Strong Woman Do Bong Soon DramaBeans Recaps

Episode 1: Ridiculous Punks!

I DO NOT OWN THIS.

All credits belongs to DramaBeans.

On a dreary afternoon, high school student AHN MIN-HYUK (Park Hyung-shik) sits in the back of a bus holding a bouquet of flowers. Suddenly, one of the tires bursts and soon the bus careens down a hill. The driver desperately tries to regain control only to discover that the brakes are broken.

He swerves to the right, barely avoiding an oncoming car, but then redirects into the path of two pedestrians standing to the side of the road.

Panicking, he stomps down on the brakes as they barrel forward, then closes his eyes, unable to witness the certain horror to come. However, when he opens his eyes again, the bus has stopped in its tracks, and all remain unharmed.

Out the back window, Min-hyuk notices a girl wearing a pink hoodie back away from the rear end of the bus. She turns around without revealing her face, and begins walking up the road.

Min-hyuk watches the girl as she leaves, fascinated. And as if sensing his curiosity, she stops in her tracks and turns back slightly toward him, when a breeze catches the hood of her sweater and begins to peel it away from her head.

Right before the hood falls away, a ringtone blares in the background, snatching grown-up Min-hyuk from his dream. He struggles to wake, and grumbles about being unable to see the girl’s face.

Still half-asleep, Min-hyuk answers the call, introducing himself as the CEO of AinSoft. A disguised, menacing voice reminds Min-hyuk that they warned him to delete his RPG game called “Albertine Chronicle,” or Min-hyuk would die.

Cranky to be roused in the middle of the night, Min-hyuk barks back that the man’s threats would be more terrifying during the daytime when he’s awake and could properly feel fear. Undeterred, the voice continues with his ominous warning, until Min-hyuk hangs up in annoyance.

That morning, DO BONG-SOON (Park Bo-young) slurps up a mouthful of ramyun. She receives a notification on her phone, informing her of her failure to be selected for a job.

Bong-soon isn’t surprised by the rejection, and immediately she studies her resume, (which is noticeably sparse), rewriting her self-introduction. She introduces herself as Do Bong-soon who lives in the Do Bong neighborhood of the Do Bong district, adding that she’s rather unique.

Bong-soon narrates her family’s unusual history, and explains firstly that she’s SUPER strong. Her strength is a hereditary trait that has been passed down to the women in her family, starting from her ancestor Park Gae-boon, who, legend has it, used boulders to crush enemy soldiers during the Siege of Haengju back in the Joseon Period. Love this.

Bong-soon cryptically adds that there is a secret that accompanies her inherited strength.

She explains that in 1862 during a rebellion, another one of Bong-soon’s ancestors used her super strength to enforce imperial rule against the people in exchange for large sums of money.

As punishment for her greed, she lost her powers and lived the rest of her life afflicted with leprosy. Should the women in Bong-soon’s family use their powers for evil and/or personal gain, then they would be punished and cursed for the remainder of their lifetimes.

Generations later, Bong-soon’s mother HWANG JIN-YI (Shim Hye-jin) ignored the warnings, and used her abilities to become a world champion weightlifter. Initially, it seemed as though the gods would not punish her since she had brought pride to her country.

However, soon Jin-yi’s success made her arrogant and selfish, and she began bullying the weak. And while her punishment was not dealt to her swiftly, eventually she lost her strength.