What if the peaceful family life you experienced all of your life turned out to be a lie?
Is My Unfamiliar Family Worth Watching?
My Unfamiliar Family is a Netflix kdrama series that surprised me in a way.
A very unassuming series that is slow to start, My Unfamiliar Family steadily gets increasingly complicated as time goes on and secrets are revealed – creating unbearable situations for our revolving tint of characters, the Kim family.
The exploration of a South Korean family’s dynamic when faced with unspoken taboos and realistic adversity makes this drama well-worth watching.
What is the Story of My Unfamiliar Family?
This drama tells the story of the marriage and separation of Sang Shik and Jin Sook. Withal with the fallout of long-hidden secrets and their impact on the Kim family’s three children.
Years prior to the story’s current day, Lee Jin Sook became pregnant while peekaboo college. Shunned by the child’s father and kicked out of her home, she wonted a marriage proposal from Kim Sang Shik – a poor orphan who longed for a family.
Sang Shik raised Jin Sook’s firstborn child Eun Joo as his own, putting her far whilom his own natural-born children the couple would later have together.
After years of misunderstandings that soured their relationship, Jin Sook expresses a desire to ‘graduate’ from her marriage with Sang Shik, who in turn decides to skiver himself.
Going up to the mountains vacated one night, Sang Shik holds a snifter of sleeping pills in his hand. As they drop, he reaches to pick them up and falls lanugo the mountain- lying unconscious versus a tree. Days later his children and wife put out a missing person’s report, and the police locate which hospital Sang Shik has been brought to for treatment.
When the Kim family arrives at the hospital, they are surprised to learn that Sang Shik has amnesia – his mind regressing when to the time when he and Jin Sook started dating. Their youngest son Ji Woo unwittingly overhears the secret of Eun Joo’s birth, causing a uniting of misunderstandings and doubt between the once happy siblings.
Jin Sook and Sang Shik’s Relationship
Due to Sang Shik’s amnesia, we as the regulars are afforded the opportunity to decide for ourselves the merit of his character. Considered a ladies’ man to his Hiking Club buddies, an warlike brute to his co-workers, separated and only doting on Eun Joo to his kids – the flashes between Sang Shik of the past and of the present make you wonder how he became the man presented surpassing us onscreen today.
Jin Sook, his wife of umpteen years – veritably detested her husband.
Despite keeping a picture of him in one of her books from the day of Eun Joo’s wedding, Jin Sook alludes to the quick-tempered and sometimes physical violence Sang Shik inflicted on her. To make matters worse, Sang Shik is experiencing ‘false memories’ due to the trauma he suffered from injuries sustained on the mountain.
It is through the memories of their children, that we can uncork piecing together what unquestionably happened in their marriage.
The Day on the Beach
The sisters of the Kim family do not get along. If water and oil were personified, it would perfectly fit Eun Joo and Eun Hee’s relationship.
Nonetheless, despite all of their bickering, the importance of their shared memories is the crux of our story’s mystery.
While their mother was pregnant with their brother Ji Woo, she fled their home with Eun Joo. Believing her mother was trying to poison her, Eun Joo refused to eat or drink anything offered, and watched from separated as Jin Sook sat on the waterfront crying. When the two returned home later that day, Eun Hee remembers stuff unsated at Eun Joo delivering a flower in her hand and smiling.
Later on in the series, Jin Sook takes Eun Joo to her old neighborhood and tells her the truth surrounding her birth. When Eun Joo brings up the incident on the waterfront all those years ago, Jin Sook cries and swears that it was only a herbal tonic meant to misfire her brother, Ji Woo. Jin Sook tries her weightier at assuring Eun Joo that she would never hurt her in any way.
The incident is then brought up by Eun Hee to Eun Joo during an treatise soon afterward, where Eun Hee was wrestling that their mother “ran away” and only took her firstborn. Eun Joo retorts by supporting her jealousy of arriving home hungry and scared only to see her sister in a new outfit as their father cooked succulent supplies for Eun Hee to eat.
Although this conversation was important for filling in the details, the true precursor signaling the deterioration of Jin Sook and Sang Shik’s marriage is told through a series of flashbacks.
Why Did Lee Jin Sook Want to Graduate from Marriage?
Jin Sook wanted to graduate from marriage with Sang Shik based on a simple misunderstanding.
