Weak Hero (2022)

A heart-wrenching and brutal depiction of the cycle of violence

When Meego and Primary are credited on the OST, that can only mean one thing : the drama you’re about to watch will shatter your heart in pieces (Yes, I’m talking about you D.P.).

“Weak Hero Class 1” is extremely violent and brutal. The emotions portrayed are so raw that it is sometimes unbearable to watch. This drama is infused with a despair so complete that you wonder how the characters found the inner strength to open their eyes every morning and get on with their lives.

Collecting my thoughts after watching such a heart-wrenching drama is harder than expected : I have so many things to say but, paradoxically, I am at a loss for words. I was truly shocked by how violent this drama was and how it accurately portrayed what bullying is like in South Korea.
The fight scenes are extremely well-choreographed and kudos to the persons in charge of creating them and extra kudos to all the actors who did their own stunts. Such well-choreographed fight scenes seem to hint at the fact that bullies are used to fighting : fighting has become nothing more than a morbid dance in which the one who is fast enough to lead the dance will win.

This series depicts the tragedy of bullying no matter the environment and emphasises how violence is always the answer for bullies. If some people felt that the violence was too much in this drama and even pointless, that means the director successfully conveyed the message this show carries : the cycle of violence is never-ending however absurd and destructive it gets.
Although the action scenes may look “cool” given how well-thought-out and well-filmed they are, they’re unbearable to watch. Teenagers these days — and even before — are beating people with a bat, a monkey wrench or a metal bar… I cannot fathom how teenagers can be so utterly violent and cruel to one another. We live in the sickest world. Bullies have their senses numb by their desire for revenge and only the lingering presence of death can make them scurry away.

The cycle of violence is nothing but a vicious circle which, by definition, has no end. Such a cycle is especially devious in bullying cases because bullying is never as simple as people think it is. It must not have escaped you that there are almost no adults in the drama, let alone adults who embody any kind of neutral authority. Victims of bullying have no one to talk to. Even when they do, the people they talk to cannot begin to imagine how absolutely wild the revenge gets once someone’s ego is bruised. Beyond the desire for revenge, toxic masculinity is at the core of this drama. Bullying is only seen as a means to “fulfil [one’s] ego” and revenge is shown as nothing else but the correct response to a bruised ego. Toxic masculinity makes men entitled to the use of violence once they’ve been humiliated especially by people they deemed inferior. Shi Eun strives to stand at the opposite of such a dynamic but he is forced to respond with violence because his life and those of his friends are at risk.

To make my point absolutely clear : I do not hate Beom Seok. You hate someone once you have made a judgement on them. However, I don’t have it in me to judge Beom Seok. I simply cannot. Beom Seok is an incredibly complex character and people putting all the blame on him like he is nothing but a coward misses how fleshed-out he is. Hong Kyung’s acting showed a profound level of understanding of his character and he did amazing as Beom Seok. Beom Seok is the tragic embodiment of the human condition, with all its sickening flaws.

Beom Seok desperately longs to belong somewhere, anywhere. He was adopted by a father who only did it to better his political image. His father never showed him anything but pure hatred and the beating he receives is absolutely horrid both because of how violent it is but also because it hammers home the point that he is not a part of their family. He is nothing and his father never misses a chance to brutally remind him of that fact.
He was harshly bullied in his previous school making him an outcast. When he arrives in his new class, more than blending in, he wants to belong to a group — no matter which one. Soo Ho and Shi Eun make the perfect group for him except for the fact that Soo Ho is only seen as a carefree antihero to Beom Seok. Beom Seok feels like he owes Soo Ho and he hates it. Soo Ho doesn’t make him feel like he belongs although Shi Eun does because of how attentive and careful he is towards him.

Soo Ho is also a complex character with whom friendships are complicated because of how above everyone else he feels. Although Shi Eun successfully communicated with him, Beom Seok never did and neither did Soo Ho (with Beom Seok). A friendship with Soo Ho implies an imbalance which has to be corrected somewhere along the way. Shi Eun is acutely aware of that and from the get-go, he tells Soo Ho that he shouldn’t tell him what to do. Their confrontation in the classroom is actually quite meaningful because both of them get a pretty solid understanding of each other afterwards.
Given how skilled Soo Ho is when it comes to fighting and fighting bullies in particular, people are humbled by his mere presence. Soo Ho is aware of that and so he seldom comes to the rescue — only when it is absolutely necessary — because he knows people are going to feel indebted to him. However, people deal with debt in different ways. Beom Seok feels as if he owes Soo Ho and that feeling runs so deep that it eventually destroys his friendship with Soo Ho.
Soo Ho doesn’t know how to communicate with Beom Seok but he knows how to talk to Shi Eun. For instance, when Soo Ho makes Shi Eun work to help him during his part time job, he’s actually being thoughtful in his own way. He doesn’t want to give Shi Eun the feeling that he was rescued. Making him work is a way to tell him that Shi Eun doesn’t owe him anything. Beom Seok also did work in the restaurant Soo Ho works in but he missed the point of the whole “help me with my work now that you’ve wasted my time”.

Beom Seok never found a way to shift the balance of power in his friendship with Soo Ho. Thus, he was always on the defensive and whenever Soo Ho tried to help him, he only interpreted his actions as another means to humiliate him to make him remember that he is the “weakest” member of the group. Neither do Soo Ho nor Shi Eun consider him inferior or weak but Beom Seok has convinced himself otherwise, especially when it comes to Soo Ho’s perception of him. Shi Eun tried to point that out to Soo Ho but Soo Ho isn’t as thoughtful as Shi Eun. He felt deeply pained by Beom Seok’s words and reactions to whatever he did or said and his growing frustration towards him did not allow him to analyse things in a rational way.

