Tokyo, Berlin, Denver, the Professor… The names haven’t changed, but the faces have. In “Money Heist: Korea”, a Korean remake of the Spanish fiction “Casa de Papel”, which takes its Anglo-Saxon title, the same robbers in red jumpsuits attack the manufacture of money in a reunited Korea. This is where the good idea of this adaptation is put online on Netflix: the series starts in 2025, North Korea and South Korea then ended a war by linking the two state entities. Inequalities are widening all over the country, while some are making huge profits by taking advantage of this new political and economic context.
For the rest, even if the personal journeys of the characters differ a little from the original Spanish series, the different stages of the robbery are the same. Admittedly, the masks of the heroes have changed, it is no longer a caricatural representation of Salvador Dali but traditional local masks. However, the general aesthetic is identical, right down to the introductory credits with a paper representation of the building targeted by the criminals.
By launching the first episode, we smile when Tokyo says that she is a fan of the K-Pop group BTS, this one being the first to give a concert to celebrate the reunification of the country. The news does not play in favor of fiction since the members of the group have just announced that they were taking a break in their career.
Unnecessary mimicry
Subsequently, we tend to roll our eyes when, beyond the general copy-paste of the plot, certain details are reproduced with unnecessary mimicry. The Professor who constantly repositions his glasses, the particular laughter of Denver, the scene of the latter lounging on a huge pile of banknotes… No real surprise therefore for fans of the Spanish series.
The Korean rereading, which relies on the tensions between citizens of the South and the North to add divisions both within the hostages and the investigators, does not exploit these particularities enough. It nevertheless benefits from a very good casting with certain familiar faces from the international public. In the role of Berlin, we thus find Park Hae-soo, propelled to the front of the stage thanks to the “Squid Game” phenomenon in which he played one of the main characters. Nice reunion also with Kim Yoon-Jin, revealed to the general public in the American series “Lost”. She embodies the police negotiator who will fall under the spell of the Professor, without knowing his true identity.
Lighter flashbacks
Another good point: the script has been tightened since this first season has six parts of 63 to 78 minutes each (six hours and 57 minutes in all) against thirteen episodes of 42 to 56 minutes each for the Spanish version in its format offered by Netflix (ten hours and fourteen minutes in all). The events discussed remain substantially the same, it is especially the flashbacks that have been lightened.
A little watered down, “Money Heist: Korea” – of which Alex Pina, the creator of “Casa de Papel”, is a producer – can therefore benefit from an effect of curiosity but lacks body and originality to justify that we spends too much time on it. Difficult to see more than the exploitation of a commercial vein without real substance behind.
« Money Heist : Korea », Korean series by Ryu Yong-jae (2022) with Yu Ji-tae, Kim Yoon-jin, Park Hae-soo… Six episodes of 63 to 78 minutes each.