The K2 (2016)

Story
The story is about politics, corruption, a dysfunctional family, and revenge. The story is also kind of like a fairytale. Wherein the female lead is taken captive by her evil stepmother and the male lead is her prince charming. The first half of the show is good. It all went downhill when the female lead took the spotlight away. Her character is so dull, boring, and annoying. She is like a filler in the story. Her romance with the male lead was forced and was unnecessary. The second female lead (Choi Yoo Jin), on the other hand, nailed this one, what a phenomenal acting. Her character is very well written and is one of the best antagonists ever. 

Cast and Characters
• Ji Chang-wook as Kim Je Ha, or K2: His action scenes were entertaining. He had better chemistry with Song Yoon-ah, despite their age difference.
• Yoona as An-na: Her acting is totally fine with me. The problem is with how her character was written.
• Song Yoon-ah as Choi Yoo-jin: Hands down, she is the best actor in this drama. She is a fantastic actress—one of the best, actually. She totally nailed it. You will hate, but at the same time, pity Choi Yoo Jin, and you will root for her despite all of the horrible things she has done.

Music
The music is good, but forgettable.

Overall
Watch it for the actions scenes and for Song Yoon-ah. She made this her own drama with her excellent acting skills.

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A botched fairytale attempt

In the words of one of my favourite reviewers, Autumn Topping, The K2 is a modern retelling of Snow White that raises the question of "What if the Evil Queen fell in love with the Huntsman, but the Huntsman fell for Snow White instead?".

Although I watch this drama years ago...I'm finally able to properly word my thoughts.
Despite the fact that Ji Chang Wook is not my favourite actor, I enjoy him enough to have high expectations for this production. To begin on a good note, I must state that The K2 delivered on the action front with intensity (with some over the top exceptions). Now I will review each section of the good and the bad of this show.
Starting off with the romance. Oh god, where do I being? Je Ha and Yoo Jin's chemistry....let's just say I found myself sitting in agony as I question why I had to put up with Je Ha's childish crush on An Na. And I mean childish as in immature.
The main leads relationship had no chemistry and even pushed me to believe that the true stars of the show were Yoo Jin and Je Ha.
There were many moments in the show where it had reached a point where rationality no longer mattered.
It attempted to make a tale out of plainly improbable events, a massive cluster of plotholes, and outright ludicrous ideas.
An example of such an illogical plot was during Je Ha's first love's back story. His first love is Iraqi, she's entirely dressed in a gown and hijab at all times, but magically she chooses to throw off her veil and liplock with her "hero" only because he suggested they married. NOT EVEN A PROPER PROPOSAL!!! Her ONLY purpose was to die in order to create motivation for Ji Chan Wook's character to get involved in the action. She had nearly no dreams, hopes, or realistic goals.
On that note, I might as well mention the most cringe-worthy scene in all of drama romance history. Despite the fact that Je Ha is a mercenary soldier, he squeals while seeing An Na prepare ramen. As if that is the world cutest, most precious, never before been done action in the world. If I could show you all how much I rolled my eyes, I would.
There are numerous simple plot devices just holding up to spring out from all sides at the final moment to spare and draw out the show, and they're all exceedingly wry.

To summarise, The K2 was successful in generating exciting action moments, but the storyline struggled to match them. The drama started strong with a good setup in the first third, but it didn't seem to have much of a narrative to tell after that. Ji Chang Wook had a strong performance, yet some of his impacts were lost due to a lack of connection with An Na's character. This drama has enough decent things in it to appeal to fans of action and political manoeuvring, as well as Ji Chang Wook fans. While it didn't quite meet my expectations, it was a decent watch overall. I may revisit the drama a few years down the road, but I doubt my opinion will change. 

X0X0 <3
---Taemangi

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Hmm.. Good, but not drama-of-the-year-omg-i-wont-be-able-to-sleep-for-a-week-good.
Basically, there was a point after the 12th episode where I thought: "wait -- just where did those 12 hours go?" because the plot progresses so little despite many loooong scenes of veryveryvery fast action. In the first few eps, there was an accent on Je Ha's fighting abilities; he fought using systema, tae kwan do and all kinds of other martial arts, and it was quite interesting and impressive. But most of the action scenes after that were filmed in the dark and involved guns, and although you could see there was fighting involved, you couldn't really distinguish what was going on.

