Reasons To Enjoy Typhoon Family

Reasons To Enjoy Thyphoon Family 

This article will contain mild up to major spoilers from 1-4 episodes and from episode 8 with a music video! It is also available in light and dark mode reading!

Set in 1997, while the South Korean economy was going through an economic crisis. Kang Tae Pung's father runs a small company named Typhoon Trading Company. Due to his wealthy father, Kang Tae Pung lives a carefree life, but the worst economic crisis hits South Korea. This changes everything. While the economic crisis hits Typhoon Trading Company, Kang Tae Pung's father passes away. 

Kang Tae Pung steps in to become the CEO and to save the company. Although he was immature in his past, he is armed with a warm heart, a strong sense of responsibility, and a spirit for challenges. He struggles to save the company with his family and his employees, including O Mi Seon. O Mi Seon is the eldest daughter in her family and carries the burden of her family on her shoulders. She works as a bookkeeper at Typhoon Trading Company. She does things like washing cups, cleaning, attaching receipts and organizing ledgers, like going all in starting from the smaller things to more complicated asignments. (Source: Asianwiki) 

 (Source for GIF: mostlyfate on Tumblr)

This is the wave of affluent 90s youth who could be spotted in Gangnam nightclubs, spending their parents’ money, unconcerned with any economic realities. And amongst this tribe is where we meet our Armani-clad hero, Kang Tae Poong (Lee Jun Ho). He’s the one and only son of Kang Jin-Young (Sung Dong-il), the CEO of Typhoon Trading, and the generational difference in approaches to money is purposefully marked.

While Tae-poong is out with his bestie, Wang Nam Mo (Kim Min Seok), dancing and getting into brawls, his dad is doing his best to keep debts in check and ensure his staff stays paid. The two meet face to face when Tae-poong and Nam-mo wind up at a police station after a fight with a long-time rival. It’s all good humor when their moms show up — but things turn very serious when Dad arrives. He shows no remorse and Jin-young wants to leave him there to fend for himself. We get the impression this is a regular-enough occurrence and Dad is somewhat ashamed. By that time,Tae-poong goes a step too far by asking Dad for money, rather than apologizing, and he gets smacked in his already swollen face

Here is where the problems start for Typhoon Trading. Even companies that have been around forever start to default on their payments. From there, it’s a chain reaction. With no payments coming in, Jin-young can’t pay his workers, and pretty soon, he’s arriving to the office to tell his staff there won’t be a paycheck this month. The strain of the circumstances is too much for him, and by the time he enters his own office, he collapses to the floor in what appears to be a heart attack.

At the hospital, he’s stable but unconscious as Tae-poong waits by his side. And then, in what turns out to be a gag by his archnemesis, Tae-poong is called to an emergency. He leaves. Which means he’s not there when his father dies. Tae-poong gets back to the hospital, his mother is a wreck and so is the nation. Newscasters are reporting the government’s decision to accept the terms of the IMF bailout, plunging the country, along with our characters, into a profound crisis.

(Source for GIF: mostlyfate on Tumblr, here and here) 

When Tae-poong goes to his father’s office to claim his belongings, some guys who are owed money show up and make a scene. Since he’s there, Tae-poong says he’ll take responsibility for the debt. This means, although unwilling, he’s officially on the team — which is much smaller now since most people have already resigned.

The thing about Tae-poong’s character is that while he’s a partier who seems carefree, he can also be sincere. He’s a horticulture major in college, cultivating a new breed of roses. And he also never fails to shine his father’s shoes. Still, he’s not the brightest bulb. For example, when he’s asked to fill out an employee registration card to join Typhoon Trading, it asks him to list his qualifications and licenses. Without missing a beat, he writes his level of taekwondo. Haha.  

At the company, Tae-poong meets Oh Mi Seon (Kim Min-ha), the bookkeeper who’s on top of everything. Actually, these two have run into each other before, once on a morning train ride — where she was definitely feeling the flutters over him — and once at his dad’s funeral, where she stood up for the company against some out-of-line debt collectors.

Now, she’s his ticket to understanding exactly what it is he’s supposed to do at Typhoon Trading. For one, he finds a hidden key in his dad’s office and discovers it goes to a cabinet with a safe in it. Inside, he finds a series of bank books, each in the name of an employee, and one in his own name, “for his dream.” This is when he starts to get a glimpse into what his father really felt, and Tae-poong cries for the first time. After that, he starts taking his duties seriously, gets rid of the awful highlights, removes the earring, and comes to work in a proper suit.

When he and some team members go to the port to collect the fabric order they’ve been waiting for, they’re supposed to deliver it to their big new client and get paid. At the client’s office, Tae-poong realizes something is off. It seems like a shell company and it’s likely they won’t get their money.

To save the day, he runs to the road to stop the delivery trucks before they make a huge mistake. No one believes him, and so, he lays down in the street so they can’t pass. Our final scene shows the trucks plunging toward our hero, while he thinks of his father and knows he’s doing the right thing.

As we jump back into the story, where we left our hero flat on the concrete in front of a truck, Mi-seon finds evidence that Tae-poong’s instincts were right: the company they’re dealing with is going out of business and has no way to pay them. She runs to tell Tae-poong to get out of the street, and these two are sealed as teammates from here on out. This is good news because it’s one problem after another, starting with the fact that they have nowhere to store the fabric they’re holding until they find a new buyer.

After sitting in a parking lot all night to watch over the goods, he calls on someone he believes is a resource. This is Pyo Bak Ho (Kim Sang-ho), the sinister character that I noted last time, who is also a bigtime business owner and was seemingly a close colleague of Tae-poong’s dad.

(Source for GIF: mostlyfate on Tumblr and here)

However, we know there was something amiss between Bak-ho and Jin-young — and Bak-ho was in the hospital room with Jin-young just before he died, asking “where is it?” We don’t have enough information yet to know what “it” is or exactly what transpired between these two, but we find out that Bak-ho is a really, really bad person. So, when Tae-poong goes to Bak-ho in good faith, asking to get a warehouse on credit, he gets what he asks for, only to find a mountain of problems later on. First, with the whole country in an economic tailspin, no one wants to buy the fabric. And second, the warehouse has holes in the roof and no glass in the windows, which becomes a nightmare when it starts to pour rain.

Tae-poong and Mi-seon arrive separately to the facility in a panic, and then work together to protect the rolls of luxury goods. The show consistently does an amazing job to create tension over things that could seem super boring — like watching two people pull sheets of plastic over stacks of fabric. Somehow, I was rapt. And that was before Tae-poong and Mi-seon tumbled to the floor and got wrapped up in plastic together...

Sources: kisskh, DramaBeans, here, Spotify, YouTube, here, Asianwiki. GIF images are used from mostlyfate on Tumblr.