heartofashes | in defence of nam dosan

"To be honest, who would choose Nam Do San? He's not charming at all," A post by a k-netizen read, back when the popular TVN drama, Start-Up (of which the aforementioned Nam Dosan is the protagonist), was in its tenth week of being on air - and of garnering deeply polarising views from its audience.

If you, like me, are an avid kdrama enthusiast, the phrase ‘second lead syndrome’ shouldn’t be something novel to you. The very foundation of a mainstream, romance-centric drama is it’s second male lead, who is conceived as a worthy antithesis to the "main lead", a foil, a constant reminder of what-could-have-been, the almost titillating other side of the coin. Sometimes, he’s the nice guy, too unassuming, too ordinary (in the eyes of the female lead, that is) to ever get the girl. Sometimes, he’s the darker, sexier, more salacious foil to the main lead - always on the outskirts of romantic affection because he ravages and breaks the rules, is far from a socially desirable suitor for the female lead. But no matter which end of the spectrum the second lead falls in, the one thing they always have in common is this: they’re always the underdog.

And yet, never has a conversation around the second lead syndrome become so wildly incendiary, so bizarrely conflicted, and so bitingly vicious like it did in the case of Start-Up. The netizen comment panning Dosan’s lack of charm was just the beginning. With the airing of each episode, there were increasing cries of displeasure and disillusionment with the main lead, and vehement support for the second lead, Han Jipyeong. Twitter threads and Pann message boards alike were rife with opinions ranging from “Jipyeong deserves better” to “Dosan is toxic and horrible, he doesn’t deserve to end up with Dalmi (the show’s female protagonist)”.

First, a disclaimer: I love Jipyeong, and this long, rambly essay-length post is in no way disparaging him (or any other second lead, for that fact). In fact, I think Jipyeong’s arc was incredibly fleshed out, and his journey from being a bitter orphan with trust issues to a mature, loving individual who finds family and friendship, who learns to accept love, was portrayed with great sensitivity. But that said, what made me curious was the severity of the sentiments that were circulating in brutal criticism of Dosan, even if all he did was exist, all he did was be as human and flawed a character as any other.

What enraged the audience so much? Why Start-Up of all shows, which, at its core, is about the vagaries of entrepreneurship, about family ties (both biological and found), about overcoming insurmountable odds, about challenging society's expectations of success?

The answer wasn't perhaps so simple, and yet, it was.

In Start-Up, the antithesis is the hero. The underdog, who is traditionally supposed to be the second lead - the foil to the requisite smooth-talking, sharp-dressing main lead - is the main lead here. The nice, unassuming, perhaps even a little bit plain, guy is at the emotional core of this story, is the one who basks in the limelight. Dosan isn't charming (at least not in the conventional sense), isn't brooding and traditionally masculine, isn't the white knight who will saunter in with effortless ease, glibness and dramatic declarations and sweep the heroine off her feet within seconds. In fact, the show is deliberate and almost adamant in its fashioning of Dosan as the very contradiction of every main lead characteristic one can imagine a main lead to have. There's a moment, towards the beginning, where Dosan takes on the garb of the suave, charismatic individual, the type of male hero one is accustomed to seeing as the quintessential centrepiece of a kdrama romance. He dresses in a sharp suit, pretends to be rich and confident, pretends to own a fancy car, tries to sweep the heroine off her feet. But within seconds, cracks begin to appear in that facade. It becomes brutally apparent (in more ways than one) that this version of Dosan is not Dosan at all, that the real Dosan is everything but this, is the very antithesis of this.

In reality, Nam Dosan is awkward, introverted, lacking as much emotional intelligence as he possesses scientific intelligence (though, never lacking warmth). Nam Dosan is kind and sincere, is selfless and immensely caring, is constantly performing acts of service for the people he loves, no questions asked, regardless of the barriers he has to circumvent to do so. Nam Dosan struggles with the extreme burden of expectations his parents have from him, as an erstwhile "gifted kid" and the youngest winner of a Math olympiad (though his "genius", too, is smartly and very empathetically deconstructed in a particularly moving episode).