The beginning was promising - well, not the very beginning. The first episode [[this review contains no spoilers, i'll just explain how part of the summary is carried out in the first ep so that you get an idea of the pace]], the first episode is Anna running around town and wandering alone for an hour. She encounters Je Ha at the end and we're left with a cliffhanger. Yeah, that was one hour of her running in a dress and looking slightly out of it and full of despair. Too. long.

But I wanted to see what this mysterious 'K2' was all about. In the first few screen hours he was soo cool and mature.. But boom! suddenly he meets Anna and it's LOVE (get it?) Yes. Love. Love makes people blind, or in his case, pabo. Stupid. It was impressive -you had K2, the dude no one can beat for the serious stuff, and then there was the lighthearted (TOO lighthearted) moments of the drama, Je Ha was an incredible fool for Anna. Everyone knows an annoying couple who likes to display overly public display of attention. That's them basically.

About Anna: It's futile talking about her. She has 0 character development. Ah yeah, she goes from (stupid) girl who's been trapped for years and doesn't know anything about the world yet is seeking revenge --> cutesy little girl who still gives her trust easily and is nice to everyone (she's still stupid and still seeks revenge as a hobby) Also 0 involvement. Honestly, take Anna's physical presence out of the drama and it won't change a thing.

Choi Yoo Jin.. In the end, she deceived everyone. Although she tried to portray a strong and independent woman, she was really weak, weak at heart, weak for love. Somehow naïve, too. She's the only one who supported the drama when Je Ha got a little boring. Song Yoon Ah sure can act, her character was very interesting, although not immensely profound, and some typical facial expressions of hers were overdone, but she was still interesting.

Evil characters: Lee Jung Jin (Yoo Jin's brother) and Kim Kap Su (Park Kwan Soo) have a decent acting, but their mimics were even more overdone than Yoo Jin's. At some point it becomes annoying and not credible.


I don't know if I should really go on with this review, all has been said really. I felt like Je Ha's character was perfect at the very beginning and during action and serious scenes where he had to fight and take decisions and save everyone. His relationship with Anna was unrealistic and made his whole aura fall apart. Yoo Jin sorta balanced it out. The last two episodes however took an unexpected turn. It was filled with action and last minute decisions, unlike many dramas where you suddenly have a mysterious hasard make everything easy and possible for the hero, then happy ending and it's a wrap. Nope, not here. That was nice. But (there's always a but) THE VERY LAST (and expected, so I'm not spoiling anything here) happy ending scenes literally RUINED that previous action. Again, way.too.much PDA. It was both inappropriate and irrelevant.

This, like many other dramas, could've been so much better blah blah blah unfortunately it was carried the wrong way.

In a nutshell:
Don't watch this if you're looking for a a great action drama.
Do watch it if you're bored (that's actually what I started doing after I realized my expectations were too high, only watched when I was bored and didn't really look forward to it anymore.)

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If you like lone wolf action heroes who have a heart of gold and nine lives, then perhaps you'll like this. Ji Chang Wook is a very compelling reason for giving this drama a try, but the scene-stealer is Song Yoon Ah as Choi Yoo Jin. Yoo Jin is the only character with depth, a sympathetic villain with layers and complicated emotions. The only character who comes close to being her match is Lee Jung Jin as her brother, Choi Sung Won. The political plot is fairly straightforward without too many layers of conspiracy but the drama managed to be entertaining without being predictable. That being said, there were so many disappointing elements that while I don't regret watching it, I don't particularly recommend it.