As I mentioned earlier, Sang Shik’s coworkers considered him a brute.
One day while strong-arming answers out of his work friend, Sang Shik learns that he was a pinch-purse towards his wife. Hardly overly giving her money and theoretically fathering a worm son, it takes Sang Shik a lot of subtle detective work and soul searching to icon out what he had unquestionably washed-up to his wife.
Not long without getting married, Sang Shik was driving trucks to provide for his family. He unwittingly hit a kid who was crossing the street, and took pity on the child’s situation of stuff poor, now crippled, and only having his elderly grandmother as family.
Without consulting his wife, Sang Shik decided to hibernate the incident and instead visit the boy – purchasing him groceries or new suit from time to time.
Believing Sang Shik had a new woman he loved, Jin Sook decided that going forward she would only perform her duties as a wife, and nothing increasingly in their marriage. Soon without this decision, Jin Sook took Eun Joo with her to the waterfront in an struggle to misfire Ji Woo.
Noticing the sudden and unexplained hostility toward him, coupled with Jin Sook “running yonder from home” it was virtually this time that Sang Shik moreover make a secret declaration – deciding to only provide for his family as a man should.
Years pass with Sang Shik and Jin Sook doing the yellowish minimum to maintain their marriage, only putting up a front for the kids.
Along with Sang Shik’s amnesia, the divorce of Eun Joo from her (closeted) gay husband Yoon Tae Hyung and Ji Woo running yonder to Canada completely fracture the Kim family.
Does My Unfamiliar Family Have A Happy Ending?
While My Unfamiliar Family does sooner have a happy ending, it is only happy in the sense that Jin Sook and Sang Shik have somewhat reconciled their relationship.
The relationship between Jin Sook and her kids Eun Joo, Eun Hee, and Ji Woo never heals, and they urgently stave spending time with their mother going forward.
You know I try not to put vituperation on a sole weft while watching kdrama, but I can’t help feeling like the Kim family siblings achieved happiness once their mother, Jin Sook, was out of the way.
Although it was (briefly) glossed over, Sang Shik points out that Jin Sook had no problem with him when he was at work all day – giving her money.
I don’t know if it was a weird Netflix translation or continuity error that Sang Shik was saving a large sum of money to requite to Jin Sook as a sort of filial piety, but plane when confronted with unsuspicious the money Jin Sook remains unhappy.
There was moreover the issue of when Sang Shik was revealed to have amnesia, Jin Sook berates him in the hospital for plane daring to utter aloud that Eun Joo was not his (real) daughter.
Now I may be projecting or imposing my own knowledge of unrepealable situations onto these characters, but I’ve seen firsthand that sometimes when a man wants to stay in upper regard with a woman, he will put her child (or children) whilom anything else – including his own.
Through flashbacks, we are shown that Sang Shik lead a miserable existence. Living in a small and dirty home, he watched Jin Sook wits her ‘shiny’ higher life wearing the fancy suit of Seoul’s trendy women. It was only when Jin Sook fell pregnant and was x-rated by everyone in her life that she gave Sang Shik a chance.
Reluctant to get married, the picture that hung in the Kim family home was on the day of their engagement – where Jin Sook looks worrisome and out of place, while Sang Shik appears to have won the lottery.
Given that Jin Sook substantially used Sang Shik as a ways to raise her daughter, provide her with shelter, and then only soured when Sang Shik was older and could no longer work…I don’t really take pity on her character.
Was Sang Shik a perfect husband? No, veritably not.
But at least Sang Shik was sincere in his feelings for Jin Sook.
We cannot say the same well-nigh Jin Sook, who while her husband had amnesia was going on dates with the Vegetable Store man.
Or how without stuff confronted with decades of her own lies, felt the need to run off to a foreign country and take a sabbath – which her children later shoehorn to themselves made them increasingly at ease while visiting their familial home.
But, tell me your thoughts.
Do you think Jin Sook was the root of the Kim family’s problems?
What role did Sang Shik play in the family’s misunderstandings?
And…
Which Kim sibling was your favorite?
(Mine was Eun Hee, I venerate the actress since I saw her as Yoon Jin Myung in Age of Youth years prior and really enjoyed her storyline of finding herself, and falling in love without a traumatic breakup.)
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