Going After My Damn Brother
오빠 새끼 잡으러 간다
Oppa Saekki Jabeureo Ganda
A former national-reserve shot-putter who now runs a factory line in a mining town spots her vanished brother in a YouTube exposé accusing him of fraud, and storms into Seoul's startup scene to drag him home.
Synopsis
Chae Ha-na, born in 1999, once made the national women's shot-put reserve squad. Now she is a team leader at a factory in Taebaek, a former mining town in the mountains of Gangwon Province. Their father lost everything to a friend's swindle and the casino; their mother died of grief and rage.
One evening in the factory canteen she sees a familiar face in a YouTube video titled “Career Fraud, Faked Sales: Exposing the Con Artist.” It is her older brother, Chae Gang-cheon, who walked out a year and a half ago without a word. Now he is “Choigang Cheonjae,” bestselling author, startup CEO and star lecturer who teaches professors.
Her best friend thinks he's a 21st-century Heo Saeng, the scholar-turned-tycoon of Korean classic fiction. Ha-na is sure he's been conned, or worse. She takes her summer leave and heads for Seoul, where a company called Luxury Brain, a shared office in Gangnam, a mysterious CFO and a reporter friend who sees con men everywhere lead her deeper into a world in which no one is quite who they claim to be.
Full of disguises, reversals and irony, it is a fast, funny and bittersweet portrait of an age of swindlers, and at heart the story of a brother and sister learning to forgive each other. The author calls it the only one of his novels with almost no allegory.
Why it works on screen
- A factory canteen in Taebaek, at dinnertime: a YouTube exposé titled “Career Fraud, Faked Sales” comes on, and the brother who vanished a year and a half ago is in it. The opening scene is the trailer.
- A former national-reserve shot-putter takes her summer leave and heads for Seoul: from a mining town in the mountains to a shared office in Gangnam, a company called Luxury Brain and a mysterious CFO.
- Bestselling author, startup CEO and star lecturer who teaches professors: “Choigang Cheonjae.” Fake reviews, paid testers and book scams: the cons of Korea's platform age become episode-sized set pieces.
- Petupe, a draft-beer bar by Hwangji Pond, and the Hwangji Kkoltongs, her crew of friends. The novel's first and last sentences are both its title.