dangermousie | Evil Parent: if you are not a kdrama evil parent, you are doing it wrong!

While people eagerly anticipate the appearance and interference of Gu Jun Pyo's evil Mom into the lives of Jun Pyo and Jandi in the next episode, my main thought is that she would have to work extremely hard to be able to match in any degree the typical Korean drama parent villainy.

She would hardly be able to catch up, e.g. with Shin Tae Hwan, the resident parent (and villain) of the other ratings powerhouse, East of Eden.

Shall we count the ways?

Shin Tae Hwan (from now on abbreviated to Mr. Evil) has murdered the protagonist's father for being a union organizer. He also cheated on his wife with a nurse and then had his pregnant mistress kidnapped, forcibly aborted her baby, and dumped her to die in the cold. Regrettably for Mr. Evil, he did not succeed in murdering her, and she ended up switching his Birth Son and the younger brother of protagonist in the hospital as revenge.

Mr. Evil then spent a happy couple of decades intimidating the workers, committing violence against interferers, and doing everything to make the protagonist's family's life hell (including the life of unknown-to-him his biological son).

He has spent many a day contemplating and attempting to carry out murders, kidnappings, beatings and mob dealings, including torturing protagonist and protagonist's supposed brother (in reality Mr. Evil's son). And by torture, I mean torture. Electrodes and all.

Not being the one to neglect those near him, he has also spent many a productive evening warping Evil Jr. (the kid he thought was his biological son), turning him from a rather sweet kid, into an unstable nutcase. He also considerately helped to relieve Evil Jr of his virginity (through intermediaries, it's not that kind of drama :D )because the kid was too fixated on a girl instead of using women the way he should. All of that upbringing resulted in Evil Jr. being about as stable as a unicycle and deciding the best way to win over girl he was in love with was to rape her. Yes. Mr. Evil clearly believes in spreading his values around.

To be fair to Evil Jr., he has spent the decade after that trying to atone for his act by becoming a better person in general and trying to be good (not that this, understandably, helped him with the rape victim girl who married him to save face and hates him) so he is a few steps up on his supposed parent. Now, Mr. Evil found out about the baby swap and decided a good way to deal with it would be the classic way he is familiar with: to have Evil Jr, who he brought up as a son for 30+ years, kidnapped and beaten within an inch of his life.

Now, that's what I call a kdrama parent. Top that, Jun Pyo's Mom!