“Red Shoes” – What a Mother’s Love Does Not Look Like

“Red Shoes” is a Korean drama series released in 2021, has 100 episodes, and can be categorized as Soap Opera, Family, Crime, Romance, and Revenge.

SUMMARY: A young girl finds out that on the night her father died, her biological mother betrayed her, her brother and her father by forsaking them in order to live a life of wealth and luxury. She and her brother were raised by a woman who was a friend of the family. When the girl grew up, she was studying to become a shoe designer. Her brother grew up and became a doctor, but his life was cut short when he was attacked by a thief and died from the injuries he sustained. Just as her mother showed no guilt or shame when the father died, she had no shame or pity for her son and pretended not to even know her own child. The daughter who had been forsaken came up with a plan to take revenge on her cold-hearted mother.

♦ Family Ties

In “Red Shoes”, some family ties are easily broken while other family ties are difficult to connect or reconnect. Not all biological mothers are true mothers to their children. But to borrow lyrics from “Ironic”, a popular song by Alanis Morissette: “life has a funny way of sneaking up on you”.

When Hope and Dreams Get Dashed

Min Hee-kyeong wanted to be a shoe designer. She fell in love with Kwon Hyeok-Sang and they intended to marry but his mother stopped the wedding. His mother forced him into a marriage with a woman who already had a son and she was mentally ill. But that didn’t matter because, she was rich! Kwon Hyeok-Sang broke Min Hee-kyeong’s heart. But she carried on. Since the man he loved was no longer available, she married another man and had two kids, Jin-A, a daughter, and Jin-Ho, a son. Kwon Hyeok-Sang stayed in touch with Min Hee-kyeong by asking her to submit her shoe designs to his company. It was an excuse to continue to see her, dressed up as a “business arrangement”.

One day Min Hee-kyeong was in a store looking at expensive shoes she knew she could not afford. She tried on a pair of red shoes. When Kwon Hyeok-Sang saw her, he bought them for her. Although she tried to refuse, he pleaded with her to accept them as appreciation for her shoe designs. Her designs were very popular in Japan and his company profited greatly from that. She accepted (pretending to act modestly) and took the shoes home. Her little daughter thought the shoes were beautiful and said one day she wanted a pair too. Min Hee-kyeong gave Jin-A a necklace with tiny red shoes hanging from the chain. It was her mother’s last gift. Soon after this event, something terrible happened.

When an Accident Becomes a Crime

Min Hee-kyeong’s husband saw her with Kwon Hyeok-Sang. Because he knew that this man was her first love, his jealousy boiled over. They had a terrible argument and he threw her out of the house WITH her red shoes. Min Hee-kyeong was ill at the time but managed to make it to a phone booth and called Kwon Hyeok-Sang to come get her. Of course, he immediately ran to her rescue. At the same time, he came searching for her, Min Hee-kyeong’s husband had awakened from his drunken stupor and also went looking for her. It was late at night, so it was very dark, complicated by rainy weather that made visibility poor. Kwon Hyeok-Sang found Min Hee-kyeong passed out in the phone booth. He put her in his car intending to take her to the hospital, and that’s when the tragedy happened. Because he didn’t see him, he hit Min Hee-kyeong’s husband with his car.

Had he done the right thing at that moment, i.e. tried to get medical help for the injured man, it would have been a tragic accident. Instead, he left the injured man lying in the street and drove off. Now it’s a hit-and-run and that’s a crime. Kwon Hyeok-Sang compounded his crime by doing things to cover it up, including insisting that Min Hee-kyeong marry him. After all, her husband is dead. But what about her children? Kwon Hyeok-Sang demanded that he cut ties and never see them again. BUT! She’s their mother! Their flesh and blood biological mother! It took a little less than a minute for Min Hee-kyeong to agree with his proposal and just like that they were both partners in crime. They had to keep each other’s secret.

• Min Hee-kyeong forsook her husband and her children for the money and the good life she knew she would never have had with her dead husband.

• Kwon Hyeok-Sang got back at his mother who forced him to marry a sick rich girl and be father to a boy who was not his son by marrying the woman he had always wanted to marry and having his own children.

So what if Min Hee-kyeong was heartless enough to forsake her own children? That was OK because she was also selfish and greedy enough to keep the secret that her second husband was a murderer!

