Race – K-drama Episode 7 Recap & Review

Rejection and the Cost of Being Courageous

Episode 7 of Race starts with Seyong’s current Chief Strategy Officer Su-Hwan, looking for Yoon-Jo. Yoon-Jo sent a report indicating that CELLTICS sales aren’t good because of poor marketing strategies.

The main reason Su-Hwan is mad about this report reaching Seyong’s board members is that he was overseeing CELLTICS as a project from the beginning. So, he’s afraid he’ll look bad in front of the board members.

Yoon-Jo tries to explain why she thinks CELLTICS’s underperformance is due to poor marketing, but, Su-Hwan doesn’t want to hear any of that. He scolds Yoon-Jo and Eun-Jeong, and then he leaves. We’ve taken a few days prior to this situation. Seyong staff even called it “the CELLTICS Su-Hwan Jeong war.”

Yoon-Jo visited Dong-Hoon to consult him about CELLTICS’s dwindling sales. Dong-Hoon admitted that the problem wasn’t the marketing strategies but the products themselves. This meant revamping CELLTICS’s brand image (BI).

Yoon-Jo shared the idea with Eun-Jeong, who was worried about how much work it would be to revamp CELLTICS’s brand image, but she agreed to the idea. Yoon-Jo then pitched the idea to the CELLTICS planning team, and the leader, Jeon Da-Jung, was also hesitant about it.

Eun-Jeong and Da-Jung later started arguing about Yoon-Jo’s rebranding idea. Then, Kim Jung-Hee, the planning team’s assistant manager, approached Yoon-Jo and told him they also suggested revamping CELLTICS’s brand image, but they were ignored.

Meanwhile, Jae-Min inquires about something from Seung-Hee when he noticed she wasn’t feeling well. Remember, she found out she’s pregnant. Seung-Hee asked Jae-Min whether the lady who Jae-Min is filling in for at PR team 1 because she was on maternity leave would return. She then mentioned something about female employees at Seyong being transferred to the customer service department if they went on maternity leave.

Later that night, while having dinner together, Jung-Hee and Da-Jung ask Yoon-Jo why she cared so much about CELLTICS when many products out there failed. Yoon-Jo told them that this is her first brand, and she built it from scratch. She’s confident she can make it sell.

Da-Jung and Jung-Hee advise Yoon-Jo and Eun-Jeong (who were also having dinner with them) to report about CELLTICS’s dwindling sales and their rebranding idea to Byung-Man. But, that doesn’t go well as Byung-Man didn’t agree with their idea.

Eun-Jeong then went with Yoon-Jo Yi-Jung and pitched their idea to her. Fortunately, she told them she would think about it.

Back to the present, Eun-Jeong receives a call that Yi-Jung addressed the issue at the board members’ meeting. That didn’t go well though, as Su-Hwan comes in later to yell at them about bringing up this report.

Elsewhere, Ji-Hyeon is happy that the CELLTICS project is going to flop, which will make him look bad. Yi-Jung tells her that she isn’t looking to blame someone for CELLTICS’s downfall, but she wants to improve its brand image. Ji-Hyeon still insists on them leaving it alone to fail, and Su-Hwan takes the blame. She even tells Yi-Jung to stick to her job as CCO.

Later, Yeon-Soo asks Yi-Jung to meet with him. He tells her that Mr Oh, the head of CELLTICS, has resigned. He also tells her that Seyong will still maintain CELLTICS’s current brand, so she shouldn’t bother changing it. Yi-Jung asks Yeon-Soo why they plan to make Mr Oh take the fall for CELLTICS’s failure, bringing up a huge argument between them.

Jae-Min comes and informs Yoon-Jo how people are praising her on “BlahBlah,” Seyong’s online forum, for how she was courageous enough to mention that CELLTICS needs a rebrand. But, that courage comes at a cost as Yoon-Jo later learns that Mr Oh resigned and Da-Jung has been asked to resign too. Yoon-Jo asks Eun-Jeong for advice on what to do, but she tells her that they shouldn’t do anything but continue with their jobs.

Yoon-Jo goes to Su-Hwan’s office to request him not to let Da-Jung or Mr Oh take the blame for CELLTICS’s rebranding idea and that she should take the blame instead.

