K-Drama Flashback: ‘Shopping King Louie’

Shopping King Louie—alternatively, Shopaholic Louis—became one of the iconic K-dramas in 2016. The year recalls a pig-flying period supplementing the Hallyu wave with superhits like W, Uncontrollably Fond, Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Love in the Moonlight, The K2, Descendants of the Sun, The Legend of the Blue Sea, Hwarang, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, et cetera. Unequivocally Shopping King Louie was one of the best among the titles helmed by director Lee Sang-yeob and starring blue-chip Korean actors Seo In-guk and Nam Ji-hyun.

Seo’s Louie, or Kang Ji-sung—the lone surviving successor to the financial clique Gold Group—is the blue-eyed boy of its chairperson, Choi Il-soon (Kim Young-ok), his grandmother. She, dotes him to death, keeping him spoiled and overprotected in France, with all at his beck and call. Even so, that doesn’t do him any good—his reclusive life numbs the otherwise opulence, begging for variety. Louie, 25, thus turns to retail therapy, acquiring a shopping addiction as a side effect.

Things were dragging along as usual, abruptly cut short by a car crash, reducing the prince to a pauper and landing Louie on the streets. He wakes up to lost memories and is homeless without access to money or food. On the flip side, Ko-Bok-shil, 21 (Nam), is a country cousin, nimble on her feet, and malleable to conditions. Coincidentally, when in Seoul, she meets Louie, and as fate would have it, they start living together.

Bok-shil earns hard, but Louie still indulges in his wasteful spending habits and lives off of her income, frustrating the girl, who is still oblivious to his roots. But it doesn’t take much for his naivete and how he peers at her defenseless to make her heart race. As much as he needs her, she strives to protect him and keep him at ease. Unbeknownst to both, emotional proximity triggers feelings growing fonder.

With each step through their journey, Louie and Bok-shil fall deeper in love. She begins to apprise him of money’s value and how it frequently works for serving the needy instead of just for personal pleasure. Conversely, she acknowledges that each of us satisfies distinctive demands based on unique values, something, that impacts our approach to life and how much we spend.

Shopping King Louie has a fuzzy feel, an unexpected break from the stereotypical K-dramas with rom-coms, is easy on the eyes, and its premise lacks anything exceedingly intricate or sinister. Still, what it does have is beneficial in that it weaves a more profound lesson within the humor and tender romantic scenes between the two dimwitted characters. As a standalone K-drama, I can still turn to it and watch it again for good cheer. There are further aspects to the narrative that I am not including here. Check out the show if you haven’t already.

Louie, as opposed to many of the quintessential heroes from Korean dramas—dashing, debonaire, and imposing, stays in memory for being naïve and odd, and he becomes reliant, possibly Seo’s most effective switch-up as a male lead—but that anomaly strikes a chord; he’s also the romantic hero into the bargain—Louie steals Bok-shil’s heart—and the two make an endearing, enduring image of love’s young dream.

I had the privilege of having an in-depth exchange with Seo In-guk a year ago and talking to him, I realized (this I have noted in the interview) how real artists are “true in the dark and humble in the spotlight.” You can read the edited excerpts here.