Love in the Time of a Pandemic

Netflix’s Hometown Cha Cha Cha is a timely and moving look at the transformational power of community

The world has spent the last eighteen months grieving over five million dead and the loss of all the ways that we normally come together as human beings. 

And we have done so largely alone. 

As Washington Post book critic Ron Charles noted last year, we have lived throughout the pandemic, whether by choice or not, much like Henry David Thoreau in Walden grieving alone in our own figurative cabins in the wood. From that cabin, Thoreau asked “What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?” It is a question that Korean television writer Shin Ha-eun set out to answer half a world away and over a century later. And by doing so, she has brought the world together through a story. In the midst of a pandemic, Shin Ha-eun’s simple and yet profoundly meaningful answer is “people should live among other people.”

And people are watching. Shin Ha-eun’s television series, Hometown Cha Cha Cha is the other 2021 worldwide blockbuster show on Netflix from Korea. It is not about a battle to the death or zombies. Rather, the Studio Dragon adaptation of the 2004 romantic comedy film Mr. Handy Mr. Hong is about ordinary people living in a coastal town. Despite its pervasive international popularity and explicit tie to American literature, Hometown Cha Cha Cha has gone largely unnoticed by American media. The series has remained in the top ten worldwide for three months, regularly trends internationally on social media, and is the third most watched non-English language show of the year on Netflix after the high concept shows Squid Game and Casa de Papel. Yet what is extraordinary is just how resolutely ordinary Hometown Cha Cha Cha is in its focus. It is a show about people simply living their lives that keeps the audience on the edge of its seat. 

In a setup reminiscent of Northern Exposure, a big city dentist named Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a) moves to the fictional coastal village of Gongjin. There she encounters Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho), affectionately known as Chief Hong around town, and his fellow villagers ranging in age from eighty three to eight. But like the characters that populate the town, there is much more than first meets the eye to Hometown Cha Cha Cha. What begins as a slice of life romantic comedy set in a beautiful place grows over time into a moving story about loss, mental health, intimacy, and community. It is a story about people just like you and me and how we never know what is going on in the life of the person standing next to us. Yet knowing can make all the difference in the world.

A 21st Century Thoreau… Who Surfs

Chief Hong is Gongjin’s Coach Ted Lasso. Like the famously positive coach of the eponymous Apple series, Chief Hong hides a traumatic past behind a willingness to serve others, a cheerful demeanor, and an ever ready quip. And like Ted Lasso, Chief Hong is also in therapy and has trouble opening up about his trauma. Interestingly, Chief Hong is modeled in part on Thoreau who famously retreated to a cabin in the woods after the death of his brother and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s young son. You may be asking yourself what a cabin in 19th century Massachusetts and a 21st century Korean seaside village could possibly have in common? As it turns out, quite a lot.

Early in the series, Chief Hong reads Walden while fishing alone by the sea. As astute viewers have pointed out on social media, Thoreau and Chief Hong have many shared attributes. They both studied engineering at a prestigious university, work odd jobs rather than pursue a more socially acceptable career, live alone in a house largely constructed by their own hands, and sought refuge from past trauma in nature. As the Romantics before him, Chief Hong rejects the conformity of the urban rat race. He is living a “self-reliant” life that includes self declared days off from work, surfing, reading poetry, and obtaining certifications in every professional discipline under the sun simply for the pleasure of acquiring new skills. 

The Boat on the Hill

But like the fishing boat that he has mysteriously placed at the top of a hill, Chief Hong also keeps himself at an emotional arms length from his fellow man. In some ways, he is all of us after eighteen months of isolation. 

This boat on the top of the hill is the first and last image of the series and comes to symbolize many things. First, it is eerily and confusingly out of place -- a sea vessel stranded on land far from where it may be of use. Chief Hong is a person who, even while living among people, decidedly lives apart from them. While his isolation manifests in the rural beauty of the Korean coast, it could just as easily represent those of us endlessly scrolling through social media in the confinement of our urban apartments. 

The boat also symbolizes a central mystery: Why is a brilliant graduate of a prestigious university working as a handyman in a rural village? His lifestyle becomes a flashpoint of debate with Yoon Hye-jin and their differing perspectives on the definition of success. The self made, prosperous dentist, giving voice to the Realist point of view, asks what is the use of something not serving its purpose? Chief Hong echoes the Romantics in his celebration of simplicity and seeing things from a different point of view. Chief Hong’s reply can be summarized by Thoreau stating in 1854, “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.” 

Calling the Self Reliant Man’s Bluff

While this questioning of success as defined by capitalistic metrics is a thought provoking thread throughout the drama, Shin Ha-eun does not allow Chief Hong and his mask of self-reliance to remain alone on the top of the hill. Rather, Shin Ha-eun calls her “self reliant” man’s bluff. In one scene Chief Hong reads a poem entitled The Gatekeeper, by Kim Haeng-sook. Through the voice of a poet, the protagonist calls himself out as the doorkeeper of his own heart as he reads aloud the words “[i]t is my job to deny my love.” A book he repeatedly pulls off of his shelf is Leo Tolstoy’s What Men Live By and Other Tales, in which an angel living among men observes that “all men live not by care for themselves but by love.”