Aside from Yoo Jin, every other character is so poorly developed. While Ji Chang Wook's Kim Je Ha starts off as a promising character, he ends up with only two defining characteristics: the ability to win a fight against all odds and a tendency for saving/falling in love with the damsel in distress. Yikes. Aside from the reason he seeks revenge, he's given little backstory. His relationship with Yoo Jin is complicated and intriguing, and showed SO MUCH POTENTIAL, but it all went away when he suddenly fell in love with Anna. I can understand if they slowly built a friendship and fell in love as they got to know each other but that's not what happens. What do they even know about each other?

Even on her own, Anna's character is so flimsy. The relationship with Je Ha aside, her character could've been 10 years younger and had the same storyline. What has her life been like all these years? All we see are glimpses of her running away, but was she educated? Was she allowed to have hobbies? It didn't make any sense. (Compare her character to the main character in Graceful Family, who is sent away for years and heavily watched/guarded.)

Choi Yoo Jin's husband, the congressman, had a shockingly small role. I would have liked to see him make some of his own decisions as well as the backstory of how they met. Also, the JSS agents seemed so inept compared to Je Ha, which I always find unbelievable, but ESPECIALLY Mi Ran. I cannot believe that after making a huge mistake, Mi Ran didn't lose her job. She was the World's Worst Bodyguard, from beginning to end, and while her personality was meant for some comic relief, I just found it annoying. The most under-utilized character with potential might've been Chief Kim though. She was fierce and loyal, but we never learn why.

I really liked the ending theme song though - Today by Kim Bo Hyung.

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I just finished watching this drama and I have so many mixed feelings that I wanted to write something about it. To start with the story line I would say it was there even though it could have been better. The music was good. I liked the action parts of the movie and I liked how the fighting scenes where choreographed and filmed. I did like that the main character was successful in all his actions and that's because I have seen so many movies where the main character is supposed to be this well trained, well prepared fighter just to end up in a lot of scenes being beaten up. So this movie satisfied my liking where the hero gets to be just that: a hero. I did love Choi Yoo Jin character even though she was one of the villains I grew to love her a lot. She was so deeply misunderstood and she missed on so much love throughout her life that all she had left was to make her husband become the president to at least achieve one dream or one thing in her life. Her methods to do that were not the best ones but if you strip her character of all this doings and if you peel all the layers that were making her character, its visible how hurt she was inside, how misunderstood she was. What I didn't like was Go Anna character. For a socially awkward person, phobia issues, locked in a convent for 10 years, she definitely acted nothing like she was having this problems, except the flashing lights thing, but that didn't stop her to participate to a fashion show in her mother name, which by the way nobody even thought about it for 10 years but now they were having a fashion show in her memory. She surely created a few extra problems for Kim Je Ha that made him deviate from his path and always do extra just to protect her, that it was driving me crazy. I wanted to get in and just tied her to a chair or put her on a plain to let him concentrate on his plans first and then he could go to her. As far as the love between them I didn't feel it at all. It felt forced, cold, rushed, strong feelings into a short period of time and I missed that build up to get to those feelings. All in all I just didn't feel Go Anna's character at all. I think the movie could have done just fine with out her character or have some other love interest for the main character. Maybe even a love between him and Choi Yoo Jim but definitely not with Go Anna. Maybe I'm wrong but I just really didn't feel Go Anna character. Not a bad drama since it has a good story but it does at times feel like you want to quit watching it. I stuck with watching the movie for a few characters in the movie and mainly for Kim Je Ha and Choi Yoo Jim characters.

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A little confused but it's got the spirit

The K2 is one of those shows that I’ve seen around regularly since I started watching K-dramas, and while some people seemed to like it, there are few shows I’ve seen get torn apart the way this one does. Then again I mostly see it talked about in Instagram and Instagram comments suck and all but whatever.

Anyways, I decided to ignore some of the backlash and give it a shot anyways. I mean it’s got ji Chang-Wook in it, so I’d watch it just for him. But honestly, I did enjoy the show, it did have some issues, absolutely, but I don’t think the extent of the negativity this show gets is deserved.

The first episode started out pretty strong introducing us to all the main characters. I really enjoyed the sections with An-Na and the K2 or Je-Ha, and the episode left me feeling pretty disturbed, which I can totally get behind for a show like this. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t always live up to the standards the first couple episodes set for me. So while I liked it, I do get what people mean when they say it was wasted potential. It was good but it could have been better.

