The Sex Tape Scandal
Episode 1 of Divorce Attorney Shin starts with a look at our protagonist, Shin Sung-han. He’s certainly unconventional, and works as a divorce attorney, managing to effortlessly win on behalf of his clients by exposing his opponent’s weaknesses and getting good settlements.
As he leaves the courthouse after his latest win, singing in his car the whole way, he happens to be parked up alongside Lee Seo-jin, a woman with a very different outlook in life. She’s down in the dumps, working as a DJ and having recently just left her job. She’s not in a good headspace right now because of a horrible scandal that’s spread across about her. This involved a leaked sex tape but we’ll return to her shortly!
For now though, Sung-han returns to his law office, where his associates help to give a bit of exposition over our main character’s values. He barely passed the bar exam and he’s pretty old for a lawyer. Sung-han though, argues that he passed the exam triumphantly after 2 years of grueling effort at a time when his brain cells weren’t fully developed.
But to be fair, passing in 2 years rather than the usual 4 certainly speaks more about Sung-han, who has decided that divorce settlements are where he wants to put all his effort in.
Seo-jin shows up at the law firm and while Sung-han is nonchalant to her arrival, Jang Hyeong-geun (Sung-han’s assistant) can hardly contain his excitement about seeing her. In fact, he gets some drinks but his hands are visibly shaking as he takes a seat. But of course, he’s ushered out the room as Seo-jin wants some privacy with the attorney.
Seo-jin wants Sung-han to help with her husband’s divorce, deciding that all should go smoothly. “Please help me,” She says. Sung-han isn’t sure, given how public this whole ordeal is, and tries to work out a best course of action. The only thing Seo-jin wants is custody of her child, Hyeon-u, but she knows that things aren’t looking good for her right now.
Sung-han warns that things could get a lot worse before they get better but as Seo-jin is aware of this, she shakes on it and Attorney Shin’s latest case goes ahead. Of course, there is still a danger that she could lose everything. Seo-jin seems to trust him though and believes she’ll get the right outcome. Although our Divorce Attorney is certainly an odd character!
Seo-jin heads home and while her husband is really frosty with her, Hyeon-u is busy playing videogames in a dark room. Seo-jin’s husband grabs his wife’s hair and looks set to hurt her but Seo-jin is adamant she wants to try and expose his true face. She calls him below human and eventually grabs ehr stuff to leave.
The thing is, their horrible arguments and shouting is having a negative effect on Hyeon-u, who turns up the volume on his headphones and tries to drown this out.
The next day at Shin’s office, Seo-jin speaks about her past, including how she never meant for anything scandalous to occur between her and the other guy. The barman clearly has a thing for Seo-jin and she admits that it felt nice to be wanted. This is to be expected though given how awfully Seo-jin has been treated by her husband. He’s not only controlling but also meticulous to the point of outrageous. He memorized all of her underwear, including the number and even the ones that were given as gifts. He has records of them all.
As for Seo-jin, the affair was only known about since the tape leaked. She bemoans her luck of running from one asshole to another. Having heard all of this, Sung-han tries to come up with a plan before their mediation date. As he heads home and begins writing up the paperwork needed for the case, he ends up in an impromptu karaoke session. The nusic is way too loud though and his neighbours inevitably complain, forcing him to turn it off.
At court the next day, we see more of Seo-jin and her lover together. Hyeon-u ended up needing to be picked up but Seo-jin was indisposed with her lover. If that wasn’t enough, he tricked her. He started filming after telling her he stopped the video when in reality, he propped the phone up nearby to record everything.
As the attention turns to Seo-jin’s moral compass around cheating, Sung-han turns it around and brings up her husband’s awful controlling nature. You see, Seo-jin wasn’t even invited to her best friend’s wedding, nor was she able to see her friends. Her husband demanded she take a picture and confirm her location every 30 minutes.
She’s never gone to a team dinner as a result and she’s had to cut ties socially with everyone because of her husband’s behaviour. If that wasn’t enough, he also had a whole bunch of post-it notes from the last 7 years put up across the house, wearing her down mentally and calling out what an awful person she is. Oh, and he also installed 6 security cameras in the house, including the dressing room.
Despite the sex tape still being on the net being a point of contention, Sung-han argues that Seo-jin is the real victim in all this. In fact, when her husband’s lawyer questions Seo-jin’s ability to parent Hyeon-u, Sung-han points out that she’s not doing her client any favours. At the next session though, they’ll be going over Hyeon-u’s psychotherapy reports to see what impact this has had on her.
When the session is adjourned for the day, Sung-han decides to talk to Hyeon-u himself after gaining permission. At the same time, he also uses Hyeong-geun to track down the truth of this whole sex tape ordeal, with rumours being that it’s still out in the open. But is all of this one big bluff?
Sung-han heads out with Hyeon-u and they end up eating together. Hyeon-u admits he wishes he had a bad memory and could forget some of the things he’s seen. Things involving his parents. It’s definitely something bad, as Hyeon-u tenses up, clenching his fists and unable to speak. When he stands up, he bemoans his mum not showing up at the hospital and wishes that he could erase her from his memory.
