The Real Has Come ~ Lady! You Damaged the Wrong Car!

“The Real Has Come” is a 2023 Korean drama series, with 50 episodes, and can be categorized as Family, Soap Opera, Romance and Comedy (Rom-Com).

SUMMARY: A young woman was on her way up the career ladder and in a happy relationship. At least that’s what she thought until she caught her boyfriend cheating and broke up with him. She behaved like most angry women who have been betrayed and took a red marker and wrote all kinds of terrible words on his car. Cheater! Liar! Etc. Except … it wasn’t her boyfriend’s car. It was the car of another man she didn’t even know. He was a respected doctor, a gynecologist. Not only did she damage his car but she caused him a lot of trouble with his ex-girlfriend and his family and besmirched his good reputation. People started calling him a heartless womanizer. Even though her relationship was over she at least still had her work. At least that’s what she thought until she found out she was pregnant which resulted in her losing her job. Her life seemed like everything was going downhill. But one thing leads to another. How could she have known that writing in red letter on the good doctor’s car would lead to the real man in her life.

♦ Why is a Red Marker on the Ground Next to My Car?

“The Real Has Come” is filled with lots of mangled and tangled relationships, love/hate triangles, angry bride revenge plans, domineering matriarch, forced inconvenient marriages of convenience, rich boy/poor girl romance, caring and supportive family members, and selfish people who are greedy, covetous, ambitious, scheming, cunning and will do anything to get what they, etc. In short, it’s a typical soap opera storyline.

Oh Yeon-Doo is a hardworking lecturer. It took years but she is about to be promoted to the Number 1 Lecturer. Her boyfriend is Kim Joon-Ha, CEO of Kim Holdings. She received a text from him and rushed to meet him at their usual romantic meeting place. When she got there he was surprised because he accidentally sent the text to “the wrong girlfriend”. Her surprise turned into shock and then into anger. He was cheating on her!

Oh Yeon-Doo stormed out of the hotel room and went to the garage where his car was parked. She happened to have a red marker in her purse and thought of the perfect way to vent her anger. She used the red marker and wrote all kinds of horrible things about that rotten two-timer. When she was finished she calmly walked away. The problem is … the car did not belong to her boyfriend. She had damaged the property of Doctor Gong Tae-Kyung.

Gong Tae-Kyung has just ended a relationship with his girlfriend. There was no cheating involved, just a disagreement. She wanted to get married and he did not. When they entered their relationship it was agreed that marriage was not an option. However, she felt they had been dating long enough and he should consider tying the knot. His answer was NO!! and that’s The End of you and me. His girlfriend followed him to the hotel parking lot to beg and plead with him and then she saw those words written in red.

For Crying Out Loud! I Am Not a Womanizer!

Gong Tae-Kyung was as shocked as his ex-girlfriend was and wanted to know who was slandering him and sullying his good reputation. But his ex-girlfriend was too busy yelling at him to allow him to defend himself. Her yelling carried over. When her mother found out, she started yelling and when his grandmother found out, she started yelling. No matter how much he protested and said the words were not true, nobody listened to him. Grrrr …!! When he finds whoever it was that wrote those words on his car he’s going to _________.

Meanwhile, Gong Tae-Kyung’s grandmother decided to play matchmaker and force him to marry Jang Se-Jin, a faithful employee whom she calls “her person”. When someone says you’re their “person”, that means you will do whatever they tell you to do. If they tell you to get married to their grandson, you will. But what if the grandson does not want to marry you? Uuuhhh … so what! Grandmother’s word is law!

Gong Tae-Kyung and Jang Se-Jin knew each other since they were teenagers. He liked her but she only played with him. Gong Tae-Kyung had been adopted into a wealthy but he was never treated like part of the family. Jang Se-Jin knew the family looked down on him.  So it didn’t matter if she mistreated him too. Gong Tae-Kyung learned from her how cruel women can be. Now that they are adults and his grandmother was trying to force them into marriage? Jang Se-Jin was very pleased with the grandmother’s approval since she wanted to become a part of the Gong family and gain access to their wealth. However, Gong Tae-Kyung started wondering if there was a way for him to escape living in hell.

I Help You! You Help Me!

