[HanCinema's Drama Review] "D.P" Episode 1

Despite being set in 2014, "D.P" has impressive prescience. Joon-ho (played by Jung Hae-in) is exhausted by the petty indignities of the service economy. He asserts himself to a disgruntled customer, knowing full well such actions will cost him a job he hates anyway. Then Joon-ho enlists for his mandatory military service. Without explicitly saying so, the impression is clearly that if Joon-ho's life is already at a dead end, any detour, however miserable, would still be an improvement.

Advertisement

And miserable it is. Joon-ho as well as his fellow soldiers are viciously abused. For Joon-ho, the adjustment isn't a major one. But we see through his eyes how other recruits with higher self-esteem have their spirit quickly broken by sadistic drill seargents motivated primarily by whatever sadism they can get away with. It's a huge adjustment for Joon-ho to be assigned to the military police. In a dark irony, while Joon-ho himself enjoys a better working environment, he now hunts down deserters- young men who can no longer take the abuse, despite knowing the horrific consequences for disobedience.

Jung Hae-in is sublime here, in a brooding cinematic role radically different from the romances he's better known for. Joon-ho is a pained young man who's increasingly seeing any sense of empathy as being a liability in the modern world. Despite the genuinely horrific ending of the first episode, "D.P" actually makes the moment feel almost uplifting because we finally see that despite his best efforts, Joon-ho still has a soul.

So much of "D.P" is just a twisted in-joke for South Korean men, a recognition of their shared trauma. The webtoon it's based off of has the same basic tone, and is popular domestically in part because it's just free-form venting. Joon-ho, and so many young men like him, are given no outlet to discuss the abuse they received as soldiers. Dissent is unpatriotic. It's unmanly. And the reminder of similar bleakness in the civilian lives to which they will inevitably return foments anguished despair.

"D.P" is worth watching, not just by people curious what South Korean mandatory military service is really like, but anyone from any country who's seriously thinking about joining up. Any former soldier will tell you just how terrifying and soul-crushing the experience is, and how the propaganda feels like such a transparently laughable lie in retrospect. But that's just the backdrop. As of yet, there's no real story. Presumably the second episode will get into that.

Review by William Schwartz

___________

"D.P" is directed by Han Jun-hee, written by Han Jun-hee, Kim Bo-tong, and features Jung Hae-in, Koo Kyo-hwan, Kim Sung-kyun, Son Sukku, Lee Jun-young, Hong Kyung. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/08/27, Fri on Netflix.