Hyeon-u is in a rough way and that night, after a big nightmare, Seo-jin gets cold feet and decides to cancel everything. Sung-han has no such plans and in fact, instead of a mediation, tells Seo-jin on the phone that he intends to take this to court and promises her that they’re going to win.
The Episode Review
Divorce Attorney Shin (which isn’t a sequel to Attorney Woo, despite the similar titles!) sets up a very tantalizing episodic law drama to follow. There’s a delicate balance here between comedy and tragedy and for the most part, Divorce Attorney Shin does a good job of keeping that in check.
The early moments featuring Hyeong-Geun as the comedy relief is a mainstay but it’s relegated to the backburner as we learn more about Seo-jin’s case.
As anyone who has been in a controlling relationship will tell you, these horrific instances and behaviour becomes the norm when you’re trapped on in the inside, and you feel like you’re stuck in a black hole with no way out. That’s not a nice place to be and even worse, little Hyeon-u is caught right in the middle of this situation. He’s definitely seen something awful but quite what remains to be seen.
Sung-han is a wonderful protagonist though and Cho Seung-woo brings the eccentric divorce attorney to life in the best way, with a mix of humour, depth and gravitas. It’ll be interesting to see here this one goes over the weeks but this could be another solid weekend K-drama offering.
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Episode Rating
(4)
I must say that I find the fact that, had the video of her affair not leaked to the internet, she would have continued this rather than doing what she should have done instead from the very beginning, which was to just divorce her husband and take the kid (notably, the affair in no way took her kid away from the abusive environment with her husband), almost more appalling than anything else (besides the fact that she was for the most part not at home and left her kid alone with someone she knew to be abusive -the reason why she doesn’t want him raising the kid now-, and forgot about the school event, and was not reachable when her soon needed her and was at the hospital, because she was with her lover).
Issue being that she didn’t leave her husband for her lover (or just plain leave her husband), she had an affair which left her son in the same abusive environment and didn’t change anything, and they are now divorcing only because her lover filmed an illegal video and it got leaked to everybody on the internet.
I don’t really know how realistic removing the video of her affair from the internet would be… I mean, once it’s out there, it’s just a matter of someone saving it on their hard drive, and she was a famous person.
Correction: we know that the guy that took the video is, correctly, in prison.
Another strange bit that I had missed is the fact that she says she knew she would have been discovered. Which begs the question of why didn’t she simply leave the guy instead of having an affair (and would have apparently not left him had he not discovered her betrayal and wanted a divorce).
Quite frankly, had her husband not been abusive, and we set that aside, focusing on her action, then I would say that her missing the parent/teacher conference and the issue with the son and the hospital definitely makes me question her priorities: despite protestations to the contrary, she did prioritise sleeping with her lover over her son, it’s just that her husband is so horrible that she still ends up on top by comparison. But it’s one thing to basically throw the message out there that he deserved to be hurt and humiliated in such a manner because he was an abusive scum -basically, he was unworthy of any loyalty and he didn’t get any-. It’s quite another to pretend that her affair was a consequence of his behaviour, given that she had the option to divorce him -it’s not his behaviour that made her forget about the parent teacher conference and caused the school incident while she was busy sleeping with her lover-. One thing is the husband, who the show makes into a completely unsympathetic monster so that he “deserves” her betrayal, one other thing entirely is the kid who certainly deserved better.
Pretty hard to make the case she didn’t want to hurt her son when she forgot about the parent teacher conference and he had the school/hospital incident while she was with her lover. Her words might say one thing, but her actions speak much louder and say something quite different.
Again, I would have very much appreciated if the focus had been kept on the fact that the husband deserved to suffer, and this is the manner in which the show “tortures” him, rather than make it appear as if a prolonged affair is somehow not a choice, as is not getting a divorce.
I couldn’t really take the non-sequitur in the lawyer’s arguments seriously. I don’t really buy the dichotomy he was trying to create: his client’s husband was abusive divorcing him and taking the kid are signs of basic sanity. On the other hand, in terms of treating his client’s affair as a “consequence” or “to be expected”, I do have issues with the framing, and her “never meaning for anything to scandalous to occur” with her lover is simply hogwash.
In reverse order, on the two points: 1) she is a grown woman with agency, fully responsible for her actions: the affair was something she chose to do and continue over time, factually speaking, it’s just hypocritical and nonsensical to claim otherwise, and 2) the affair was clearly not a *necessary* “consequence” of her husband’s abusive behavior, there were clearly many other options, such as getting a divorce and taking the kid -importantly, the affair in no way, shape or form helped with or in any way addressed any of the problems the abusive relationship with her husband caused her and her son, and if fact it ended up hurting his son, both in terms of the school episode, and thanks to it being exposed (which was always a risk even without the scummy husband and lover, and her being a public figure would have made things even worse). Certainly as her son, he shouldn’t have “expected” this, i.e. her to miss the parent teacher conference and not even know he needed to be brought to the hospital because she was busy sleeping with her lover.
