Episodes 9-10 » Dramabeans Kdrama MGG

Welcome to Samdal-ri: Episodes 9-10

by quirkycase

Our family reels from the accident, and the sisters realize there’s a lot they’ve missed in the past eight years they’ve been away from home. The situation brings to mind a past tragedy that gets the whole neighborhood reminiscing. A lot has been buried, but bringing the parent generation’s pasts into focus sheds light on current relationship dynamics that not only impact them but also the next generation.

 
EPISODES 9-10

We start out this week learning more about the moms: the two Mi-jas. Sam-dal’s mom KO MI-JA originally hails from the mainland and struggled to fit in when she arrived on Jeju after marriage. Initially, she butted heads with Yong-pil’s mom BU MI-JA, but after discovering they were both singer Cho Yong-pil fangirls, they were inseparable. They even vowed to be second moms to each other’s children if one of them were to pass away. Bu Mi-ja, haenyeo extraordinaire, took newbie Ko Mi-ja under her wing. So many years later, when Ko Mi-ja decided to stay behind because she hadn’t caught anything the day of the rain, Bu Mi-ja joined her. And that’s the day Bu Mi-ja died in the water.

Ah, this makes much more sense. It’s not Sam-dal that Yong-pil’s dad CHO SANG-TAE hates and blames for his wife’s death – it’s her mom. I’m still not sure what that has to do with their children or why he feels the need to punish them for parental grudges, but okay.

In the present day, Mi-ja is brought to the hospital unconscious but alive. The doctor asks the logical question here, which is why in the world is a woman with arrhythmia diving? Sam-dal’s dad is so frazzled he can barely answer the doctor’s questions about her condition, but Yong-pil shows up and gives her medical history.

Sam-dal is naturally angry at Yong-pil for hiding her mom’s condition from her. He feels bad, but he was following Mi-ja’s wishes and didn’t feel he could say anything. He tried to get her to tell her kids, but she wouldn’t budge. Sam-dal goes silent when Yong-pil counters that if she’d come home at all during the past eight years, she’d have figured it out herself and maybe could’ve stopped her mom from diving. Oof. That may be true, but maybe save that conversation for after her mom is out of the hospital.

Not that she’s in the hospital for long. Mi-ja is way too stubborn to stay once she wakes up, so the best the family can do is force her not to overdo it at home. The sisters decide they’re going to stop their mom from diving for good, but they struggle not to cower under their mother’s formidable personality. It’s Ha-yul who proves the most practical and quietly hides her grandmother’s diving suit with no one the wiser.

Ha-yul has been stoic about the whole incident, insisting to the adults that she’s fine and not to worry about her. It’s not until she meets up with Ji-chan again by the ocean that she lets herself act like the child she is and cries her little heart out, worrying about her family and what to do if the ocean takes away her grandmother.

Seeing how comfortable Ha-yul is with him and how nice he is to her makes me like him, but we still haven’t gotten to see him and Hae-dal together much. They do meet coincidentally when their friends drag them to a singles bar. The groups end up sitting together, and Hae-dal and Ji-chan bond over being judged for their life choices.

The family learns that someone surreptitiously paid Mi-ja’s hospital bill. They assume it’s Yong-pil, but they don’t realize Da-young happened to be visiting a relative and saw them there. He’s loath to leave the island and gets his excuse to stay when the contract signing for the theme park goes south. The locals speak ill of Jin-dal, joking she must’ve been a handful and that the divorce “serves her right.” Da-young is livid and lays into them, yelling about how much Jin-dal suffered. He refuses to sign the contract and storms out. He then oh-so-casually decides that maybe Samdal-ri would be an even better place to put his park. You know, just because.

Meanwhile, Sam-dal and Yong-pil’s relationship gets a push from Gyung-tae who has inherited his mother’s inability to stay quiet. He gets drunk and shares that Yong-pil has stayed in Jeju all this time to look after Mi-ja because he’s still in love with Sam-dal.

This ties into how The Breakup went down: Eight years ago, Sam-dal had broken up with Yong-pil after his father told her to. Yong-pil planned to follow her abroad to work it out after his mother’s memorial day. However, Mi-ja collapsed that night after Sang-tae yelled at her when she brought food by. Yong-pil called an ambulance, and that’s how he learned of her heart problem. So when Sam-dal returned later, crying she couldn’t go through with the breakup, Yong-pil texted that he was done while sobbing in his room. He’d thought he was protecting everyone, not guessing that Sam-dal would suffer as much as he did.

After Sam-dal learns that Yong-pil gave up his own dreams of being a bigshot weather forecaster for her, she drinks herself silly. Yong-pil shows up, and they finally have an honest conversation. Sam-dal admits she couldn’t forget him and every time he asks if she’s okay, she wants to lean on him. Then, she kisses him (which of course, Sang-do sees because if a kiss happens in a drama but there’s no second lead to see it, did it really happen?).

Yong-pil goes around smiling and chipper the next day, despite being kicked out by his dad. The same night Yong-pil and Sam-dal kissed, he and his dad had it out. His father was livid after also learning why Yong-pil stayed on the island all this time. Yong-pil cried that he’s in just as much pain as his father, but he’ll never hate Mi-ja or blame her for his mom’s accident. That didn’t go over well.

Sam-dal’s memories of that night are fuzzy, which makes her incredibly awkward around Yong-pil. She gets news she won the photography competition and will be doing the Jeju exhibit, but she panics when they pair her up with Yong-pil (since it’s hosted by the weather station). After a day together of trying to find non-touristy places for a photo shoot, they stumble on a beautiful sunset. Yong-pil takes the opportunity to confront her, sharing that she confessed to him that night. And then it all comes back to her.

These two are going at a snail’s pace despite everyone knowing they’re still in love with each other, so I’m glad they’re finally having a direct talk while sober. (Seriously, you’d think Sam-dal would stop drinking so much after all the embarrassing incidents she’s had.) I get that Yong-pil’s dad needed someone to blame in his grief, but it’s been almost 20 years! Even if it’s just for the sake of his son, he needs to let his anger go. Yong-pil has been caught in the middle of his father and Mi-ja all these years, burying his own wants and needs to keep everyone happy. It’s finally time he puts himself first – otherwise, his entire life will pass him by.

 
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