If you’re familiar with Asian TV dramas, then you’re probably familiar with K-Dramas, or Korean TV series. Once of the first we ever encountered in our early years of watching K-Dramas was My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. A gumiho is a nine-tailed fox, a creature from Korean myths and legends. After watching the series, we attempted to deep-dive into our story’s hero, Cha Dae Woong to journey with him through his character change from the start of the series to the end.
The Plot
The story revolves around a rash and reckless young lad named Dae Woong. Dae Woong is every parent’s worst nightmare. He is, indeed, as a matter of fact, his grandfather’s worst nightmare. He’s spoiled, selfish, and doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He thinks everyone must act according to his wishes. He dreams of becoming a famous action star and will not stop at anything to achieve his goal. So when his grandfather threatens to stop paying for his tuition because Dae Woong’s character problems are getting worse, Dae Woong rebels further by running away from home.
He finds his way to an ancient temple which is shrouded by many mysterious secrets. But Dae Woong doesn’t care. He must find a way to contact his aunt and get her to pay his tuition. He threatens not to return until his balance with the school has been fixed. While he is attempting a call, using the cellphone of the temple monk, the battery goes dead. Nevertheless, much to his shock and horror, a voice speaks.
The voice tells him to enter the temple and make his way to the far end where a painting is the main tourist attraction. In the painting, there is a lady and a fox. Unknown to him, the painting is no ordinary painting, but one that holds a legend. Years ago a gumiho was permitted to become a human and she was so beautiful that so many men were bewitched and the women, afraid that the men would all run off to be with the gumiho spread lies saying that the gumiho would kill them and eat their livers.
Dae Woong has absolutely no knowledge of this and when the voice tells him to draw 9 tails on the fox, he does exactly that, little realizing that he is about to set a powerful creature free. As soon as he sketches the last tail, the world goes crazy and in panic, Dae Woong flees. He slips and falls and crashes down the slope of a mountain, and loses consciousness just as he lands in the bottom.
When he wakes up, he is perched on a branch way high in a tree. A pretty girl comes along and seems to know him, but he cannot remember her. She tells him of his fall down the mountain and narrates how she has placed her “bead” inside him so that he wouldn’t have to die from all his cuts, bruises, and other wounds.
Dae Woong is incredulous. He does not believe her, but he is not going to leave her alone either, for fear of wild boars and strangers who might harass her. He does what he can to ensure her safety then proposes that they travel their separate ways. The girl follows him, however, demanding that he feed her beef (her favorite food), until out of frustration, he makes a way to escape from her.
All the while, this girl is trying to convince him that she is the gumiho he freed from the painting. Dae Woong refuses to believe such an absurd story, but he starts to notice that she seems to know many things about him, like his name and where he goes to school, things he never even revealed to her; as well as her amazing strength and speed.
The girl lets him go, with the threat of taking his bead back and ending his life because, once the bead is removed, all sores, cuts, wounds, and bruises would open up, as they have not yet had the time to heal properly. Dae Woong doesn’t care and leaves. The girl does hunt him down and she does take the bead from him, but she has pity on him and puts it back, under the condition that he will supply her with beef. And so she sticks by him and accompanies him almost everywhere, much to his ever-increasing annoyance.
The Old Dae Woong
In the telling of the tale, I mentioned several negative characteristics and attitudes of Dae Woong. His person in the first few episodes is a very frustrating one. The watcher will most likely grind his or her teeth in frustration; I know I did countless times.
Dae Woong is young and rich. He has known nothing else in his life aside from the fact that he has a wealthy grandfather to provide for all his needs (tuition fee in an acting school, car, the latest gadgets, anything else he could possibly want!) and a doting aunt.
Things change when Dae Woong’s grandfather realizes that he has spoiled the boy too much. Instead of using the money for tuition fees, Dae Woong uses it to buy a motorcycle, assuring himself that his grandfather has enough money to pay for the tuition fee and the secret purchase of the motorcycle.
When Grandfather finds out, however, he is livid with rage. He takes the motorcycle away from Dae Woong with the threat that Dae Woong must find his own means to pay for the tuition money he stole. Instead of accepting the punishment and swallowing the humble pill, Dae Woong rebels. He runs away and ends up in a temple, draws a nine-tailed fox out of a magical painting, and unleashes thousands of consequences he would not have imagined with his single choice of running away from his grandfather.
