Recommended: Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area on Netflix
What's Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area About?
This is pretty much a dead-on remake of Netflix's global hit Money Heist (aka La casa de papel), set in a counterfactually reunified Korea. As with the original series, the story follows a criminal mastermind called The Professor who assembles a group of shady types to steal a fortune from a mint.
Who's involved?
Why (and to whom) do we recommend it?
The relatively low profile for Money Heist: Korea, and the fact that Netflix asked us to hold this review until the show debuts in Korea suggests that the series is largely intended for that specific audience. Indeed, if you've already watched the original Spanish series on Netflix, then there's little new about this version. If anything, the reunification fantasy only underscores the original series' anti-capitalist bias, in which the heist gang appears to act as avenging Robin Hoods.
That said, Korean TV enthusiasts, fans of the actors who made Parasite and Squid Game, and anyone who was thinking of watching the original Money Heist a second time will want to check this out. The storyline of North and South Korea reunifying as a "Joint Economic Area" is intriguing, and there are all kinds of little variations to point out (the masks, for instance, are not Salvador Dali-inspired). Director Kim and writer Ryu say that their version of the iconic characters reflect Korean idiosyncracies, but these may be too subtle for non-Korean viewers to detect.
Pairs well with
TOPICS: Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area, Netflix, Álex Pina, Jun Jeong-seo, Kim Hong-sun, Lee Hyun-woo, Park Hae-soo, Park Myung-hoon, Yoo Ji-tae, Yunjin Kim