Kim Min-Kyu is a reclusive millionaire. He has to live by himself and when he does come out in public he covers himself including wearing gloves and carrying a baton. The baton is to make sure that people keep their distance and don’t touch him. It’s not that he is antisocial. It’s just that he’s allergic to humans. If a human touches him he has an extreme allergic reaction and it could even result in death.
Hong Baek-Gyun has built an AI robot using his ex-girlfriend, Jo Ji-A, as his model. That’s right. The AI humanoid robot called AG-3 looks exactly like Jo Ji-A.
Jo Ji-A is a young entrepreneur, bursting with ideas for products that she is certain people will love. The problem is that she can never get them to market because she lacks investment funds. She is so short on money that she lives with her brother who insists that she give up her fanciful dreams and get a real job.
Hong Baek-Gyun needs funding to continue his research and to perfect the AI humanoid robot he built. Kim Min-Kyu already owns the company that is in charge of the research project and tells Baek-Gyun that he will continue investing if he can test the robot himself. If the robot passes all of his tests, he will provide the funds needed to continue the research project.
However, the robot breaks on the day Baek-Gyun is supposed to send her over for testing. In desperation, he hires his ex-girlfriend, Ji-A, to pretend to be AG-3. Ji-A can finally tell her brother she has “a real job”; even though it’s temporary and part-time. However, neither Baek-Gyun nor Ji-A know that Min-Kyu is allergic to humans. They don’t find out about his ailment until much later. But by that time, Min-Kyu had become attached to AG-3. He even tells his doctor, who has been treating him for 15 years, that the robot has cured him of his allergy. He doesn’t realize that he has been interacting with and touching a human.
Baek-Gyu did not set out with ill intentions to deliberately deceive Min-Kyu. He just needed time to get the parts necessary to fix his robot. It was just a temporary fix. Nobody knew the AI robot would break and need parts that had to be shipped all the way from Africa! YIKES!
No worries. Just stay cool and calm. As long as Ji-A played her part as a robot convincingly enough, when the real robot was repaired, the research team would simply switch them out. Who would know that they had ever been substituted?
Perfect plans always seem like they will work perfectly fine until THEY DON’T!! A couple of major complications occur that cause the plan to start falling apart.
My personal rating is the same as the Viki viewing audience. Initially, because there were 32 episodes, I thought it might become long and boring. But not so! Each episode was interesting and kept you wondering about what would happen next.
In the beginning (back in 2018), there was low viewership rating. But it’s December 2023 and this series is included in IMDb’s listing of Highest-Rated Korean Dramas. “I Am Not a Robot” was one of my most enjoyable K-drama binge-watching experiences.
MAC Drama World. “I Am Not a Robot Trailer [Eng Sub] Official 2018 || Yoo Seung-Ho & Chae Soo-Bin || HD.” YouTube Video. YouTube, February 13, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D36QRCy9JCo.
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