Shin Ha-eun draws her characters together through sorrow and loneliness and then pushes them, including her Thoreau-like Chief Hong, to come out of their literal and figurative cabins. By the end of the story, characters walk through doors without knocking; the villagers are bound together by love as if passengers aboard the same vessel. The boat on a hill ultimately serves as a metaphor for the steadying force human connection can have in the ever changing sea of life.  

Coming Out of Our Cabins

In a world of high concept drama, the stakes of Hometown Cha Cha Cha are the mental health and well being of the characters that we come to care about through detailed writing and brilliant performances. The structure of the story invites all of us to reconsider what we know of the people around us. Why does everyone in the village put up with the meddling of the town gossip? Why did a couple with seemingly so much in common get divorced? Why is Chief Hong so devoted to the elderly Kim Gam-ri when her own family living in Seoul and the United States do not have time for her? And ultimately, why is Chief Hong literally and metaphorically shut away in a 21st century version of Thoreau’s cabin in the woods? The tragedies of everyday people involving mental health, depression, suicide, grief, divorce, and the loneliness of the elderly are explored with sensitivity and depth. Words can cut like a knife or bind a wound like a salve. Love can drive us to be petty and cruel. But it also can mean the difference between happiness and isolation -- and in turn life and death. 

The series invites us to examine our own interactions in the real world. Kind words can be the difference between falling apart and carrying on; saying feelings out loud can be a revelation; considering a different point of view can lead to a heartfelt apology; family can be chosen as well as biological. Hometown Cha Cha Cha explores the everyday happiness and sorrow of normal people and makes the world feel like it hangs in the balance. Because for all of us on a day to day basis it does. 

Thoreau wrote “[W]e live meanly, like ants … our life is frittered away by detail.” In Hometown Cha Cha Cha, the intricacies of human connection are told in rich and acute detail: a porridge made for someone when they are sick; a father carrying his daughter on his back to meet her idol; a grandmother stubbornly leaving food at a door that will not yield; a text message received in a desperate moment. Human beings reaching out to one another across the void is the story. A community sits side by side and enjoys food and laughter during a funeral just as they do during a joyful celebration. There is a sacred importance to the ritual of marking sorrow and happiness together. It is a story that is both clear eyed about human nature while also being profoundly hopeful in the power of what we can mean to one another. 

Hometown Cha Cha Cha is both a salve and an escape. It deftly weaves these references to poetry, Thoreau, and Tolstoy with laugh out loud comedy, a Pretty Woman-inspired fashion show, and an impromptu Kpop concert. It is an achingly beautiful romance. But it is perhaps most importantly a deeply moving love letter to the importance of community during a time in which most of us have been cut off from one another. It should not be surprising as we sit at home largely still isolated that a story which so brilliantly depicts the beauty of community has touched so many hearts across the world and reached beyond language barriers. 

People Should Live Among Other People

Hometown Cha Cha Cha shows us how the world often is: words cut, mental health is not linear, intimacy is hard labor, and we cruelly blame others for misfortune. But it also shows us all the ways that the world can be. We can reach out to one another, take responsibility, offer care, open ourselves to real intimacy, speak hard truths out loud, and forgive one another and, most importantly, ourselves. Such acts, however small, can be transformational.

Over two hundred years ago, in a solitude carved out of grief, Thoreau asked what sort of space separates a person from others. As it turns out, it’s only the space that we allow.

Shin Ha-eun answers his question during the global solitude of a pandemic through the words of Gongjin’s grandmother, Kim Gam-ri. She tells the audience to “look around yourself closely and you’ll realize that you’re surrounded by many precious things.” That while “life may seem like a burden to you at times... if you choose to be among others…someone will carry you on their back.” What could be more meaningful during a pandemic defined by isolation and loneliness?

All over the world, we have been resigned to our own cabins. As we slowly come together once again, Hometown Cha Cha Cha asks us to knock on the doors of people’s hearts. To act with kindness; to ask questions and be slow to cast judgment. To be brave and honest. To share good food with people and carry one another on our backs. And when we cannot, to send messages of care however we can. Community is a collection of human beings where we have the courage to know one another and be known. Where we show up for the rituals of heartache and as well as the celebrations. Where we climb into the boat on top of the hill and face what life will bring, together. 

Shin Ha-eun inscribed a final thought to the audience, from Thoreau, in the best selling book version of her Hometown Cha Cha Cha screenplay:

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

It is a beautiful and timely message that we so desperately need right now. 

-CC

Our podcast coverage of Hometown Cha Cha Cha begins January 2022 and will be available on all major podcast platforms. Subscribe below and follow us on Twitter for updates.