Dream High

Episode 1 Part 2

Now for President Jung's triumphant return to his home base at Kirin High...which isn't really so triumphant after all. True, everyone bows respectfully and greets his return with excitement (particularly the students), but there's an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the teachers - in particular one underminey department head, Shi Beom-soo. You may recognize him from a similar role in Secret Garden as the second-in-command who'd dearly love to spot a chink in his boss's armor to send him packing so he can take over. He fulfills the same purpose here, and though he greets President Jung deferentially, in actuality he resents losing his position of power.

President Jung acquaints himself with the changes that have occurred in the three years he's been working in China. Many of the changes are not to his liking, such as Shi Beom-soo's pushy attitude that has led some young trainees to injury.

President Jung makes a few immediate changes, beginning with the upcoming auditions for new applicants. Not only will he be part of the judging panel, he wants to make it an open audition.

Now it's Hye-mi who follows Jin-gook, intent on retrieving her photo, and she makes enough of a pest of herself that he grudgingly brings her back to his basement dance studio (he recalls that his friend took the picture).

Jin-gook is part of a crew of b-boys who practice here and perform on the streets; it seems they're all somewhat displaced kids, including Jin-gook himself, which we'll get to in another minute.

Hye-mi demands her photo back from Jin-gook's friend, and the guy teases her to comment on his dancing skills first, fishing for a compliment. She knows it and she doesn't care to oblige, so she calls his dancing vulgar and him a coarse thug. Naturally that pisses him off and he gives her the whole, "You called me a thug? Let me show you how a thug really acts" routine.

His aggression veers close to getting out of hand, so Jin-gook steps in and reminds his friend that the Kirin auditions are coming up, and getting worked up won't do them any good.

That calms him down, but Hye-mi never met a pot of shit she didn't like to stir, and she sneers at him for wanting to go to that "shithole" of a school.

She stalks out in her superior way, but even so, Jin-gook follows her out to offer her the shoes off his feet, since she lost both of hers. What does he get in return? A shoe to the head; Hye-mi calls them stinky and rejects the offer, opting to walk home wearing scavenged tissue boxes instead.

She finds that the loan sharks have paid a visit to her (upscale, nicely furnished) home, which is in the process of being repossessed for her father's debts (hence all the red tags on the household items). Thankfully they haven't harmed her precocious little sister Hye-sung (that adorable weird girl from The Great Gye Choon-bin!).

She gets a call from Dad, who has decided to flee the country. He'll be appealing to an aunt in Canada for help, but that means when the house is repo'd, his daughters will be homeless. He directs Hye-mi to someone who will surely agree to take them in for the next month or two - but when Hye-mi hears his name, she immediately refuses. Not HIM!

He's KANG OH-HYUK (Eom Ki-joon, who's so bumblingly cute here), a teacher at Kirin, although perhaps the least-respected one, by both teachers and students alike. Still, Hye-mi doesn't have a lot of options, so she tracks him down (and breaks his car's sideview mirror for good measure).

It's a combination of Oh-hyuk's timid nature and his guilt complex that has him eager to placate Hye-mi, because as she so vocally reminds him, HE'S the bad guy here, the homewrecker who seduced her mother and caused her parents to divorce. He's not proud of that history and hurries to hush her everytime she mentions it, and buys her an extravagant lunch.

She announces the situation: Her father is ruined, so she and her sister will be living with him for the time being. She frames this not as a request, but as an "opportunity" for him to redeem himself for his sins, and he uneasily agrees.

But his cowardice gets the better of him, so he acts on an impulse and ditches her instead, driving away.

Hye-mi has too much pride to admit her situation to anybody, so Baek-hee is under the impression that all is normal in the rich, privileged Go household. When the loan shark comes to school, Hye-mi therefore doesn't dispute Baek-hee's assumption that he's her new chauffeur, and reluctantly goes along with him - to her, this is the lesser of two evils.

Back at her house, the loan shark lays out her options. It turns out that when he told her to work off the debt with her body, he wasn't trying to pimp her out - at least, not in that way. Instead, he tells her that where other thugs just use their fists on non-payers, he chooses the smarter path that allows him to recoup the debt.

He has done a background check on her and sees that she's a talented singer headed to Juilliard. That'll take too long for her to reach success, but with a few tweaks to her trajectory, he might be facing quicker repayment. Namely, if she goes to Kirin and makes it as a singer, she could be earning money a lot sooner. So, his conclusion: Go to Kirin, put out an album, "hit the jackpot like Lee Hyori" (lol), and pay back the debt.

Hye-mi glowers, not at all about to agree, until he smilingly reveals his Plan B: If she refuses, he'll just move on to the next in line. Meaning, little sis Hye-sung.

There's family drama in Jin-gook's background, too, which we're given a glimpse into as he reacts to a newspaper article about some highfalutin businessman. Jin-gook's jaw tightens, indicating there's bad blood there.

(This info isn't in the drama proper, but according to the website profiles, Jin-gook's father is a rich businessman, Chairman Hyun. Jin-gook's own real name is Hyun Shi-hyuk, and he was abandoned by his single mother at an orphanage as a young child, then taken in by the chairman. He was raised in that cold environment until he ran away at around the time he would have been a first-year in high school, and changed his life and his name. Clearly he prefers his freedom despite his extreme poverty - his friend cooks ramyun on an upside-down clothing iron.)

Hye-mi thinks over her options, recalling how happy she was when she was given the chance to sing with her teacher, Jo Sumi, knowing that she'll soon be giving that dream up for a much lesser (in her estimation) reality.

Still, she doesn't really have much of a choice, and so, after indulging in a bit of tears alone, she puts on her bitchface (it's her shield, really) as she announces to Baek-hee that she has decided to audition for Kirin instead.