Money Heist: Korea

Meet Netflix's new cast of thieves from 'Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area,' including Park Hae-soo, Yoo Ji-tae, and Jeon Jong-soo.

Helsinki and Oslo are the muscle of the team, two ethnic Koreans who are former members of a Chinese gang. Nairobi is a charming con-woman who has extensive experience with counterfeits, which comes in handy in the mint. Moscow's hard-headed son Denver is a notorious gangster and fighter, who can't seem to stay out of trouble. After being scammed and discriminated against, the young woman is on the verge of giving up when the Professor asks her to join the heist. Berlin, who leads the thieves inside the mint, is a North Korean prisoner who escaped after living in a concentration camp for 24 years. Moscow is an expert miner who's in charge of building a tunnel under the mint.

The Money Heist formula is given a Korean twist when the Professor and his crew target the mint for an area managed by both North and South Korea.

Sleeper Star: Park Hae-soo is Berlin, who is one of the few people to escape a North Korean concentration camp. It speaks to the idea that the Koreas are going to reunite in the near future, and inserting the possible issues that a reunification will bring up makes for story elements that will separate this version from the Spanish original. Part of that plan includes getting into a shootout with police, putting the hostages in their signature jumpsuits and masks, and getting South Korean negotiator Seon Woo-jin (Kim Yun-jin) to inadvertently help them out, especially against the more militaristic-minded North Korean Captain Cha Moo-hyuk (Kim Sung-oh). That will be the target of a new Professor and his city-named gang of thieves. Now the long version: Money Heist: Korea brings up all of the same haves and have-nots issues that drove the Spanish original, but adds in everything that has made Korean dramas like Squid Game popular here in the States. The Professor and the members of his crew are all introduced in ways that show immediately what they bring to the team, with Tokyo being our narrator and the person much of the story revolves around. We see how she turned to petty crimes after moving to the JEA, and The Professor saved her from getting killed doing those risky robberies.

Against The Professor's orders, Berlin uses fear to take control of the heist. A recap of episode two of season one of Netflix's 'Money Heist: Korea.'

While the Professor may have planned this entire thing, his control has limits now that he is physically removed from the scene. Her mom seems to have dementia and is not interested in going to the hospital about it. • When Rio sees Berlin send Denver to kill Mi-seon, he runs to get Tokyo rather than answer the Professor’s phone call. As the episode progresses and we learn more about Denver through his many emotional outbursts, it becomes clear that he is at least partially driven by a desire to secure the kind of outcome for this (maybe) baby that he never had: one with a mom who is present. (The actress playing Ann is 24. We don’t know much about the Professor yet, and I’m sure that, like all of these characters, he’s experienced some real hardship, but Berlin and his North Korean cigarettes are still judging him. (True, my girl’s got a lot going on.) The tears stay in his eyes even after Woo-jin has gone, and we’re left to wonder: Is this all an act, or does he have feelings for her? For the viewer, it’s proof that Young-min is spineless (but also understandably scared). He is part of a team holding this woman and her co-workers hostage, and he is worried the proffered milk might be too cold for her fragile, (maybe) pregnant body. She went to work in the morning thinking her biggest problem was telling her selfish boss/lover that she is (maybe) pregnant with his child — which, to be fair, does sound like a pretty shitty day — only to be embroiled in a terrifying hostage situation. “Don’t resent me for this,” is the last thing Denver says to Mi-seon before pulling the trigger off-screen. In Kacheon, Berlin learned to become the biggest bully.

With its plot-packed first season comprising just 6 extra-long episodes, the show somehow manages to both way too long and way too short all at the same ...

