Review of Reborn Rich / 재벌집 막내아들

Reborn Rich has been one of my dramas that I’ve been meaning to watch for a hot minute, but never got around to seeing it. For the longest time, I’ve had the basic Viki subscription when it was only available for those who were paying premium prices. That’s made it kind of difficult.

But because I’ve been taking this blog more seriously, as well as my Korean studies, I invested in a year’s worth of Viki premium upfront despite trauma after what DramaFever did.

When DF was still around, I purchased a year’s subscription a week before they randomly shut down, and they never paid me back for that. They kept my money, and I’ve been salty about it ever since, even six years (while writing this) after the fact. I was a broke college freshman then.

Anyways, I was prepped to watch this as soon as I got the premium account. It was my first watch, actually, and I ended up finishing the show within a week. That’s rare y’all—sometimes it takes me up to three weeks to watch a single drama because of how little invested I am in it.

Let’s get into the review!

When an employee is killed by his company, he’s reincarnated in the past as one of the chaebol family’s relatives.

In this drama, Song Joong-ki portrays Yoon Hyun-woo, who is the textbook perfect employee at the beginning of the series. He follows all of his orders efficiently, and he works for one of the biggest chaebol families in South Korea: the Soonyang Group. Even though his employers are difficult, with one even beating him on the job, he does everything perfectly.

However, in the first episode, he begins unveiling a tax scheme within the company, and that’s his downfall. When he’s sent abroad for something, they shoot and kill him. But when he wakes up, he discovers himself in the body of Jin Do-jun, the youngest grandson of the family, and the year is 1987.

With the knowledge he knows about the family history, Hyun-woo (I’ll be referring to him as Do-jun later on) realizes that he could completely change history.

And because he was pissed, as someone who was mocked by the family for being lower class and an employee, he wants to get revenge. He’s been literally given the perfect opportunity to take them down, and he doesn’t actually have the familial ties that he was reincarnated into.

So begins a complicated web where he worms his way into the Soonyang family as Do-jun, befriending the grandfather and convincing his new father to invest in movies like Titanic coming out. With his knowledge of the world’s future, he meets some investors and becomes the shadow head of a different investor group, allowing them to be a method to get control of Soonyang in the end.

At the same time, he watches his old family. There’s some angst and romance happening on the sidelines here, but the ending of this drama is definitely not a popular one.

I think that the ending fits the show in some ways, but I can see how it really pisses off some people who were expecting something else from it.

Overall Thoughts

Although many Korean drama actors would not fit into the Chungmuro category of Korean cinema (look up Chungmuro—it’s a fascinating aspect of Korean entertainment in general), I think Song is one of the best drama actors on the scene for what he does. I haven’t really seen him in movies, so I can’t vouch for that.

But overall the plot in this one is really good, and if you’re really into the narratives that are like “screw rich people,” then this’ll be right up your alley. It’s very much a critique of chaebol culture in some ways, but they make it quite entertaining.

So if you haven’t seen this already, go for it! I’m not sure if it’s Viki premium only anymore, as I don’t pay attention to that, but when I originally wanted to watch it it was. Take the opportunity if you can!

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