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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
Immediately preceding the filming, in January 2019, the Burning Sun scandal erupted, reaching national and international stages, targeting wealthy and prominent figures of the entertainment industry. The series of unfolding scandals extended well beyond the show’s premiere (including the hotel peeping scandal and the N-th Room case). All of this highlighted that these were not isolated incidents, but systemic problems present in the country’s ethical public discourse. Patriarchal societies have had thousands of years to build systems that degrade women into second-class beings with diminished rights, contrasted with the mere few hundred years of the history of women’s civil rights struggles. Korea differs from many Western countries with similar perspectives only in that public thought—perhaps due to deeply bigoted Confucian roots in this area—remains more resistant and permissive to this day; naturally, from the perspective of men, and not women. While men thus remained the beneficiaries of cases that turned into legal matters for a long time, women became the victims. And they were not only victims of legal judgments but also vulnerable to a narrow layer of people who, feeling protected and absolved, unscrupulously indulge their morbid sexual fantasies, creating an independent and profitable industry based on the demands of a significant consumer base among the more timid majority.
It was during this sensitive time that Big Issue was born, touching upon these phenomena at many points but also pointing beyond them. It chooses a unique perspective: focusing primarily on the workings of the tabloid press, and more broadly the media, examining the role it plays in shaping power dynamics.
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
Seok-joo originally dedicated his life to ethical journalism, but now his only chance is to embrace the requirements of the paparazzi: an attitude that tolerates neither emotion nor sympathy. We witness the stages of this transformation through a series of successive events, while experiencing the technical feats our devilishly clever and truly daredevil photographer is capable of, often taking insane risks. The operations of the newspaper’s staff are anything but legal; they are capable of breaking any rule, as everything is permitted for them under the protection of their leaders, except for one thing: failing to deliver the expected photographs. Every case highlights the discrepancy between reality and its presentation in the media, but this would not be news to the viewers. A new element of the drama is that following events sometimes provoked to order, the leaders of the tabloid play a decidedly active and creative role in the resulting bargains, often achieving (or rather, forcing through the photos) a situation where every party comes out as well as possible. Initially, the cases focus on the minor and major scandals of entertainment industry figures, until at one point we move up a level, as the exposed individual is none other than Nam Jin-seok (Oh Tae-kyung), a prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office—a true psychopath intent on taking bloodthirsty revenge on those who caught him.
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
At this point, a struggle for survival begins among everyone involved (the chief prosecutor, the police chief, and their subordinates), and eventually, they all reach the same conclusion: the guarantee of their personal survival is possession of the tabloid’s photo archive. Everyone in the editorial office knows this, which turns Editor-in-Chief Ji Soo-hyeon and CEO Jo Hyeong-jun (Kim Hee-won) against each other. An important detail is that, besides the CEO, no one—not even in the editorial office—knows who actually owns the paper; internal information is blocked even from the employees.
As organizations now rival one another, the field of force changes, which does not necessarily benefit the drama. It is as if we have suddenly dropped into a super-spy movie; every character, including the tabloid press, possesses a technical arsenal and knows how to use it, with no qualms about its deployment. This over-dimensioning strongly jeopardizes the seriousness of the drama. The pacing also becomes uneven; the previous momentum breaks here and there due to unnecessarily inserted interludes. For instance, I did not feel much need for the scenes intended to be funny involving the bumbling homeless buddies, and the portrayal of the gangster squad consisting of idiots felt like a break in style. The homeless characters were otherwise great, clearly portrayed with great enjoyment by the actors, and their later appearances revealed that Seok-joo had also learned the lesson of social solidarity.
Fortunately, the well-developed nature of the key characters and the fluctuation of power dominance keep the tension high throughout. The extremely cleverly written script allows each member of the editorial staff to have an individual and quite unique persona. This applies to the rivaling and careerist women (Shin So-yul, Kim Si-hyun, Kim Kyu-seon) just as much as to Soo-hyeon’s bodyguard-driver (Lee Kwan-hoon) or Seok-joo’s taxi-driving right-hand man (Ahn Se-ha). Standing out among them is the omniscient former legend, Im Deok-hoon (Kang Sung-jin), who is confined to a wheelchair.