From Denver (Kim Ji-hoon) to Moscow (Won-jong Lee) to Rio (Hyun-Woo Lee) to Nairobi (Yoon-ju Jang) to Helsinki (Ji-Hoon Kim) to Oslo (Kyu-Ho Lee), they are styled the same, act the same, and are given the same mannerisms—down, and I am not kidding, to Denver’s iconic laugh. Of course, the trouble is, if you establish that any follow-up Money Heist exists in the same universe as the original Money Heist, then you’re stuck connecting them all, which in turn would mean that the genius required for each subsequent team to make their way into their respective national mint to would only ever grow exponentially. I mean, given that the point La Casa de Papel went to such pains to underscore when launching that crew’s follow-up heist was that the Professor’s first plan was so ideologically effective that it had caused a global upswell of popular anti-capitalist fervor, expanding that movement in a tangible way to other countries just makes sense. But at the same time, is it likely that any warning one grumpy critic might give about the (too-long) length of Joint Economic Area’s episodes or the (too-short) length of its season will keep the Korean language market holdouts Netflix is clearly targeting this project to from finally springing for their own Netflix subscription? When the Professor gives her something much more tangible to fight for—taking from the haves to give to the have-nots who had no say in how reunification rolled out but are suffering all the same—she understands its value implicitly; when she picks her code name, she does so with articulate, culturally resonant aggression, choosing the clearest signal she can to let the world know that “[they’re] gonna do something bad.” This is great! On the South Korean side, you have negotiation specialist Seon Woojin (Lost’s Yunjin Kim), an almost perfect analogue of Itziar Ituño’s Raquel Murillo down to her abusive ex-husband, her dangerously senile mother, and her tendency to pull her hair int a ponytail before getting down to business trying to rescue hostages. Based on Álex Pina’s Madrid-set La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist), the cumbersomely titled Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area is the first of what are sure to be many international La Casa de Papel remakes. Not only does the clash between South Korea’s aggressively capitalist 21st century culture and North Korea’s equally aggressive communist one make for compelling, believable tension—both between the members of the heist team and between those of the negotiation task force—but it also gives the writers the opportunity to be dead clear, from the very start, about the sociopolitical and ideological motivations behind the Professor’s plan. In Joint Economic Area’s version of things, this makes Tokyo (Jeon Jong-seo) not an impulsive party girl burning the candle at all ends, but rather an ex-North Korean soldier who, having found herself violently disenchanted by the South’s false promises of neoliberal capitalism, is recruited by the Professor (a suitably charming but may not so convincingly nebbish Yoo Ji-Tae) after she’s gone on a murderous vigilante rampage against the predatory loan sharks taking advantage of North Korean women like her. From the standpoint of someone who just wants TV to embrace (or even just understand!!) the things that make TV a uniquely effective artform, this is an enormous bummer. To their credit, when it came to trimming enough fat off the Casa de Papel plot that Joint Economic Area mirrors with almost maddening exactitude (I’ll get to that in a minute), writers Ryu Yong-jae, Kim Hwan-chae, and Choe Sung-jun at least chose to excise the original’s most toxic storylines—e.g., Berlin’s sociopathic hostage-rape-as-relationship arc, and Ángel’s extramarital romantic fixation on Raquel—proving, in the process, how completely unnecessary either was to the Spanish series. Too unwieldy to maintain any kind of meaningful narrative rhythm—not least in the context of a densely plotted heist story!—each 70(ish)-minute episode of Joint Economic Area stretches the viewer’s patience past the point of breaking.

Money Heist: Korea's premiere works hard to establish its own identity from its Spanish-language source material. A recap of episode one of season one of ...

