Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area review: Garnished with Korean spices, the show has La Casa De Papel all over

3.5/5

Story: The series is a simulation of the original Spanish heist crime drama television series with similar characters and the same plot. In a fictional Joint Economic Area of North and South Korea after unification, Professor (Yoo Ji-tae) plans to pull off a heist of four trillion won from a mint. The member of his squad – all with a clear well-defined past – adopting the aliases Tokyo, Berlin, Rio, Moscow, Denver, Nairobi, Helsinki and Oslo get on with the plan. The first series shows the first part of the heist and the robbers’ journey with the hostages.

Review: When Alex Pina’s La Casa De Papel, aka Money Heist, was aired on Netflix from 2017, it became the most-watched non-English content within a few months. As a result, the streaming platform came up with other seasons. Now, with a spin-off Berlin in making, the original counterpart gets another super-successful formula of Korean drama. The series is set in a fictional period after the unification of North and South Korea. Jeon Jong-seo as Tokyo is a North Korean BTS fan who has undergone military training. The Professor (Yoo Ji-tae) picks her up when she becomes a fugitive wanted for murders and robberies. As in the original, Tokyo's narration of the series serves as a bird's eye view.

Rio (Lee Hyun-woo) is a young hacker who looks and behaves like a K-pop idol.Nairobi (Jang Yoon-Ju) is a con artiste. Father and son duo Moscow (Lee Won-Jong) and Denver (Kim Ji-Hoon) are street fighters. Oslo (Kim Ji-Hun) and Helsinki (Lee Kyu-Ho) complete the squad. Other important characters come in as soon as the heist begins. And each character goes through a proper buildup in each episode. The professor starts a relationship with the Korean crisis negotiation officer Seon Woo-Jin (Kim Yun-Jin) and this will grow in the next season. There are other characters like the Mint director Cho (Park Myung-hoon) – a trouble maker, who scores low on ethical grounds, Misun, a mint employee who falls for Denver and so on.

The series has a lot of socio-political references. The Professor hides out in a café he runs. Its name is Café Bella Ciao. When Tokyo needs to justify her pseudonym she says, ‘because we are going to do something bad,’ the comment being a pointer to the antagonistic relationship between the two countries. The initial episodes of the drama refer to the exploitative nature of a market economy and so on.

However, the sole objective of the show is to entertain and it does not fail to do so. Besides the traits of a thriller, the heist drama also offers an emotional roller-coaster ride of friendship, and betrayal.

Verdict: There is no episode of Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area without a sense of thrill, excitement, or suspense. After a slow start, the series becomes unstoppable by the third episode. The trouble, however, remains in the predictability because of the original show. Despite all the cliffhangers, many of us know what’s going to come next.