Su-Hwan tells Yoon-Jo that she’s a nobody and is in no position to take the blame for what happened. Later in the evening, Su-Hwan meets with Yi-Jung, and he makes mocking remarks about Yoon-Jo to her. Yi-Jung then asks Su-Hwan who Yeon-Soo and Gu-Young will hold accountable if CELLTICS fails. Su-Hwan is lost for words, realizing that it’ll be him.

Yoon-Jo passes by Earth Comms to see Hee-Young and meets the owners of Ang’s bread, who are nice to her. Hee-Young and Yoon-Jo later go to Eun’s bar, and she comforts Yoon-Jo because of how things have turned out with her CELLTICS’s rebranding idea.

The next day, Jung-Hee comes to tell Yoon-Jo that Gu-Young made a last-minute decision to agree to CELLTICS’s rebranding. Thankfully, Da-Jung isn’t going to be fired after all. Su-Hwan was the one who persuaded Gu-Young to agree to allow CELLTICS to be rebranded. He must have been afraid to lose his job if CELLTICS failed. Ji-Hyeon isn’t happy about it because she wanted CELLTICS to fail so Su-Hwan could be fired.

At Earth Comms, General Manager An tells Dong-Hoon she wants to resign. She mentions that she can’t take the pressure of being blamed when a product’s marketing campaign fails. It turns out, Byung-Man called Dong-Hoon earlier and scolded him for their company having poor marketing strategies, which led to Yoon-Jo’s idea to rebrand.

Ji-Hyeon meets with Yoon-Jo and Yi-Jung to discuss Yoon-Jo managing Ji-Hyeon’s social media accounts as she had requested. At Hae-Jo’s school, Hae-Jo, Yoo-Jin, and Hae-Jo’s friends are practising the TikTok routine they were doing in the last episode.

As they’re taking a break, Hae-Jo notices Yoo-Jin being distant, so she asks her what the matter is. Yoo-Jin tells Hae-Jo that her mum, Yi-Jung, who left her and her dad when she was two years old, has returned to Korea and is reaching out to her.

Back at Seyong, Jae-Min tells Yoon-Jo about how Chul-Jun keeps thinking they’re a couple. He also tells her how he thinks Dong-Hoon is attracted to her. Yoon-Jo then asks Jae-Min if he would like to date her.

Thinking it’s a joke, Jae-Min tells her that he’s okay with pretending they’re dating as it will take his mind off the fact that he’s single. But Yoon-Jo tells him that she’s serious about dating him. Jae-Min seemingly rejects her though.

Later, Jae-Min insists on taking a bus home with Yoon-Jo. On the way, Jae-Min tells her that he actually likes someone else. It turns out the story he told Eun and Yoon-Jo about him meeting a lady in the US is true. And the lady he was talking about is Yi-Jung.

Yoon-Jo then tells Jae-Min that she has had a crush on him ever since they were in middle school together but she didn’t say anything because she saw that he and Jae-Min were from different worlds. Now that they’re working together, it gave her hope that she could date him.

Jae-Min goes to Eun’s bar and tells her what happened. He also tells her that his story about meeting a lady in the US is true, and that lady is Yi-Jung. He even tells her that he still has feelings for Yi-Jung. Later, Jae-Min calls Yi-Jung and asks her if he could come over so they can talk.

The next day, Yoon-Jo is on the phone with Eun talking about what happened yesterday. Yoon-Jo is glad that at least she won’t be seeing Jae-Min as much because he’s in a different PR team, only for her to discover they’re on the same project together.

The episode ends with Yoon-Jo seeing Jae-Min holding onto Yi-Jung when she accidentally bumps into someone, causing her to almost fall. She sees this while still on the phone with Eun, who tells her that Jae-Min revealed he has feelings for Yi-Jung. Jae-Min hadn’t told Yoon-Jo though, someone whom he actually had feelings for.

The Episode Review

It’s really weird how the top executives, specifically Ji-Hyeon and Su-Hwan, were so focused on their personal interests that they were willing to see CELLTICS, their brand fail. That is until Su-Hwan realized he would also be affected by CELLTICS’s downfall.

I feel bad for Yoon-Jo that Jae-Min rejected her after she confessed her feelings towards him. But it’s good they talked about it, so they can now stop portraying confusing hints about their feelings towards each other. Let’s see how things will go between Yi-Jung and Jae-Min, and whether Yoon-Jo will finally move on!