Strong Girl Nam-soon – K Drama Episode 5

Strong Girl Nam-soon Episode 5 begins with Nam-soon and Hee-sik investigating Doogo’s warehouses. Seok-ho, from Hee-sik’s team, helps them by cutting the electricity inside the warehouse. Nam-soon finds the masks using her super sight and jumps high up to get the boxes down. Hee-sik gets hurt during the debacle and Nam-soon ends up carrying him out.

Elsewhere, Shi-oh drinks a mysterious blue liquid and the veins in his body stand out.

Geum-ju gets a message from Opulentia inviting her to a dinner at Incheon port. She gets into her bike-wear and drives off but finds someone following her. She confronts the other biker who turns out to be the man who gave her the business card for Opulentia.

He guides her to the port, where she meets the Vice Chairman of Opulentia who is running a small food stall. He tells her Opulentia was started by his grandmother and their purpose is to do good in the world. The man says they chose Geum-ju because she knows how to spend her money.

Nam-soon heads off towards her house. Hee-sik tries to walk her home but she laughs it off. Na-young, Geum-ju’s secretary, welcomes Nam-soon home. Then she checks a dating app and comes across Geum-ju’s brother, Geum-dong’s profile. In her room, Nam-soon gets flustered when Hee-sik sends her a text telling her to be careful and wash her hands since she touched the masks.  

At the police station, two detectives discuss how Nam-soon was the one who saved people from the burning building the other day. An employee from Doogo calls the police station and reports a sighting of Hwa-ja. But she catches him and he cuts the call halfway. The policewoman, Yeo Ji-hyun, calls Hee-sik and tells him about the call. She informs him that Hwa-ja seems to be at Doogo.

Hwa-ja calls one of her men and they discuss what Nam-soon could be up to at Doogo. She insists that she’s going to kill Nam-soon.

Nam-soon’s boss tries to make friends with her and asks her what she eats to become so strong. She tells him she has 100 eggs every day. And she eats only raw food.

Geum-ju reaches her office and is met by a woman named Ms. Cho. The woman offers a ten-carat blue diamond in exchange for cash. Geum-ju insists that her company’s money should be spent meaningfully and asks her what she’s going to use the money for. The woman shows her a business card.

Hee-sik tells Nam-soon about Hwa-ja. A flashback shows that Geum-ju let Hwa-ja steal her watches because she knows lack of money can make people do bad things. She claims to have seen a brief moment of sincerity in Hwa-ja’s eyes. Nam-soon agrees with her mother and wants to give Hwa-ja a chance to change.

At the police station, the masks don’t seem to be dissolving into drugs. Young-tak calls Hee-sik and tells him to come back. Hee-sik claims that Shi-oh is suspicious. He was absent from the country between the ages of 20 and 32 so they don’t know where he got his money from.

Geum-ju thinks over what Ms. Cho told her. Turns out, the business card was of a Korean fund manager called Bread Song. He launders money and doubles it for his clients. Geum-ju decides to look into him.

Nam-soon and Hee-sik deliver Doogo products but Hee-sik is called back to the police station. They deal with a rude customer, who is the owner of a restaurant, and Hee-sik stops Nam-soon from fighting him. She goes back in as his customer this time and orders food. When he refuses, she breaks one of his dining tables in half.

Geum-ju goes to visit Bread Song and when she’s asked for an appointment, she shows the assistant one of her passbooks. Seeing the large amount written on there, she is admitted inside immediately. She goes into the office and meets Bread Song. He gets a call from a Russian man which she overhears. When she claims to have black money, he suggests ways for her to evade tax.

Hee-sik meets with Ji-hyun and gets information on Hwa-ja. She’s an orphan who was initiated into a gang. Each member has a mark on the sole of their foot.

Joong-gan visits Nam-in’s cafe to meet the barista, Jun-hee. When Bong-go asks about her missing husband, Nam-in reads the tarot cards and deduces that his grandfather is in the East. 

Joong-gan does indeed have coffee with Jun-hee. While chatting, Jun-hee gets a call from his daughter who happens to have gotten into a car accident. On a video call, she asks him to wire money to bail her out. Joong-gan and Jun-hee head over to the police station only to find that it was a phishing scam using deepfake videos. And Jun-hee’s money is gone.

Hee-sik and his team investigate the death of a swimming instructor. Turns out, the man’s behaviour changed and he kept chugging water, even pool water. We then see multiple instances of people uncontrollably drinking water. One man even punches a table and breaks it in half before collapsing. Even Dong-seok, Hee-sik’s team leader, has been gulping down bottles of water.

Jun-hee gets upset about everything with his daughter and Joong-gan tries to comfort him. At Nam-in’s cafe, a pretty woman walks up to him and gives him a small box with a tablet. She claims it will help him lose weight.

At night, Nam-soon investigates the Doogo warehouse again and finds Shi-oh standing with his hand outstretched. He looks unwell and when she touches his arm, he pushes her hard enough that she goes flying into a stack of boxes.  

Geum-ju asks her secretary to converse with Opulentia in English. She asks them about Ryu Shi-oh and they say his money came from an unknown source. They also mention a Russian mafia group that has entered the country. Afterwards, Na-young tells Geum-dong that she is on the dating app too and they should avoid each other there.

Nam-soon comes home and tells her mother how she’s been helping Hee-sik. She then recognizes Shi-oh’s picture on her mother’s computer. Geum-ju says it must be fate, they are meant to save the world together.

Hee-sik worries about the drug’s increasing fatality rate. He then realises that Dong-seok has been drinking a lot of water and stops him. He figures out that it’s the water that reacts with the drug and makes it potent.

One of Shi-oh’s assistants shows him a video of Nam-soon working at the Doogo warehouse. Shi-oh is unnaturally delighted at this news.

Geum-ju meets Hee-sik and reveals that it was her who tipped him off about Doogo. While working at the warehouse, Nam-soon suddenly bumps into Hwa-ja and they come face to face at the end of Strong Girl Nam-soon Episode 5.

The Episode Review

Now that Nam-soon’s reunited with her family, Strong Girl Nam-soon Episode 5 turns its focus clearly on the drug plotline. It does seem a little quick, the way they move on from the return of their long-lost daughter. But with Nam-soon’s incredible feats of strength, the magnitude of Geum-ju’s riches and the intensity of the drug plotline, the tone of the show is fantastic enough that you go with the flow.

Ryu Shi-oh’s motivations are slowly coming to light and it seems to have something to do with getting super-strength. But the air of mystery around him, his company and the source of his money serves to keep the story engaging. From the way he pushed Nam-soon, we know that the protagonist is likely going to face a worthy adversary.

All in all, the pace of the episodes is slow and not all the shenanigans strike the funny bone — scenes with Joong-gan’s aspiring romance and the fund manager Bread Song are not as funny as the show wants them to be. Despite that, the main leads have enough charm to keep us going.