“White Nights” (aka “Night Light”) – I Want to Be a Villain

“White Nights” (aka “Night Light”) is a 2016/2017 Korean drama TV series, with 20 episodes, categorized as Romance, Crime, and Thriller; and is streaming Only on Netflix.

SUMMARY: Seo Yi-Kyung is a woman determined to be the successor of her father’s criminal enterprise. She hired another woman, Lee Se-Jin, to work for her and that woman wanted to be just like her boss. Park Gun-Woo had to return from living abroad because his father was sent to prison and he needed to continue to run the business for him. It turns out his father and Seo Yi-Kyung’s father are enemies. The last thing in the world that either of them want is for their children to become romantically involved with each other. But it happened and rather than let their parents decide their future, Seo Yi-Kyung decided that she would not allow Park Gun-Woo to have a place in her future. The ambitions of three strong-willed people eventually collide.

♦ Family Ties Need to Be Unraveled

In “White Nights”, Seo Yi-Kyung was raised by her father who only taught her how to value money. Money is everything. Seo Yi-Kyung developed thick skin being raised by her father and never experienced kindness, gentleness, the joy of being loved, and being in love. Then one day she met Park Gun-Woo. They were both pursuing their higher education aspirations. Park Gun-Woo had a dream. He was a talented musician and hoped to pursue a music career. He was Seo Yi-Kyung’s first love. But when her father found out that he was the son of his enemy, he took action to end their relationship.

• Seo Yi-Kyung accepted her father’s will. She made her choice clear when she told Park Gun-Woo that she was going to be her father’s successor. In other words, she was going to follow the same criminal path her father had taken and achieve wealth and power, no matter what the costs. One of the costs was forfeiting a romantic relationship with Park Gun-Woo. Her father ran a criminal enterprise and she was the only child. Who else was going to take over the family business if not her? Her boyfriend’s dream of being a musician was simply unrealistic and had no place in her plans for the future. Not only that but he was the son of her father’s rival. How were they ever going to have a happy relationship? She broke up with him and never looked back. 

• Park Gun-Woo did not want to be a part of his father’s business. However, his father went to prison so he returned home, hoping to find a way to get his father released. When he got there, he saw that his greedy uncle was determined to take over and leave him out. If that wasn’t bad enough, his uncle and his former girlfriend, Seo Yi-Kyung, were partners in crime. When he met Seo Yi-Kyung again she told him not to talk to her about their past. She was only moving forward and it would be best if he did not get in her way. But how could Seo Yi-Kyung avoid having confrontations with her? He wasn’t about to let his greedy uncle take over his father’s business.

♦ Not a Family Tie But a Tie Nevertheless

Lee Se-Jin attended a business gathering where she put on an act pretending to be someone’s “significant other”. It was just a gig. She worked all kinds of jobs to support her family and yet it was always difficult to make ends meet. When Seo Yi-Kyung saw her, she perceived that Lee Se-Jin was smart and ambitious. With some training, she would be an excellent employee. She would even be able to send her out to certain places as her representative for Gallery S.

Lee Se-Jin was happy to accept the offer of employment. The job paid much better than any of the other jobs she had worked. She admired everything about Seo Yi-Kyung. She believed that her employer lived the life she always wanted to live and hoped one day to be just like her. However, when she started working for Seo Yi-Kyung she realized that her boss did not lead a fairy tale life.

Her boss had to face off with ruthless people, was sometimes put in dangerous situations, and being soft-hearted was not an option. Even so, she still wanted to be like her boss and took every job she was assigned with the goal that one-day others would be working for her. Lee Se-Jin made a special effort to meet Park Gun-Woo and start a relationship. But that was before she knew that Park Gun-Woo and her boss,, Seo Yi-Kyung, had “a history”.

As if the family ties weren’t making life complicated enough, the three of them become entangled in a fierce battle for money and power.

Main Characters:

• Seo Yi-Kyung (played by Lee Yo-Won, “The Recipe”, “The Great Queen Seondeok”)
• Park Gun-Woo (played by Jin Goo, “My Lovely Angel”, “The Auditors”, “Shadow Detective 1 and 2”, “Descendants of the Sun”)
• Lee Se-Jin (played by Uee, “Ghost Doctor”, “Jeon Woo-Chi”, “Golden Rainbow”)
• Tak (played by Jung Hae-In, “D.P. 1 and 2”, “Snowdrop”, “Connect”, “The Three Musketeers”)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Rating:

• IMDb: 6.7 out of 10 stars
• My Drama List: 7 out of 10 stars
• Dramabeans: 5.8 out of 10 stars
• JustDial: 6.6 out of 10 stars

My personal rating is the same as My Drama List.

A reviewer said they watched this K-drama because they liked the way they dressed. I must say the characters were quite stylish. But there was a lot more to “White Nights” than good fashion. The moral of the story was: If you choose to be a villain, there is no place for love and a romantic relationship. The female lead was determined to stick to the path she had chosen. If you like series with strong female leads, you’ll enjoy “White Nights”.

Some viewers described the series as “gender-bending”. I didn’t see it that way. I saw a strong woman standing on her own two feet and making direct eye contact with all the men in the cutthroat business world, plainly telling them her demands and if fighting them was necessary she wasn’t going to back down.

For some reason, this series did not make Soompi’s list of “must-watch” Korean dramas released in 2016. Not sure but it seems to have slipped under the radar because there were very few reviews. It doesn’t help that there is an American film by the same name which makes searching for this K-drama a tad bit difficult. “Netflix acquired the international rights for the drama and is using the name White Nights for it.” Even if some don’t think it’s a “must-watch”, I think it’s binge-worthy.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Leverage meets The Handmaiden in Netflix’s K-drama White Nights | The Verge

Night Light Korean Drama Review | Funcurve

15 Must-Watch K-Dramas From 2016 | Soompi

TRAILER/TEASER:

anopinion. “[Teaser] Night Light Trailer 1 (Eng Sub).” YouTube, 10 Nov. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyrOiN2d9hk.