Why We Tell Stories Part 3: Welcome to Samdal-ri (2024) Final Comments

It’s been a good six months for Ji Chang-wook and honestly this has been a long time coming. Obviously it’s hard for any actor to know how a project will be received at a script level but it’s certainly a win for those of us who have followed his career for several years that the last two dramas he’s been attached to are better than watchable. Of course it isn’t about him but the writing that underpins the storytelling. Welcome to Samdal-ri is perhaps the first seachange story since Racket Boys that sings sincerity. It is worth repeating that seachange stories are almost always about disillusionment. Rather than finding oneself, the protagonist finds a community or a tribe that allows him/her to recover a truth about oneself or to better oneself. Finding oneself assumes (erroneously in my view) that there is a hidden treasure that needs to be dug up somewhere but if we were to consider the hero’s journey for instance, the self is not found but constantly shaped, reshaped and negotiated through conflict, obstacles, struggles and suffering. It’s how metaphysical outcomes like redemption, maturity and healing can actually come about. In these kinds of stories… similar to amnesia ones… the answers are usually found in the past but the truth can only do so much if the various parties involved in an intractable issue aren’t willing to negotiate.

If Korean dramas are to be believed, grief can be the rationale for all kinds of social dysfunction including lawlessness. While Samdal-ri is a wholesome place to live, there’s a dark cloud hovering over the otherwise cheerful inhabitants. A haenyeo diver died a while back and though the physical landscape remained untouched, the bonds that united a community were in tatters. With regards to her demise her best friend blames herself. Her husband blames the best friend. So does her now demented mother broken by sorrow. Their children who were fated to be together from birth have to suffer the perpetual pangs of break up. A single event changes everything and becomes a stranglehold on the people caught up in their grief to the point where they’re imprisoned by their grief.

Asian dramas love the fated lover trope to death. It’s been flogged with impunity in every genre possible and yet audience consume it up like there’s no tomorrow. It isn’t just because we are spiritual creatures at our core but because often there’s so much of life that can’t be explained by the word “coincidence”. Examples of this are given in the drama itself. Why Cho Yong-pil and not Sang-do? Is Yong-pil is the better man and Sang-do the lesser? Or is it entirely timing? Would that in and of itself preclude the notion of “fate”? Some might struggle against the idea of fate and predestination because we like to think we’re free agents with free will coming to a perfect smorgasbord of alternatives open to everyone equally. Deep down common sense tells us that complete free will is a myth. In a lot of K and C dramas… the vast majority in fact… there is a past connection — often a childhood one because the thread has to be there from the beginning to reinforce that unbreakable link. The idea that there are spiritual forces at play in limiting human choices does have explanatory power even in a so-called secular humanistic age. Why do some people click and stay friends when all of us have shuffled off this mortal coil? Why do we gravitate towards our spouses and not to others? Biological explanations are sometimes offered but few in the audience find that romantic or satisfying to any substantial degree.

This notion of “fatedness” is pervasive in the Asian drama landscape to the point in which even male lead characters are more fantasy than anything resembling real life expressions of masculinity. It’s hard to believe that any CEO from the 21st century in his thirties could still be inexperienced with women even while he hangs out in pubs and bars with his bachelor mates but that’s not the point. The point in these stories is that he’s been “reserved” for that right woman either laughably through sexual dysfunction or an inexplicable allergy to all other women. The rise of the fictional puppy male is another manifestation of a muted masculinity which is a reaction to a kind of domineering tyrannical masculinity. The pendulum swings but often too far one way or another. Rather than art imitating life, art constructs ideals, preoccupations and deep fears. Fate in these stories is about the inexplicable — in this case, the mystery of “falling in love” with the right or wrong person.

Actual love triangles are rare because for the individual at the centre of it to waver diminishes them in the eyes of the audience. Can someone be in love with two people? Absolutely. It’s a matter of degrees. But it comes across as being greedy and narcissistic. There are no love triangles in Welcome to Samdal-ri despite conventional wisdom. It’s all Sang-do harbouring a one-sided infatuation and musing over what might have been. Everyone is the lead character in their own story and Sang-do’s no different. Rather than seeing himself as an interloper in someone else’s romance, he sees himself as a man possibly given a second chance by fate at a romance he always hoped to be his. It takes a while but he comes to the realisation soon enough that a confession from him would be an unnecessary burden for a woman in love with someone else. Sang-do’s long-term infatuation is his grief. A burden he’s carried around for years. Like Yong-pil’s father, he’s been grieving for years over never getting the girl. Regrets. Thoughts of what might have been. Wondering if his timing was off. Wondering if things would be different this time. Finally coming to the conclusion that some things in life just aren’t meant to be. So why did it take him so long? Because of a story he told himself. A story of terrible timing and missed opportunities.

On the surface Sam-dal escapes to her hometown because of a career crisis but at a deeper level, her return marks a call to healing. Her return creates a ripple effect that has significant ramifications for the small town. Unbeknownst to everyone she’s back home to help setting things right. Of course it isn’t her per se. But her homecoming does present new opportunities for old wounds to find some measure of repair. When she goes home, she brings along her sisters — one divorced, one widowed with a child. The fatalism is strong here as everyone at this point in time steps out in courage pursuing a life that they’ve always dreamt about. Sam-dal is a pied piper that leads them on a merry dance and into their own utopia.

It’s true that Welcome to Samdal-ri does nothing particularly new but it plays to its strengths through a strong strain of sincerity, well-placed comedic moments and a well formed ensemble.