Her escape from all of these responsibilities is (1) smoking and (2) a cafe and the hot barista who runs the place. Those themes are here too, but this series has added another incredibly ambitious layer: the promise of reunification for the two countries of the Korean peninsula. Tokyo has finished her military service and has moved to Seoul. But the Korean capital is not like it is in the K-dramas — especially not for North Korean immigrants, who are increasingly being taken advantage of and discriminated against in a South Korea flooded by North Korean workers looking for a better life. Compared to the original, Money Heist: Korea broadcasts how this heist subverts genre expectations much sooner — namely, in the Professor’s partially political motivations for the crime and in how these initial stages of the robbery are really about buying time in order to print money. One such worker is Yoon Mi-seon (Lee Joo-bin), a North Korean accountant and Young-min’s mistress who may or may not be pregnant with his child. From here, Money Heist: Korea follows the same broad story and character beats as La Casa de Papel (called Money Heist for English-speaking audiences), with a few changes that could ripple out into a much different story but feel minor here. From the gaggle of school children who are on a field trip when the heist breaks out, there’s haughty, English-fluent teen Ann (Lee Si-woo), who’s still pissed that her father is making her attend school in Korea. Representing the Mint, we have South Korean director Cho Young-min (Park Myung-hoon), who watches porn instead of doing his job and attacks workers with his lips and grabby hands. It says a lot about the chemistry of these two and also how much I already want good things for Woo-jin that I am still hoping this somehow works out. An extended prologue follows a character we will know as Tokyo (Jeon Jong-seo), a university student living in Pyongyang with seemingly not a care in the world other than how she will get her hands on the next Bangtan comeback (same, friend). From there, the premiere whiplashes us through the next decade of Tokyo’s life and this near future’s history. He shields a suicidal Tokyo from the rain and promises her a future with greater purpose. When a loan shark attempts to rape Tokyo for daring to question their violent abuse of another woman, Tokyo fights back and begins a life of targeted crime as “the robber who only steals from bad people who prey on immigrants” — the Professor’s (Yoo Ji-tae) words, not mine. BTS bops and neon-noir vengeance define the first ten minutes of Money Heist: Korea, which is tonally distinct from not only La Casa de Papel but the rest of this episode.

Mmm, it's not great that the heist has descended into complete chaos. A recap of episode three of season one of Netflix's 'Money Heist: Korea.'

Is it a matter of ethics?” He really is trying to understand why the Professor might want to avoid killing people. • There’s some effective editing in this episode, seen in subtle moments like a cut of the Professor opening his cafe door to Nairobi opening the office door to the robber’s group meeting. Denver is called Taek-su. The Professor is called Sun-ho — or at least that is the name he has given Woo-jin. This show follows the blueprint left by La Casa de Papel, but that show was set in our world and therefore had a different, easier relationship to establishing the setting. Moscow is probably afraid of many things, but he is most afraid of his son being doomed to a life like his. Later in the episode, we see more of Denver’s street fighter moves as he tries to take down Oslo, who is not easily felled. What will it mean for Woo-jin, who gave the order to shoot a hostage? Even when self-preservation is the emotion that fuels actions, how the surrounding mess of humans responds can be unpredictable. Berlin uses the group’s eventual confirmation of his leadership as proof that his strategy is working and that fear is the best motivator. It’s why he is so distraught when he thinks Denver has killed Mi-seon. It’s what drives him out onto the steps of the Mint and into the crosshairs of the waiting task force. It was probably inevitable, given that there are so many factors and he is physically distant from the action. I’m not talking about an emo Batman staring off into the rainy mists of Gotham; I’m talking about the physical and mental consequences that come with causing others pain.

Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area pilfers Spain's global blockbuster series with a fresh take on the gang of robbers and the greatest heist ever.

The tried-and-true Money Heist fans won’t get their fix of the groundbreaking franchise, just a reminder of how great it was and how Money Heist: Korea pales in comparison. The biggest failing of Money Heist: Korea is that it doesn’t deliver cliffhangers like the original. In Money Heist: Korea, the Professor hides out in a café he launched as part of the plot. But disregarding having seen it before, Money Heist: Korea lacks the cinematic pacing of the original. There’s a sense of humor to Money Heist that emerges in the first episode when Rio (Miguel Herrán), Denver (Jaime Lorente), Moscow (Paco Tous), and Berlin (Pedro Alonso) discuss if the Dali mask is scary enough. Despite the undisguised communism versus capitalism themes (and it’s important here to remember that Money Heist: Korea is produced in South Korea) the show lacks the subversiveness of original had with its political commentary. After the original series became a banner for the resistance, Money Heist: Korea is more self-aware of its potential as a protest parable, but that nearly undoes its effectiveness here. Instead of the Royal Mint of Spain, Money Heist: Korea targets this Mint in the Joint Economic Area for their heist. His mother was shot and killed right in front of him when he was a child when they tried to cross the border to the south. Set in 2025, Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area imagines North and South Korea on the brink of reunification. The original Money Heist became an international symbol of discontent and resistance. The breakout success of Money Heist took the world by storm.