Choi Yoo-jin was one of my favorite characters, she was delightfully horrible to watch on screen. I loved and hated her all at the same time. Most of the other villains weren’t as well done as she was, but I liked most of them well enough.

One of the highlights of the show was some of the action scenes and intense flashbacks, oh and the music. I don’t know exactly what style it was but I thought the music added really nicely to all of the dramatic parts of the show.

I loved Ji Chang-wook’s portrayal of Ja-Ha, he’s a pretty good mix of stoic and kind of soft. Most other reviews I’ve seen liked him well enough. An-Na on the other hand, gets a lot of hate. I imagine that her character was pretty darn hard to portray and I have to give props to Im Yoon-Ah. An-Na isn’t exactly that kind of “strong independent” female protagonist that a lot of people have come to like, but I thought she was interesting in her own right.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen about her character is that she’s naïve, which is fair enough. But for someone who has been separated from society for most of her life, it makes sense,

As far as the romance goes, I thought it was fine, though there isn’t much of it. An-Na and Je-Ha spend much more screen time apart then they spend together, what little time was spent on their romance, I thought was cute. Theres plenty of other things to keep your interest outside of the romance though, so it was fine.

Unfortunately, on that note, there might be a little too much going on. It might just be me but there were a few times where I was a little lost, and that kind of took me out of the story a few times.

Also another kind of random note, why are so many shots so shaky? I get that it’s probably a stylistic choice or something, but it was overdone. And I get that this was somewhat of a retold fairytale, but I wasn’t a fan of the mirror. I also wish the ending had been wrapped up just a bit cleaner.

Overall I though that The K2 had it’s problems, I had a good time watching it. And since I finished all sixteen episodes I obviously liked it enough to spend my time on it. So yeah, that’s all.

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Bit cheesy, unrealistic...

This drama probably reflected the true nature of high level corruptor/fraud/villain; watching entire drama was stressing me, as i question our own politician. Even though my first reason to watch this is ji chang wook, the true character spotlight of this drama is CYJ, instead KJH, TBH im much more into her than Ji Chang Wook. But i wasnt falling in love with any of lead characters, even in the end i cannot trust Master Song! I just really dont like the story line, the ending is too unnatural and unreal. The romance is not mature and cheesy. As a big fan of Ji chang wook, What i can say is im disappointed with his choice, as imho the dramas not exposing his best quality (i also disappoint with his backstreet rookie and suspicious partner, seriously Ji chang wook need to hire hu quality and smart consultant to chose his projects wisely)! Although being entertained, the almost-nude scene is cheesy and degrade JCW!

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I spent watching "The K2" after a long hiatus of not watching K-Dramas due to my studying and was able to watch it during my semester break. I think I took about 2 or 3 days like that to finish the whole 16 episodes without skipping (well except for the early minutes in each episodes since they like to re-capped the whole previous episodes before that).

I honestly watched it because of Ji Chang Wook since I am a fan of him after watching "Suspicious Partner". One of my friend actually suggested me to watch "The K2" while this drama was ongoing in 2016 but yeah, I don't like watching ongoing dramas since I love to watch dramas in one shot without stop.

What I could say about "The K2" is that it gives me this kind of feelings where it is not going to get bored. And when you feels like you're getting bored with the storyline and then suddenly out of nowhere the protagonists mostly really do play the main roles in this drama.

Choi Yoo Jin by Song Yoon-Ah ( you are going to have a love-hate relationship with her in the end ! ) and I am still amazed with her role in this drama! She just gives me so much feelings and I really do love her acting ! You are going to feel amazed with her in the end ;-)

It have been ages since I fell in love with a K-Drama that give me such an impact. The last K-Drama that gives me this kind of feelings was "Innocent Defendant" or "Defendant" (2017) acted by Park Jisung. If you love "The K2" then I am sure you'll love "Innocent Defendant" too ! I think it is because these kind of dramas are my cup of tea so yeah.