Eventually, Gong Tae-Kyung found Oh Yeon-Doo, the angry woman who damaged his car. Their relationship started with a misunderstanding but they kept having unintentional encounters. When Oh Yeon-Doo found out she was pregnant, she was dismissed from her job for being an unwed mother. Her career goals had been crushed and she was having a hard time finding a job. She was also trying to decide if she should have an abortion. Her ex-boyfriend accused her of trying to use her pregnancy to get money from him. By this time Gong Tae-Kyung had begun to understand Oh Yeon-Doo’s predicament and wanted to help her. The three of them got into an argument and in a fit of anger, Gong Tae-Kyung claimed to be the father of the baby. Oh Yeon-Doo knew her ex-boyfriend Kim Joon-Ha no longer wanted to be in a relationship with her, so she never told him that he was the biological father.

Also, she did not know that the woman Kim Joon-Ha cheated on her with was Jang Se-Jin, the woman Gong Tae-Kyung was being forced to marry. As time passed, the relationship between Gong Tae-Kyung and Oh Yeon-Doo developed into good friends who relied on each other. Gong Tae-Kyung had helped Oh Yeon-Doo to end her relationship with her ex-boyfriend. So he asked her if she would help him escape his forced marriage to Jang Se-Jin. He wanted them to pretend to get married. Initially Oh Yeon-Doo refused to “help” him by doing that. But on the day of the wedding, just before the couple could be pronounced man and wife, Oh Yeon-Doo disrupted the ceremony. She walked down the aisle and bellowed “How dare you get you married when I’m pregnant!!” Then she and Gong Tae-Kyung ran away and left the shocked bride at the altar.

Perhaps the innocent duo thought what they did at the wedding would fix their situation. Gong Tae-Kyung had escaped a loveless marriage and Oh Yeon-Doo had decided to keep her baby and live an independent life as a single mom. However, others had other plans for how this couple was going to live the rest of their lives. The grandmother, their parents and other family members, and the jilted bride and her parents, were not going to just let them run off into the sunset. This doesn’t end like that 1967 movie “The Graduate” where Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross ran out of the church building. Oh no! The war for their freedom had just begun!

Main Characters:

• Oh Yeon-Doo (played by Baek Jin-Hee, “Missing Nine”, “Jeon Woo-Chi”)
• Gong Tae-Kyung (played by Ahn Jae-Hyeon, “My Love From the Star”)
• Jang Se-Jin (played by Cha Joo-Young, “The Glory 1 and 2”, “Wok of Love”)
• Kim Joon-Ha (played by Jung Eui-Jae, “Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency”)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Ratings:

• IMDb Rating: 6.3 out of 10 stars
• My Drama List: 7.3 out of 10 stars
• Dramabeans: 8.2 out of 10 stars
• Amazon customers rated the series 4.3 out of 5 stars
• Viki viewers rated this series 8.8 out of 10 stars

My personal rating is 9 out of 10 stars.

I liked the male and female leads. They were an adorable couple. “The Real Has Come!” is a funny Korean drama that addresses a serious topic: abortion. The Korean movie “Anchor”, posed the question: Must single mothers give up on life? The answer provided in that film was depressing. It’s like the single mother’s life was completely ruined. I was very unhappy with that answer. The same question is asked in this series but the answer was much more hopeful. The sun still comes out the next day, even if you did not expect to get pregnant.

Abortion is a very sensitive topic and the scriptwriters handled it in a sensitive, loving, and caring way by considering the unborn child, the mother, and the father. This soap-opera-type series was full of Kdrama tropes but they were all mangled and tangled and took a lot of unraveling. I did not expect to laugh so much and it was old-fashioned, wholesome, squeaky-clean humor.

Also, I learned something new. When the female lead learned she was pregnant, the sonogram showed twins. But when she had another sonogram a little bit later, the doctor told her there was only one baby. Have you ever heard of “Vanishing Twin Syndrome”?

• “It is evident in any case that resorption of gestational sacs during pregnancy happens without affecting the co-twin. Regardless of the resorption of the vanishing twin, there are excellent chances of the survival of the other twin, as resorption mostly occurs in the first trimester.”

I did not know this. Did you?

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Korea’s “The Real has Come!” reign continues; 50-episode KBS drama tops Nielsen ratings for 14th consecutive week | ContentAsia

“The Real Has Come!” And “Doctor Cha” Soar To Their Highest Ratings Yet | Soompi

4 Reasons To Watch Weekend K-Drama “The Real Has Come!” | TRENDS | KPopMap

WATCH TRAILER:

KDramaforyou. “THE REAL HAS COME Trailer (March 2023 KDrama) | Ahn Jae Hyun & Baek Jin Hee Korean Drama.” YouTube Video. YouTube, March 10, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ492WdQkTo.‌