I am deeply heartbroken by how Shi Eun, Beom Seok and Soo Ho’s friendship ended. Nevertheless, the drama gave us one of the most genuine male friendships I have ever seen and this is the thing I liked most about “Weak Hero Class 1”.
Before I dive further into Shi Eun and Soo Ho’s friendship, I would like to remind everyone that Shi Eun understood Beom Seok till the very end. The scene in which he cannot punch him, despite all the anger and despair he feels, is highly symbolic and should encourage the viewers to be as understanding as Shi Eun. What Beom Seok did is wrong and unforgivable. But his suffering should not go unnoticed. If Shi Eun could notice it even when Beom Seok started his descent into hell then so should the viewers. I wish people were more nuanced when they talked about him. He is a tragic character in all its splendour.

Now on to Shi Eun and Soo Ho’s friendship. Even before everything that happened with Beom Seok, their trio — now turned into a duo — was genuine and beautiful and I have seldom seen such an accurate and subtle portrait of genuine male friendships. Both of them communicate rather well and deeply care for each other. Although the two of them might be new to the feeling, they both react in different ways and it was truly heartwarming to see how moved they were to each other’s affection — the hospital scene in which Soo Ho is speechless because of Shi Eun’s thoughtfulness and warmth was a superb scene.

Soo Ho brought such comfort and a sense of safety to Shi Eun that Shi Eun felt overwhelmed by such warmth. The way he sometimes only looks at him, without saying a word, and his gaze is so vulnerable and obvious. He is finally understood and he feels deeply relieved.

Soo Ho is quite a misleading character who is more complex than the happy-go-lucky type he uses to present himself. He sure is spontaneous and straight-forward but those traits of his character are in keeping with the fact that he has no time nor does he have the means necessary to dwell on his thoughts. He has to work a lot to get by and he barely has time to sleep so taking the necessary time to take care of himself is not something he can afford. I don’t believe he would find much use in that either. He seems used to muffling his emotions.
I wouldn’t say Soo Ho embodies a kind of toxic masculinity but some of his actions are not far from it. Shi Eun’s company invites him to be a bit more vulnerable although he seldom explicitly voices out his worries but his “Are you okay?” and his questioning gaze is enough for Shi Eun to understand his friend’s concern. In the same vein, the way his “See you tomorrow” addressed to Shi Eun always sounded like a promise never missed to squeeze my heart just as it must have squeezed Shi Eun’s heart in his chest.
However, he doesn’t know how to control his frustration and that’s why he could never talk things through with Beom Seok. The two of them were always engaged in a power struggle that none of them clearly understood. Shi Eun tried to act as a mediator between them but even when he talked to Soo Ho about Beom Seok, Soo Ho didn’t know how to react when faced with Beom Seok’s loneliness and angst. I’m not solemnly blaming Soo Ho for Beom Seok’s descent into hell. Beom Seok should have voiced his worries to Soo Ho without putting on a defying front whenever they talked to each other. But Beom Seok’s inferiority complex didn't allow him to do that and only Shi Eun saw right through him till the very end. Soo Ho also wished for Beom Seok to stop his nonsense but he hadn’t realised that his mere presence had become a burden to him. Their failed friendship is tragic because the two of them never succeeded in talking with each other on a neutral ground. They could never stand on equal footing however hard they tried.
Choi Hyun Wook did a wonderful job at balancing his character’s seemingly casualness to show, at times, a more emotionally vulnerable part of Soo Ho.

Although Shi Eun fights a lot and analyses things through in a way that might appear quite scary, he is the only soft-spoken character in the drama who always strived to talk things through first. He is a profoundly lonely character who lives his life like a programmed robot who should do what he is told to do just because he doesn’t know what he would do otherwise. His feelings are stifled deep within him and the way he fights so desperately gives the viewers a hint as to how long he has kept bottling up his thoughts and worries.
Park Ji Hoon’s eyes speak volume and thus everything Shi Eun felt found echoes in the viewers’ heart. Park Jihoon did a stellar job at portraying Shi Eun, from how devoid of colours his gaze could be to how soft and raw his voice sounded.

This drama could not have been as gut-wrenching without the actors and actresses’ amazing performances. I have only praised the three main actors’ acting but it goes without saying that they delivered such honest and heartbreaking performances because of how stimulated they must have been by the way people acted out all around them.

I don’t particularly enjoy watching dramas about bullying but I still watch them because they usually never miss to draw a true and nuanced portrait of the human condition with all its /hubris/. This drama highlighted how brutal the cycle of violence is and how revenge has no end since people with bruised egos lose all sense of rationality.
“Weak Hero Class 1” is, in many ways, similar to a Greek tragedy from the way the story unfolds to the characters themselves. Every character is so caught up in this vicious circle that they all lose control of what they’re doing — just like the hero of a tragedy has no control over their fate — leading them to almost kill one another. The bitter irony of bullying is that bullies long to completely destroy their victim without killing them. The prospect of them dying sends a wave of panic into them which is beyond understanding. Cruelty implies a long-term suffering which aims at hurting and humiliating relentlessly the person bullied to make them turn into the shell of themselves.

Male friendships are the reason I would recommend this drama to everyone because it is truly refreshing to see genuine friendships brought to the screen. However, this drama may not be suitable for everyone because of how terribly violent it is. There is something in “Weak Hero Class 1” — from the way it is filmed to the way characters speak and act — that reinforces the violence shown which makes it all the more shocking even if you are used to watching brutal series/movies.

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