Seoul’s Gangnam district has an indomitable reputation as one of the country’s glitziest locales. In stark contrast, though, Disney+’s new K-drama Gangnam B-Side creates a sleazy underbelly characterised by crime, prostitution and gang violence for the glamorous district. It’s here we find escort Jae-hee (played by singer BIBI) in a drunken stupor one night. Everything seems normal until she takes a peek at a stranger’s phone, which is full of mysterious messages instructing him to abduct her.
In her panic, Jae-hee stumbles past crowds toward a dingy restroom cubicle where she pumps her stomachs of the drugs and booze, before booking it out of the venue and shaking the rowdy gang off her trail as she flees into the night. A friend and colleague of hers, however, is not so lucky – their pimp, Gil-ho (Ji Chang-wook), soon finds her friend’s bloody, lifeless body dumped in a hotel room jacuzzi.
Gil-ho, who manages to catch up to Jae-hee on the run, simmers with resentment towards most people who he deals with in his line of work. He verbally and physically lashes out at drug peddlers and gangsters who take advantage of him or his escorts. Even with his protective nature toward those around him, he and Jae-hee are faced with a force far greater than they expected – with the bad guys’ claws thoroughly lodged in the justice system, Jae-hee tries to escape her friend’s tragic fate while Gil-ho is framed for her murder.
Gangnam B-Side is narratively ambitious, to say the least, with parallel plotlines and players in the game from the get go. As the story jumps across wildly different perspectives – whether its the pimps, escorts, drug dealers, gangs, police and prosecution, just to name some – things are quickly lost in the shuffle, leading to a frustrating viewing experience that just feels overcomplicated for the sake of it.
At the same time, the K-drama also oversimplifies the themes it deals with, drawing the line of good and evil square down the middle. The main conflict, which lies between a sex trade syndicate run by Gil-ho and an unknown evil organisation that uses drugs to further their agenda, is one that is undoubtedly shaded in greys. Yet, Ji Chang-wook’s morally questionable character is strangely portrayed as some sort of knight in shining armour – he’s the “good guy”, despite all that we learn about him along the way.
There is some promise at the core of the series’ premise – just take a look at similar yet superior K-dramas such as My Name and Taxi Driver. In the right hands Gangnam B-Side might have been able to use its setup to meaningfully explore larger ideas, especially if it treated its main characters as more than just infallible heroes and victims in their isolated worlds. But as it stands, Disney+’s newest K-drama offering is simply an overplotted, underthought series about the evils of drug use and a corrupt justice system.
Gangnam B-Side is available to stream on Disney+ globally, and Hulu in the US.