When the nine-tailed-fox-turned-girl attaches herself to him (meaning he needs to provide for her basic necessities) in exchange for letting her bead restore his wounded body to its vigorous, healthy state, Dae Woong now learns all about responsibility. But not in a calm way of realization. He fights it, kicking and screaming (okay, not literally). He argues with the girl and threatens her, but cannot do anything because she is the stronger one and with the magical powers.
To top it all, the fox-girl (whom Dae Woong names “Mi Ho”) has warned him not to tell a single soul. Not his family, not even his best friend. So Dae Woong is left to fend for himself, and he does not like it one bit. His sole goal is to rid himself of her by any means, and he attempts to do that several times. In one instance, he leaves Mi Ho on a cruise, using against her the knowledge that she is afraid of water. Mi Ho’s tears, however, bring the rain, and out of guilt, Dae Woong returns to her.
It is Mi Ho who first learns to care for Dae Woong. But he is blind to her affections (or he purposefully shuns them), as he has eyes only for his “noona” (which is a term of endearment in Korean, used to address an older sister, or a friend close enough to be one). Noona, in my opinion, is the old Dae Woong’s character’s perfect match. She is a self-centered aspiring actress who wants to be admired and fussed over. She, like Dae Woong, will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and when Mi Ho appears in the scene, Noona feels threatened by her with regard to Dae Woong’s affections. She creates a series of incidents and blames them all on Mi Ho. Dae Woong believes them and so his dislike for Mi Ho increases. He will not listen to Mi Ho’s pleas on innocence.
As the story develops, however, Dae Woong’s character develops as well. He is not the flat kind of character who remains stubbornly resistant to change throughout the TV series. In spite of battling those rising emotions, his heart is warmed by Mi Ho. He can’t help it either, she is a sweet, friendly, innocent girl, who doesn’t know what a vacuum does and what soda water is. He’s drawn to protect her, even if he denies it, and sometimes endangers her life by his thoughtlessness.
The Change
Somewhere, sometime in the story, Dae Woong decides to buy a couple ring for Noona with the purpose of asking her to be his girlfriend. But Noona, the hot-tempered Noona, sends a signal that she’s not interested. Dae Woong, out of frustration, decides to give it to Mi Ho, who has found out that she can become a human if someone can house her bead for 100 days. She asks Dae Woong to do so (but without telling him the reason); he agrees and in exchange, gives her the couple ring. They are now boyfriend and girlfriend in a very complicated kind of relationship.
Neither Dae Woong nor Mi Ho is fully aware of the consequences of Mi Ho’s choice to become a human. All Mi Ho was told (by her “mentor” who is a mythical creature himself) is that she must find someone who will house her bead for a hundred days. What she does not know is that the bead will take the life out of the person who houses it for that hundred-day period and when she takes it back from that person, in this case, from Dae Woong, he will die.
For the first several days, Dae Woong hides his relationship with Mi Ho from Noona, hurting Mi Ho’s bead and endangering Mi Ho’s life, something that Mi Ho’s mentor, warned her should not happen because such circumstances could kill her. Nevertheless, he begins to see the true Noona—the spiteful, hateful Noona who seeks only to use people for her own interests and gains. And he begins to admit to himself that he is attracted to Mi Ho.
As he starts to see Mi Ho as something other than a terrifying fox (his first impression of her) and something more of a sweet girl, he starts falling in love with her. And this brings about a change that stuns even his grandfather. Instead of being selfish, he learns how to put others ahead of himself. Instead of leaving other people to do what he does not want to do, he starts becoming responsible. Gone is the brash, free-spirited, self-centered Dae Woong. In his place springs forth a Dae Woong who learns how to be tender, even caring; a Dae Woong who sees to the comforts of other people; a serious Dae Woong who knows how to differentiate work from play.
And Dae Woong’s character change does not stop there. Somewhere in the middle of a hundred days, Dae Woong and Mi Ho both learn that one of them has to die. Dae Woong will die if he gives Mi Ho the bead at the end of a hundred days. Mi Ho will die if she does not take the bead back.
At the brink of panicky despair, Mi Ho decides to leave. Her love for Dae Woong will not allow her to take the bead from him and end his life, even if it is, as her mentor, Teacher Dong Ju, mocks her, “a false love.” She leaves without telling Dae Woong, but he tracks her down and tells her that she shouldn’t run away just because one of them will have to die. Right then and there, he makes her take the bead back. It is the middle of the hundred-day period. Neither of them knows what is going to happen, neither of them knows if they will both survive, but, as Dae Woong says, they must make the choice together and face it together.