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
Alongside the multitude of characters and events taking place in various environments, there is time for a deeper unfolding of the protagonists' characters. Soo-hyeon has her own backstory, which explains the duality of her personality: her professional brilliance coupled with cold elegance, and the emotional susceptibility hidden behind it. Seok-joo is an even more complex personality; besides his professional transformation and lingering doubts, we see his struggles as a father, his unyielding sense of shame, yet his stubborn perseverance—his finding of himself professionally, humanly, as a parent, and as a man, fought out from near-total destruction. Joo Jin-mo interprets all of this authentically, whether we see him as someone suffering from tremors in delirium or as a truly potential opponent to the "big dogs." Particularly interesting is the shared history of the two characters, as they realize how they influenced each other's fates and as they grapple with the awareness of this fact.
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
We find an abundance of both unsettling and hopeful elements in the story. A quite unusual character is the "outcast" of the prosecution, Cha Woo-jin (played by Cha Soon-bae), who has an irreproachable past. Among so many villains, he ought to be a positive figure, yet he is not. His integrity stems more from his predicament; fundamentally, he is a petty-minded but ambitious and repulsive character, as disgusting as the filthy hand he offers for a handshake. While it is terrifying when a media figure preaching about professional ethics turns out to be more corrupt than anyone else, the integrity of a politician who appears on the path to the solution is a refreshing phenomenon, even if the logic of the story surrounding him suffers from a few flaws. Since the corruption of power is not a new phenomenon, I will refrain from listing the many big-name actors who embody these depraved figures.
Beyond these, we encounter a wide variety of phenomena in the drama: alongside adult-rated content, we hear about the dark activities of talent agencies; sasaengs appear, as do the tricks and impacts of web broadcasting—all of which are logically integrated into the whole of the story.
Director Lee Dong-hun’s locations, color compositions, the film’s editing, and the careful application of CGI resulted in an extremely stylish film. However, this was somewhat disrupted when, presumably due to Lee’s illness, the substitute director was unable to carry this through with sufficient consistency. There is even a famous broadcasting blunder linked to this, when, incomprehensibly, episodes 11 and 12 were aired in a half-finished state.
The greatest question of the drama is actually whether the tabloid press can have a balancing role that, by moving within the gray zone, keeps those intoxicated by power in check. In any case, we learn that our two protagonists, who know every trick of the press's multifaceted operations, have already begun to set things right—at least around Sunday Syndicate. This, as we know, is a small step toward the purification of the press, but a giant leap in expressing the intent.
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| (Author’s screenshot from Big Issue.) |
However, regarding the social reality relevant to the picture presented in the introduction, though occurring after the series: a year later, Joo Jin-mo hit the headlines because details of allegedly vulgar chats degrading women were leaked from his hacked phone, conversations he purportedly had with fellow actors of similar caliber. Since the police investigation revealed that he was the victim of a blackmailing operation committed against eight actors (the perpetrators received heavy prison sentences), the leaked texts—as Joo Jin-mo claimed—were almost certainly manipulated.
Yet, the very method of blackmail shows that even after such an authentic performance, the tone of private conversations (presumably distorted) can be made believable to the public. I am voicing my most positive suspicions when I assume that, for a long time to come, it will not be people’s changing attitudes for the better, but the ingrained habits of public discourse that determine if private conversations frequently strike a similar tone. We see countless examples of this in our own environments, and not everyone is a villain who occasionally yields to habit, while if they reflect on their phrasing, they realize they do not even agree with their own stumbling self. Furthermore, Joo Jin-mo married in 2019, so he likely has no grievance against the female sex. I would like to continue liking him as an actor who is worthy of it in every respect and to see him back in a new role as soon as possible.
Disclaimer: All images used in this article from Big Issue are owned by SBS and are used here under Fair Use for the purpose of criticism and scholarly review.
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