So, factually speaking, the affair was in no way necessary, she did have other options, it would have been a potential cause of pain for her child in even without the abusive context, and trying to pretend this was not a choice is not taking responsibility for her actions in any way, shape or form. This is simply a separate issue from the abusive relationship and her untrustworthy scumbag lover. Now, the abusive relationship is very important context in that it clearly makes the point that her husband didn’t deserve loyalty, something underscored by his physically abusive behavior in this episode.
I very much would have preferred an approach where she honestly owned up to her actions and made the case that her abusive husband didn’t deserve any loyalty and consideration. Which is very different from pretending that the affair was something that she didn’t intend to happen, when it was clearly something she chose to do. And, again, is also different from the fact that her actions risked hurting her child, as they ended up doing, and it would have been nice to see some awareness of the fact that this was a risk that existed separately from her husband and lover’s atrocious behavior: again, beyond the school episode, this coming to light was always a risk, a risk whose consequences are exacerbated by her being a public figure.
I very much would have preferred a more honest and no bs approach of acknowledging that yes, this was a choice, and no, it was not the only option, nor did it in any way address the issue of her husband for her and her son, and yes, it ended up hurting her son, both in term of the school episode and in terms of the scandal breaking out, and this was always a possibility and a risk she had chosen to take, even if her husband and lover had not done what they did.
In short, I wouldn’t say “to be expected” at all, she had other options, this in no way helps her son (quite the contrary), and generally it was not the only option.
I don’t really like the framing of presenting the affair as something she didn’t intend to do or as a necessary consequence of her husband’s behavior, because this is something that she decided to do and was not in any way obligatory (she always had the option to divorce).
I would have very much preferred her owning up to her actions and simply saying that she was disloyal to someone that was unworthy of any loyalty and whose suffering and humiliation are not merely inconsequential, but positively a good thing.
I mean, if the argument is that doing this to her husband was a good thing because he was scum, then let’s go with that, saying that the only wrinkle is hurting the kid, specifically with the school episode, but that otherwise the attitude should be “he was unworthy her loyalty, so he wasn’t given any”.
Very surprised there was no more focus on the lover illegally filming and distributing the video of the affair (the very same video that was apparently shown her son) -not sure whether he ended up in jail for that-.
Ultimately, she had a responsibility toward her son, to protect him, and his happiness was endangered by her actions, not only by the affair but by the fact that she didn’t divorce and take the kid in the first place given that her husband was dangerously deranged. Again, this is not only about her and her feelings, it’s also about the kid: she has a responsibility to protect him, and in this case he was hurt both by the affair (the school episode, plus the fact that him discovering it was always a risk, irrespective of her lover and husband’s actions, and it was a risk she decided to take) and from his abusive father (which she should have divorced years ago, taking the kid -having the affair but staying with him really didn’t help her situation, nor the kid’s-).
I couldn’t really take the non-sequitur in the lawyer’s arguments seriously. I don’t really buy the dichotomy he was trying to create: his client’s husband was abusive divorcing him and taking the kid are signs of basic sanity. On the other hand, in terms of treating his client’s affair as a “consequence”, I do have issues with the framing, and her “never meaning for anything to scandalous to occur” with her lover is simply hogwash.
In reverse order, on the two points: 1) she is a grown woman with agency, fully responsible for her actions: the affair was something she chose to do and continue over time, factually speaking, it’s just hypocritical and nonsensical to claim otherwise, and 2) the affair was clearly not a *necessary* “consequence” of her husband’s abusive behavior, there were clearly many other options, such as getting a divorce and taking the kid -importantly, the affair in no way, shape or form helped with or in any way addressed any of the problems the abusive relationship with her husband caused her and her son, and if fact it ended up hurting his son, both in terms of the school episode, and thanks to it being exposed (which was always a risk even without the scummy husband and lover, and her being a public figure would have made things even worse).
So, factually speaking, the affair was in no way necessary, she did have other options, it would have been a potential cause of pain for her child in even without the abusive context, and trying to pretend this was not a choice is not taking responsibility for her actions in any way, shape or form. This is simply a separate issue from the abusive relationship and her untrustworthy scumbag lover. Now, the abusive relationship is very important context in that it clearly makes the point that her husband didn’t deserve loyalty, something underscored by his physically abusive behavior in this episode.
I very much would have preferred an approach where she honestly owned up to her actions and made the case that her abusive husband didn’t deserve any loyalty and consideration. Which is very different from pretending that the affair was something that she didn’t intend to happen, when it was clearly something she chose to do. And, again, is also different from the fact that her actions risked hurting her child, as they ended up doing, and it would have been nice to see some awareness of the fact that this was a risk that existed separately from her husband and lover’s atrocious behavior: again, beyond the school episode, this coming to light was always a risk, a risk whose consequences are exacerbated by her being a public figure.
I very much would have preferred a more honest and no bs approach of acknowledging that yes, this was a choice, and no, it was not the only option, nor did it in any way address the issue of her husband for her and her son, and yes, it ended up hurting her son, both in term of the school episode and in terms of the scandal breaking out, and this was always a possibility and a risk she had chosen to take, even if her husband and lover had not done what they did.