A New Dae Woong
They both survive, but only for a time being. Ever since Mi Ho gave her bead to Dae Woong, her 9 tails have been disappearing one at a time, a sign that she is about to become a human being. After Dae Woong returns to Mi Ho the bead, her tails are supposed to stop disappearing, according to Teacher Dong Ju. If they cease to disappear, it means that Mi Ho has quelled her desire to be a human and that she will no longer die. If, however, they continue to disappear, it means that Mi Ho will die on the hundredth day. Teacher Dong Ju tells Dae Woong that it is because Mi Ho is living around humans and that her desire to become herself is so great that it overpowers the desire to live just as she is a fox. Mi Ho does not know that, however. She thinks that she will still become a human and live. Dae Woong, however, watches her with wary concern to see if another tail disappears.
It does.
Dae Woong now has to make a choice to save Mi Ho’s life. He knows that the only reason she wishes to become a human is because of him. In a last, desperate attempt, he turns her out into the streets and declares that he does not love her because she is a fox. Mi Ho is stunned and thinks he is only saying things out of a whim. But Dae Woong insists that he cannot love someone as terrifying and inhuman as her. The realization slowly sinks into Mi Ho and she accepts it as a fact, not knowing that, as Dae Woong drives away, he is weeping.
The final change in Dae Woong’s character comes on the last week of the hundred days. He arrives back in Korea after filming in China. Mi Ho has gone to be with Dong Ju. He searches for her, and they meet by chance one day in the park. He plays around, trying to act like Mi Ho during earlier days when she would crave for nothing but beef. Mi Ho is unmoved. Then comes the startling news that Mi Ho is to marry Dong Ju. Dae Woong is stunned, even heartbroken, though he denies it and does not show it. And then the truth comes out: Mi Ho’s tails have not stopped disappearing. She is still going to die on the hundredth day..
Teacher Dong Ju, when he finds out, is devastated, even heartbroken, as he remembers the death of a girl he loved, whose fate is somewhat tied with that of Mi Ho’s. Mi Ho asks him, just as they are about to leave for a faraway place, as a final favor, to go to Dae Woong with a lie; to give him the bead; to present to Dae Woong the option to drink it as the only way to save Mi Ho’s life, as Dae Woong is distraught that Mi Ho has not stopped losing her tails. Dong Ju, who is still cynical about the love Dae Woong and Mi Ho have for each other, agrees and goes to Dae Woong, half-convinced that Dae Woong will hesitate about throwing away his life for someone else. But before he is done speaking, Dae Woong drinks the bead and tells Dong Ju to come to him and take the bead away and give it to Mi Ho on the hundredth day.
Dong Ju is stunned. He had been acquainted with Dae Woong’s character from the beginning, and he had been most unwilling to believe that Dae Woong had changed. But Dae Woong’s final act of bravado borne out of desperation to save the woman he loves opens his eyes. Just as they are about to leave for that faraway place, he visits Dae Woong and hears a soliloquy from Dae Woong himself, how he would give up anything and everything just to have Mi Ho live. Unable to bear the weight of the lie any longer, Dong Ju goes and tells Dae Woong that everything was just a lie and that Mi Ho will still die on the hundredth day.
In the airport, Mi Ho is waiting for Dong Ju. He arrives, but he tells her that her last days should not be spent with him, but with someone else. He gestures towards the crowd where a disheveled, breathless Dae Woong arrives. Mi Ho understands. She thanks him and goes to be with Dae Woong.
Mi Ho’s last days are spent doing the things Mi Ho loves the most. Dae Woong and Mi Ho visit places that bring back wonderful memories. They visit Mi Ho’s friends. They do things Mi Ho had always wanted to do.
On the last day, in the last hour, Mi Ho thanks Dae Woong for giving her everything. She closes his eyes so he does not see her when she disappears. Then she is gone.
Dae Woong is heartbroken, but this time, he refuses to despair. He rises from sorrow and goes about doing his work like a man. He does not shirk his duties but fulfills them. He does not shun responsibility but welcomes it. He ceases to think only of himself but puts others first. Even if Mi Ho is gone, he relapses back to his old self but improves on a daily basis.
Then comes that magical moment, for this is a fairy tale, when a solar eclipse happens, and Mi Ho comes back. Dae Woong has been waiting for more than 3 months already, but he keeps up the faith that she will come back.
One day, she does.
