[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Red Shoes" Episodes 1-2

The fairy tale of The Red Shoes is surprisingly popular in South Korean culture. Honestly, I'd never ever heard of it before coming here, despite really loving fairy tales as a kid. One subtle way to tell- the animated film "Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves" clearly considers it to be about the same tier as Snow White. Anyway, "Red Shoes" is about Hee-kyeong (played by Choi Myung-gil), a fashion designer who is tempted by the beautiful red shoes offered to her by Hyeok-sang (played by Sun-woo Jae-duk), a department store manager impressed by Hee-kyeong both personally and professionally.

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"Red Shoes" is a bit of a roller coaster. Initially the relationship between Hee-kyeong and Hyeok-sang is played off so vaguely that it's a mystery. Eventually we find out that they both already have spouses and kids. They might or might not have had an affair. It's kind of ambiguous. On one end Hyeok-sang's sister Soo-yeon (played by Choi Young-wan) certainly acts like they did, and is so unpleasant about it she comes off as the villain despite seeming to be entirely correct in her criticisms.

Then there's Hee-kyeong's husband Jeong-gook (played by Kim Kyu-chul), who's presented as a wife beater in the first episode. Then in the second one develops an unexpectedly sympathetic backstory in the second one before- well, given that he's not in the main cast list you can probably guess that Jeong-gook ends up coming to an unfortunate fate. But during the late nineties IMF crisis, that's kind of a given.

"Red Shoes" is certainly taking its time to explain the framing device, with our lead character boldly claiming that she was blameless in her actions as a noose appears before her. It's all very symbolic. "Red Shoes" is a story about people rationalizing their way through tough choices and their own past traumas, with the more sympathetic characters not typically being that intuitively defined. I certainly wasn't expecting to like Jeong-gook more than Hyeok-sang, but that's where we are by the second episode's cliffhanger.

With ratings in the 12% range there's no sense that "Red Shoes" is setting the world of South Korean soap operas ablaze. The premiere episode of 12.8% is a drop down from the 15.9% that "Miss Monte-Cristo" ended with. Still, the early episodes did what they needed to do, and intrigued. We're still a long way off from the present day, and Hee-kyeong seems likely to make more obviously questionable moral decisions going forward.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Red Shoes" is directed by Park Gi-hyeon, written by Hwang Soon-yeong, and features Choi Myung-gil, So Yi-hyun, Park Yoon-jae, Shin Jung-yoon, Jung Yoo-min, Sun-woo Jae-duk. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/07/05~Now airing, Mon~Fri 19:50 on KBS.