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Definitely a must watch show

I. Story
When you thought you have guessed the twists and turns, a new layer is introduced to prove your guesses wrong. This is rare in this genre and the writer, Hyuk Rin Jang, wrote a masterpiece.

While "The K2" was mainly about the political game, it was also about family relationships and the politics that is common in large clans with huge money at stake. This type of story is usually told by showing a dragging drama but in this TV series they approached it from an "outsider" view or as a secondary story. THe family politics was there but they were careful in keeping it from becoming the main story.

II. Acting
Excellent acting from the veteran and younger actors. The fight scenes, especially in episode one was beyond Western choreography, "James Bond" and "Mission: Impossible" can never match what they did.

I was also impressed by YoonA's acting of her character. At first it looked like her role was easy but as we get into the middle episodes, her character was challenging--she had to be a totally different person, someone with PTSD and deep hatred.

III. Music
The background music were perfect. It adds to the impact of an already powerful scene. It was good because BGMs should act as an amplifier for scenes and not as "the scene".

IV. Production
Great production. Clearly every centavo was spent to create a realistic show which captivated the audience and made the boundary between reality and fiction non-existent.

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TL;DR summary: Watch the first few episodes, especially if you love Ji Chang Wook (he is great in this). Stick around for the naked shower fight and the umbrella scene in particular. If you end up liking the destiny pair (and some people do), you might be able to finish this. If you don't, stop watching and make up your own ending.

I started watching The K2 right after Healer, because Ji Chang Wook, and the plot looked interesting. I was not disappointed by the first few episodes. The action scenes are well choreographed and fun, Ji Chang Wook looks great (duh), and there is some nice underlying intrigue with the plot and the characters. If the show had continued like this, all would have been well. Sadly, it did not.

Most of the characters in this show are nuanced and well acted. The initial episodes are compelling because you are trying to figure them out. Most of the characters start out clearly labeled by the show as "good" or "bad," but whether or not they will all stay that way is unclear. A character that the show initially signals is "good" is shown doing "bad" things, but are they being manipulated or is this their true character? Are the characters doing bad things really trying to do good? The uncertainty of each character's position within the spectrum of good and bad is a large part of what makes the plot compelling (besides the action scenes, which are consistently awesome). Song Yoon Ah, in particular, is masterful at her acting within the grey area. Her character is clearly set up to be the big bad at the beginning, but I remained convinced that there was a possibility for her redemption. This was particularly helped by her frankly smoldering chemistry with Ji Chang Wook on screen. This chemistry with the protagonist suggests that maybe she isn't so bad after all.

It is difficult to explain what is ultimately disappointing about this drama without spoiling the plot, but I will try. There was SO MUCH potential with this concept. Unfortunately, the intriguing initial episodes are followed up with the destruction of all subtlety by the ham-handed romance of the destined pairing. The show points out this pair early on, much like how characters are labeled as "good" and "bad." With all of the grey going on in the first few episodes, though, there remains the chance that MAYBE this drama will not play out to the seemingly-destined pair. As we entered the latter half of the drama, it still seemed possible that Wook's protagonist would not end up with the destiny partner; she had a strong reason to love him, but the show never convinced me why his character was really interested in her. Additionally, it seemed that her naive character, clearly outlined as "good," at first, was drifting into the grey area, which seemed to worry her potential love interest. Could he be driven into the arms of the "big bad" instead? This was exciting! Even if the destiny pair did still end up together, having some bumps on the road is always more fun, especially as it plays into the general state of intrigue on the show. That is the show I wanted to watch.

Sadly, I was disappointed. Instead of allowing the protagonist to have some doubts about his destiny partner and letting everyone play around in uncertainty a bit longer, the show throws the pair together shortly after the halfway point in such a way that it becomes pretty clear that they won't be separated. Suddenly, a drama that seemed to be built on the nuance of its characters becomes a straightforward political/spy drama with a romance side plot. Turns out, that's not interesting. I struggled on for a bit, but ultimately stopped watching.

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