Start-Up is a tvN television channel series written by Park Hye Ryun and directed by Oh Choong Hwan. The series, which consists of 16 episodes, was produced in 2020. The series with a quite high IMDB score of 8.2 (out of 10) is romantic comedy and drama. It is also available on Netflix. Start-Up means starting a company or being an entrepreneur. In addition, companies established in this context are also called Start-ups. The series is about a group of young entrepreneurs who are trying to establish their own business and achieve success in the competition in the software industry. More importantly, the series is about their love affairs. There is both work and love (in fact a love triangle!).
Bae Suzy stars as “Seo Dal Mi”. A major female side role in the drama belongs to “Won In Jae” as Seo Dal Mi’s older sister. The two competitors for Suzy’s lover position, Do San and Ji Pyeong, are both engaging personas.
The Story of the Start-Up Series and Its Highlights
Seo Dal mi and Won In Jae are two happy sisters. Their fathers are working in a mobbing job and their mothers are tired of getting along. When her father leaves her job, their mother leaves their father and tells the girls to choose their side. Seo Dal Mi prefers to stay with her father. Won In Jae, on the other hand, enters a new rich life with his mother because his mother marries a rich man. Many events occur simultaneously in the same period.
A simultaneous incident takes place between Seo Dal Mi’s grandmother, Choi Won Deok, who sold corn hot dogs, and Han Ji Pyeong. Han Ji Pyeong is an orphan and over the age of staying in the orphanage, but is still a minor. He does not know what to do in a creek in between. While leaving the orphanage, Han Ji Pyeong, who is very smart, will not be able to study at the university he wants with the money the government gave him. So much so that he could not even invest his money in the bank because he was not considered an adult. One day, his path cross with her grandmother Won Deok. Won Deok gives Ji Pyeong the motherhood he never had. The love triangle in the drama between Dal Mi, Do San and Ji Pyeong is so engaging; but a very realistic mother-son relationship is also depicted beautifully between Won Deok and Ji Pyeong.
Another simultaneous event is experienced by Nam Do San, who won the Mathematics Olympics championship. You need to watch the first episode of the series well, it weaves the web of destiny in the first episode.
The drama tells of Seo Dal Mi, who could not study at the university because she could not afford it, and achieved success in entrepreneurship even though she was not a university graduate like Steve Jobs. However, it is not easy for Seo Dal Mi to achieve success.
Attention Includes Spoilers: The Sand Box story was impressive and was frequently highlighted in the series. Sand Box actually describes a company that offers venture capital to high-tech investment projects and also offers them offices and similar facilities. These structures are generally also called as incubation centers.
However, even though Seo Dal Mi did not know at all, Sand Box has her own marks on the founding story.
Footnote: We loved the area located on an islet on Han River where Sand Box is installed. Actually known as Nodeul Island , this artificial islet was designed by a 29-year-old enterpreneur young girl named Lee-So ai, just like Suzy’s character. Rather than being a tiny Silicon Valley in real life, there are cafes, bookstores (which we see our heroes in one of these bookstores at the beginning of the series) and music stores. It is like a culture complex.
Spoiler 2: The drama has a different love story, different from other K-Dramas. Dal Mi is secretly caught in a love triangle between a man who was his first love and another man who pretended to be his first love. The story is so sweet!
