distance between them. Something his omma tries to bridge by how she looks out for his spiritual well being, since another big plot point in Oh My Ghost is that for some reason Sun-Woo’s energy makes him a magnet for the supernatural. Why? We’ve yet to see! And yeah, he’s plenty haughty, but he’s not a total grade-A dick, and he shows himself on more than a few occasions that he’s not heartless. The passion he has for cooking, and the little friendship he strikes up with a stray corgi begging outside the restaurant show him at his best.

I’m curious to see if the personalities of Bong-Sun and Soon-Ae will merge, or if Soon-Ae will continue to dominate. Had Bong-Sun still been the main main protagonist of Oh My Ghost I probably would’ve stopped watching. How she constantly devalues herself and tiptoes around her life with her head ducked down is depressing and would’ve been annoying to have to deal with for every single hour+ long episode. Soon-Ae instead, is what makes Oh My Ghost a hilarious and at times and prickling with sadness at others. Her zest and no filters policy and her ability to be both totally awkward, yet totally boldly confident is what makes Oh My Ghost so so so so irresistible and compulsively watchable!

Catch all the episodes of Oh My Ghost for free on the DramaFever App or on Netflix. 

Maybe not canon, but Soon-Ae with her Sun Restaurant coworkers!

images from IMDB and AsianWikia