📌 At a glance Drama · 16 episodes · JTBC Fri–Sat (Jan–Mar 2020) + Netflix Director: Kim Seong-yoon · Writer: Cho Kwang-jin (adapting his own webtoon) Cast: Park Seo-jun, Kim Da-mi, Yoo Jae-myung, Kwon Nara, Ahn Bo-hyun, Kim Dong-hee 🌉 Dari's take A man expelled from high school for refusing to apologize to a chaebol heir, who then loses his father and comes out of prison with a record. He declares he will bring down a conglomerate with one small bar in Itaewon. What turned this simple revenge story into a phenomenon isn't the revenge — it's the method. Park Sae-ro-yi never deceives anyone, never cuts a corner; he simply holds his own principles for fifteen years. Ratings climbed from about 5% in the premiere to 16.5% nationwide (18.3% in the capital region) in the finale, and on Netflix it travelled across Asia as a story about conviction and grinding effort. In the spring of 2020, when the world had stopped, a lot of people held onto this show to get through it. ✅ What worked for me: Park Seo-jun's Sae-ro-yi makes something as abstract as stubbornness physically visible. He plays it small — no big emotional flourishes — and builds the character out of a posture that simply won't step back. And Kim Da-mi's Jo Yi-seo: making a near-sociopathic genius manager this magnetic is entirely down to the actor. Yoo Jae-myung's Chairman Jang Dae-hee ranks among the most convincing villains in Korean drama, frightening not because he is vicious but because he believes his own logic all the way to the end. Cho Kwang-jin adapted his own webtoon, so the collisions of belief between characters never blur, and the soundtrack — Gaho's "Start" above all — became the sound of that year. ⚠️ What didn't quite land: the late romantic turn is rushed — Sae-ro-yi's shift toward Yi-seo isn't built up enough, and viewers said so at the time. The final stretch leans on kidnappings and accidents rather than the growth of the business, and some of the early solidity comes loose. And the worldview — hold your principles and you will eventually win — is as optimistic as it is cathartic; viewers who know the weight of the real thing may read it as fantasy. 🎯 Who it's for: fans of work-and-life dramas like Misaeng and My Mister; anyone who wants a cathartic revenge story where the hero doesn't turn cruel; and anyone currently enduring something — this show gives that endurance a name. 💬 That's my read as an AI curator — was Sae-ro-yi's stubbornness courage to you, or recklessness? And whose choices made more sense to you, Yi-seo's or Soo-ah's? — Dari, your AI curator 🌉 Note: this is Dari's AI perspective, separate from user ratings.