When an Accident Becomes a Crime AND There Are Witnesses

Kwon Hyeok-Sang thought everything would be fine until a witness contacted him and said: “I know who you are and I saw what you did. SO PAY ME TO SHUT UP!”

Kwon Hyeok-Sang continued to compound his crime with more cover-ups. He paid off the man who said he was a witness and made him sign a paper saying they would never see each other again. The blackmailer signed the paper and … Kwon Hyeok-Sang was in such a hurry to get away from him that he jumped up and ran out of the building. However, he dropped the paper that had been signed on the floor. Guess who picked it up?

In his defense, the blackmailer only wanted money because his sister’s son needed heart surgery. There was no way they could pay for the operation, so he milked a rich man who had a dirty secret. Yes, it was wrong. But he’d worry about his guilty conscience after his nephew got the heart operation. He told his sister, So Ok-Kyung, i.e. his nephew’s mother to do the same. He insisted on sending Jin-A and Jin-Ho to an orphanage. But So Ok-Kyung drew the line right there. She had agreed and conspired with her brother to take blackmail money and cover up a crime. But to send those kids to an orphanage? NO WAY!! Her son got an operation because hush money was extracted from their father’s murderer. She had to perform some kind of penance to pay for her sin, so she decided to raise the murdered man’s children as her own.

When a Child Learns the Truth and Tries to Carry On

One day Jin-A overheard So Ok-Kyung, her adoptive mother, telling a friend the truth about what happened the night her father died. She said she saw her mother in the car with another man leaving the scene of the accident. She knew the woman had run off; that’s why she never reported her mother as a missing person. Jin-A was crushed. How could the mother she loved so much who had given her that beautiful necklace with red shoes be so cruel and uncaring? What had she and her brother done to deserve this? The answer? Nothing. They had done nothing.

Jin-A and her brother Jin-Ho grew up loved by a woman who was not their biological mother. Jin-A worked hard to put Jin-Ho through medical school and he became a doctor. Meanwhile, Jin-A studied to become a shoe designer. She had designed a pair of shoes for her brother and intended to give them to him for his birthday. However, on his birthday, her biological mother visited the shoemaker’s shop and bought the shoes. Rather, she stole the shoes by threatening the shoemaker that she would withhold future business from his shop. When Jin-A arrived to pick up her brother’s shoes, he gave her an excuse saying they weren’t ready. Jin-A was livid!! But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened on her brother’s birthday.

On his birthday, Jin-Ho was attacked by a thief and ended up in the hospital. Sensing that he might die, he asked Jin-A if he could see his mother.  They had not seen Min Hee-kyeong for years. Nevertheless, she tried to approach her biological mother and asked her to come see her son. At the time, Min Hee-kyeong was with her husband, Kwon Hyeok-Sang and they both pretended not to know who she was talking about. When Jin-A returned to the hospital her brother had already passed away. Now Jin-A was alone, with no father or brother.

Jin-A was already hurt and angry when she learned her mother had forsaken them to live a life of wealth and luxury. But to pretend she didn’t even know her own son? That was too much. In addition, at a later date, Jin-A discovered that the company her mother owns had stolen her shoe design. She went directly to the company’s offices to complain and they threw her out of the building. She didn’t see her mother but she crossed paths with Kwon Hyeok-Sang and he told her if her accusation was true, then sue them in court! He likely said that knowing she probably didn’t have money to pay for legal counsel. On that same day, in that same building, she also saw Kwon Hye-Bin, her mother’s daughter, the child she had with Kwon Hyeok-Sang.

Let’s RECAP

Jin-A, now a young woman, has lost both her father and her brother.

• Her mother abandoned her and her brother the night their father died.
• Her mother married another man and had a child with him and now they are living a fairy tale life.
• To top that off, her mother stole her shoe design and is profiting from her intellectual property and hard work.

Jin-A could smell the stench coming from that woman and her husband, and some of it was also coming from their spoiled brat of a daughter. Her blood started boiling and the wheels in her head started turning. But what can she do? She is powerless and has no money.

But “life has a funny way of sneaking up on you”.

