Reborn Rich (2022)

January 29, 2023

Our Take: Despite the rushed and controversial ending, Reborn Rich is a thrilling tale of revenge and repentance.

The Premise

Yoon Hyun Woo (Song Joong Ki) is a hard-working and devoted secretary to the chaebol family who runs Soonyang Group, one of the largest business empires in South Korea. Unfortunately, his greatest weakness is being born into poverty. Despite his commendable work ethic and high IQ, he gets ridiculed by his peers and treated like a servant by the Soonyang family because he lacks proper schooling and the backing of a well-off family.  

When Seo Min Young (Shin Hyun Bin), a public prosecutor informally known as the "Soonyang Group Grim Reaper," searches the headquarters for evidence of misconduct, Hyun Woo accidentally uncovers a secret company slush fund worth $700 million while destroying evidence. This discovery leads him to get caught in a vicious power struggle between Soonyang founder Jin Yang Cheol's (Lee Sung Min) children. During a business trip to Turkey to recoup the money, he gets betrayed and killed in cold blood.

But, miraculously, he wakes up as a child in the body of Jin Yang Cheol's youngest grandson, Jin Do Jun. With all his memories intact, he seizes this golden opportunity to punish the people who killed him and attempt a hostile takeover of the Soonyang Group. His efforts lead to a decades-long power struggle between him and the rest of the Soonyang family. 

Battle of the Wits and Riches

Jin Do Jun and Chairman Jin Yang Cheol's relationship was easily the highlight of the entire show. Despite their surface-level rivalry and distrust in each other, they had an endearing dynamic built on mutual respect and love for each other.

As much as Do Jun despised his grandfather's cruel business practices, he secretly admired him for his unwavering dedication to Soonyang's expansion and economic prowess. While Chairman Jin was initially hostile to Do Jun, Do Jun's ruthless entrepreneurial spirit closely embodied his own, leading him to end the inheritance system of primogeniture in favor of his favorite grandson. 

As the founder of Soonyang, Jin Yang Cheol was a complex and cynical character that was hard to hate or love. He embodied the spirit of an anti-hero as a visionary businessman with entrepreneurial acumen, viciousness, and greed. While he built his extensive empire using draconian and unethical practices, it's hard not to admire his accomplishments and how far he has come. 

Even during economic hardships and turmoil, as seen with the IMF crisis, the 9/11 attack, and Soonyang Motors' repeated failures, he continued to push his company to the next level to make it an international force to be reckoned with. He is truly a fearless and motivated leader who contributed tremendously to the country's prosperity and prestige. 

In a similar vein, Do Jun starts as an underdog - the youngest grandson whose family was previously exiled from the Soonyang Group. But, from a young age, he quickly captures his grandfather's attention with his wit, eventually transforming from someone with nothing to his name to a majority shareholder of the company and almost the CEO of Soonyang. 

A line that sums up their relationship quite well is when Jin Yang Cheol revises his will and says, "He'll do anything to survive. I want to see how he can be when he's hit rock bottom. I know that he is someone who wouldn't hesitate to sell me to buy Soonyang. If he tramples all over me to go forward, there will be nothing he can't do in the future. Only then can that rascal protect Soonyang and survive." 

The Price of Being Poor

A recurring theme is the contrast between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Throughout the drama, we see flashbacks of Hyun Woo's childhood and the painful decisions his family had to make simply because they were poor. When Hyun Woo tells his mom he wants to go to college, she encourages him to try his best but fails to disguise her guilt and disappointment at the prospects of having to pay for his tuition.

After seeing his father shoplift at a grocery store, Hyun Woo concludes, "My only option was to choose to do my best to become even poorer. There are 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. They say time is fair to everyone. However, time isn't fair. Just like everything else in this world." While going to college would have been his best bet at climbing his way out of poverty, his family's dire financial circumstances rendered that possibility impossible. His only option left was to continue the vicious cycle of poverty passed down to him. 

Chairman Jin's secretary and right-hand man, Lee Hyang Jae (Jeong Hee Tae), suffers from a similar fate. Despite standing by his side for decades and building Soonyang with him, Secretary Lee is discarded by the eldest grandson, Jin Seong Jun (Kim Nam Hee), the moment he is no longer useful and left with nothing. When he vents about his circumstances, Seong Jung's response is to blame him for not being born into the Soonyang family. 

The Korean Discount

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the privilege of being born a golden spoon. The writers do a fantastic job of calling out South Korea's flawed inheritance system among conglomerates. 

Miracle Investment CEO Oh Se Hyun (Park Hyuk Kwon) succinctly summarizes the issue. He points out, "On the New York Stock Exchange, if companies are at a similar level, and one is Korean, it goes for a lower price... the reason for the Korean Discount is because of conglomerates' succession rule. It's like selecting a national team athlete based on the sole fact of whether their parents were medalists regardless of how competitive they are in the international market. Management isn't something that's passed down in the family."

Put bluntly, the existing succession rule for conglomerates stifles innovation and social responsibility. Instead of prioritizing sustainable growth and expansion, the chaebol generations following the founders are self-interested and embroiled in fights over their inheritance. Perhaps, what made Reborn Rich so popular were the stark similarities of Soonyang Group and Daeyoung Group with real-life companies like Samsung and Hyundai.

The Romance

Unfortunately, the romance between Do Jun and Min Young felt underdeveloped and bland, almost as if it was taking away from the thrill of the broader succession plot. While their initial interaction was intriguing, they did not have enough scenes or chemistry to make their relationship adequately convincing. Because Do Jun frequently kept Min Young in the dark about his true intentions, their constant miscommunication caused their relationship to get tainted by distrust and doubts.

Additionally, despite being billed as a main character, it felt as if Min Young was relegated to a supporting actress to serve Do Jun’s character development. Her introduction as the Soonyang Group Grim Reaper set a high expectation that she would have a substantial role in taking down the Soonyang Group family. But, we never really get to explore Min Young’s background or what she stood for outside the context of Do Jun’s succession fight. Her relationship with Do Jun would have been more believable if she had a better background story and a more fleshed-out character development. 

The same goes for Mo Hyun Min (Park Ji Hyun), Seung Jun's wife. She made a strong first impression as a confident, ambitious, and highly intelligent woman. But, as soon as she gets rejected by Do Jun, she resigns to her fate as a political pawn for Seung Jun. While she has a few tricks up her sleeve, they never pan out due to her husband's general incompetence, and she fades into an afterthought.

Final Thoughts

The build-up of Do Jun and Hyun Woo's storylines was intense and thrilling, but it is debatable whether the writers stuck the landing with the ending. After 15 episodes of anticipation, the finale felt very rushed and messy and fell flat. While in theory, the writers' intent for the story to come full circle makes sense, the actual execution was confusing and left us feeling unsatisfied. Still, the vengeance plot and the cast's stellar performance make Reborn Rich worth watching.