Nam Dosan struggles with debilitating self-esteem issues, and is truly convinced that he's a loser, that he hardly deserves any amount of love, or any amount of happiness. Nam Dosan knits as a coping mechanism, doesn’t quite understand metaphors, makes mistakes, internalises his shit. Nam Dosan is everything but a hero, and yet he is, in every single way, he is. And that is exactly why he is the very center of the zeitgeist, the subject of an ongoing discourse that chooses to demonise him for his inherent fragility and refusal to live up to even a single kdrama main lead norm.

In what is my personal favourite and perhaps one of the most poignant moments on the show, Dosan confronts his father - who considers Dosan a good-for-nothing failure because he wasn’t able to capitalise on his intelligence early enough in life, because, even when he did form his own company, it was to create an artificial intelligence software that would put his own father’s livelihood at risk. His father is predictably upset, is “disappointed” - a word that comes associated with crushing, inescapable weight in the context of Asian middle class families and the upward mobility aspirations they project onto their children - but Dosan has reached his boiling point, his years of insecurity and self-loathing have reached its culmination. His back is ramrod straight, he makes firm and direct eye contact with his father for possibly the first time in the entire show, and says, “It's tiring to live as someone's pride and joy. You're afraid of disappointing that person, so you pretend you're strong and competent. So let's not be each other's pride and joy. Let's just be people to each other.”

The words are punctuated with tears, and yet, they’re uttered like an avalanche. Like he can’t hold back anymore, like he just wants to be liberated, just wants to be seen.

It’s not even a huge turning point plot-wise, but it’s perhaps the one scene that has kept me up at night, that has stayed with me like nothing else has. Dosan’s unique mixture of vulnerability and determination in that moment rung way too true to me, as someone also with middle class Asian parents with upward mobility aspirations, as someone who was also considered intelligent from a very young age but burned out as an adult, as someone who also deals with the weight of being a ‘disappointment’, of not living up to expectations and being a good-for-nothing failure. But even beyond the context of him wanting to break free from the shackles of parental and societal indicators of success and worth, to me, that simple declaration was also a larger appeal, and appeal towards just....seeing him as a living-and-breathing flesh-and-blood person, instead of a manifestation of the romantic hero who gets the girl in the end prototype.

The beauty of Nam Dosan is that he doesn’t want to be glorified, whether as a main lead or a second lead, whether as a smooth-talker or an underdog. He’s a walking pile of imperfections and contradictions, but most importantly, he is inherently, radically good. He is always actively choosing to be kind and empathetic and soft-spoken in every single instance, even in moments where he is pushed to his limit, where he’s forced to be dishonest or is consumed with jealousy or makes questionable choices. His biggest, most prominent defining characteristics are his goodness and kindness, his ability to go the extra mile for others while respecting their boundaries and agency at the same time, his resilience, his compassion. And that’s oddly powerful, isn’t it?

---
A running leitmotif in Dosan’s storyline are: hands.

Initially, before Dalmi gets to know the real Dosan and is under the false impression that he is, in any way, heroic, Dosan asks her, “What do you like about me?”

She racks her brains, comes up with responses that aren’t really about Dosan at all, until finally settling on: “You have nice hands.”

Something about that statement, that tiny acknowledgement, that small tidbit of validation during a time when nobody else even considered Dosan deserving of validation, sticks with him and drives him throughout the course of the show. If only his hands are his redeeming quality, then he’ll use them, he’ll use them to help Dalmi, to help countless others, to fulfil his potential and show the world who he truly is. He isn’t just the 13-year old Math olympiad gold medalist who didn’t have a stable source of income even after crossing the threshold of 30.

There’s always been more to him, he’s him, and his hands are uniquely him.

He’s proud of his hands.

That journey towards self-actualisation, towards self-confidence, and even self-love, is something that resonates with me even more than a month after the final episode of Start-Up aired. To a kindred spirit like me, it signals hope, it signals that the power of radical kindness does triumph, does become an unflinchingly positive force. Dosan’s self-actualisation was made possible only when he could unravel completely, only when he could lean into his fragility and softness and chart his own path, rejecting not just his parents’ notion of who he should become, but also the audience’s notion of why he is who he is.