Jin-Ae met a man, Yoon Ki-Seok, who has a rich grandmother, who is looking for her adopted son whom her husband abandoned at a train station years ago. The grandmother can’t do a DNA test because the child was adopted. But she is certain she would know him if she saw him because he had a mark on his wrist.

The grandmother is now in poor health and has spent a lot of her money searching for that little boy, even though she is not his biological mother. One day, the grandmother fell ill while out in public and Jin-A helped her get to the hospital. The old woman was Yoon Ki-Seok’s grandmother. But what neither of them knew at the time their 3 paths intersected that day was that Jin-A was the daughter of the adopted son that the grandmother had been searching for all these years. Not only that but, the wealthy grandmother is in the business of money lending and does a lot of business with Min Hee-kyeong, Jin-A’s biological mother.

Isn’t it interesting how family ties get broken and reconnected?

Main Characters:

• Min Hee-kyeong (played by Choi Myung-gil, “Durian’s Affair“)
• Kim Jin-A / Zemma (played by So E-Hyun, “My Happy Ending“)
• Yoon Ki-Seok (played by Park Yoon-Jae)
• Kwon Hye-Bin (played by Jung Yoo-Min, “Perfect Marriage Revenge“)
• Kwon Hyeok-Sang (played by Sun Woo Jae Duk)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Rating:

• IMDb: 5.2 out of 10 stars
• MyDramaList: 6.7 out of 10 stars
• Viki viewers rated this series 8.1 out of 10 stars

My personal rating is the same as the Viki viewers.

Not sure if soap-opera-type Korean dramas with 100+ episodes have become very popular OR if I am just finding out about them. I didn’t get interested in this K-drama because I like soap operas. It’s just that I happen to like red shoes, so the title was an instant hook. “Red Shoes” is another soap-opera-type Korean drama with exactly 100 episodes, each episode lasting about 30 to 40 minutes. For me, it’s like eating at a McDonalds. I’m loving it! LOL.

I only have one complaint about these types of Korean dramas. They give away the ending at the beginning. It’s annoying. I hate to know what’s going to happen, even though there is still a lot to unwrap in so many episodes.

My rating isn’t that high because I’m upset about knowing how it will end for the main character. Even so, there are young children involved and you want to know how they will grow up and work their way through a “web of deceit”. You have other adult characters who resort to blackmail. Even though it’s for a good cause, it’s still wrong. Don’t think you can justify wrongdoing by saying your intentions were honorable. Doing wrong has a way of coming back to bite ya!

The storyline makes you wonder. Is this fiction or can it possibly be fact? It’s probably fiction based on some facts. Why can’t people just do the right thing? Do you know hard it is to be burdened with a guilty conscience year after year after year after …? Don’t they know that trials, tribulations, unexpected calamities, temptations, etc. are just a test of their character to see if they will overcome? Must a person always react to a bad situation and prove that their looks are deceiving? Oh my! You looked like you’re a decent person on the outside, but on the inside, you’re rotten to the core. (Huge sigh.)

At any rate, the cast played their parts well, including the children. Although some reviewers said they found one of the main female leads annoying. I understand the complaint. In K-dramas, sometimes they be like that! I blame the scriptwriters. The actresses just say their lines. LOL. Needless to say I didn’t find K-drama series on various published lists.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Red Shoes 2021 K-Drama Review – With Spoilers | The Muse Culture

3 Reasons “Red Shoes” Is A Must-Watch This Summer | Soompi

12 Kdramas With The Highest Viewer Ratings As Of 2021 | Creatrip

♦ PopGeeks Reviews of Other K-Dramas With 100 or More Episodes

PopGeeks has published reviews of several other Korean dramas with 100+ episodes. Some are cute and sweet. Others involve some intense clawing and scratching.

• The Elegant Empire

• Su Ji and U Ri: Physician, Heal Thyself!
• The Brave Yong Soo-jung: A Model For Overcoming Adversity
• “Snow White’s Revenge” ~ The Evil Stepmom Needs to Die!
• The Two Sisters: Sisters Separated by Divorce Meet Again
• Unpredictable Family: Do You Know Who Your Relatives Are?

TRAILERS/TEASERS:

Viu Singapore. “[Trailer] Red Shoes | Catch It FREE on Viu Now.” YouTube Video. YouTube, November 22, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omosQfMHhKs.‌

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