Move to Heaven

Presentation

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Analysis

Synopsis

Han Geu Ru is a young man who has Asperger syndrome. He and his father run a trauma center “Move to Heaven” that takes care of the belongings of deceased people. After his father’s death, Geu Ru’s uncle, Cho Sang Gu, enters his life. He is cold, used to participate in underground boxing matches and hides a lot of secrets. Together, they have to run the company.

My Opinion (No Spoiler)

Beautiful drama, I sincerely loved it! This drama is heartwarming and really emphasizes humanity, despite grief and death. The themes tackled were not easy ones, but the drama treated each and every story and depicted character with a lot of respect. Main leads and secondary ones all had their importance and allowed for a broad illustration of human nature and love. A feel-good life drama, that will make you go through a lot of emotions. Don’t hesitate to watch it!

Analysis (Spoiler Alert)

Characters:

Han Geu Ru (Tang Joon Sang) is a 20-year old young man who has Asperger syndrome. He has been raised by his single father Han Jeong U (Ji Jin Hee) after the death of his sick wife. Together, they run a specific company “Move to Heaven” which takes care of the belongings of the dead. They are also called trauma cleaners. Through that, Geu Ru is able to experience life and to better understand the people he meets. His father was convinced from the very beginning that this job would help his son to be better integrated in the world and to overcome the social difficulties related to his condition. Moreover, Jeong U would be there to guide Geu Ru along the way and help him navigate through emotions and complex relationships.

Geu Ru is still inexperienced and the drama shows a lot of scenes in which he is unable to communicate with others or grasp the complicated situations he sometimes lands in. He has no tact or subtlety, but he was given a mission as a trauma cleaner (to bring the belongings of the dead to the remaining family in order for them to grief) and never gives up until he has succeeded. He doesn’t care about others’ opinions or rejection, he goes all-in and that’s is probably what makes him indispensable to the company. His resilience and perseverance allow him to overcome all the obstacles on his way. Plus, he has an extraordinary memory and connects elements very rapidly. These two qualities prove to be actually quite helpful in some cases.

Finally, Geu Ru is a loyal and attaching young man. Even though he distrusts people at first and doesn’t let them come close to him, he slowly opens up the more he gets used to those around him. Thanks to his involvement in “Move to Heaven”, he manages to dive deeper in human emotions and to apply them to his own life.

Indeed, the drama is made up of two main narratives: one about the cases the company is assigned to, and the other about Geu Ru and his family’s own grief. Right in episode 1, Geu Ru’s father dies of a heart attack. This naturally leads to a lot of changes in his life like the arrival of his unknown uncle, Cho Sang Gu (Lee Je Hoon), who is nothing like his brother.

Cho Sang Gu (Lee Je Hoon) is a wounded man. At first, he gives the impression that he only cares about money, that he is a gangster who has been in prison for murder and who could hurt Geu Ru. Yet, this tough and dark appearance is just a mask. In reality, Cho Sang Gu has had a troubled childhood, filled with his father’s beating. After his father’s death, he trusted his older brother Jeong U that he would come and rescue him. But he never did. Later on, we discover that Jeong U was at the hospital, so he couldn’t move and go to his brother.

Feeling abandoned, Sang Gu grew up devastated by his own past. He then got involved in illegal boxing matches. At the same time, he protected a high school student who was bullied Kim Su Cheol (Lee Jae Wook), who then considered Sang Gu his brother/mentor. Sang Gu taught him how to fight, but they unfortunately ended up having to fight against each other. Sang Gu punched Su Cheol too hard in the final round, causing irreversible damages. Sang Gu ended up in prison and was asked to take care of his nephew as soon as he went out.

That’s how he discovered the real truth about his past and the love his brother had for him. He never truly abandoned him and did his best to save him, though he failed. Taking care of Geu Ru is also a healing process for Sang Gu. He forgives himself and his brother. He grieves and lets go of the past in order to finally move on. Indeed, all these years he had been in inner turmoil, hurt, full of resentment and anger towards everyone around him. “Move to Heaven” enables him to close this dark chapter of his life and to start a new one, with his remaining family.

In the end, Sang Gu proves to be very sensitive, loyal and caring. Exactly the type of guardian Geu Ru needs.

Yoon Na Mu (Hong Seung Hee) is the last important piece at “Move to Heaven”. Even though she is not an actual worker there, she is very much needed to make it work. She has been Geu Ru’s friend for a very long time, is loyal, overprotective and willing to destroy everything and everyone that would hurt him. She is also very nosy and curious, but her hunches regarding Sang Gu’s illegal matches are very good. Without her, I doubt Sang Gu and Geu Ru would’ve acclimated to each other so well. They form a nice, yet atypical trio, each of them compensating for the other’s flaws.

Na Mu is a strong-willed and stubborn woman, which is also the reason why she bumps head to head with Sang Gu at the beginning. Not to mention her mother, who wants her to go to the university, while Na Mu prefers working as a trauma cleaner. If Geu Ru represents water, he is calm and rational, Na Mu is definitely fire, full of energy and explosive. I think that’s why they get along so well. In the middle stands Sang Gu, who is a little bit of both I guess.

Ambiance: Move to Heaven certainly belongs to the feel-good dramas that are really poetic. Everything in it is made to support the sad and heartbreaking stories of the dead, but in a solemn and respectful way. The shots are beautiful in terms of aesthetics (visuals for instance or the way some scenes are filmed) and of acoustics. The classical music for example really participates to the slow-paced atmosphere that resembles that of grief.

Moreover, the drama doesn’t only revolve around death. A lot of hope actually emerges from time to time in the drama. Starting with the presence of nature: the trees (Geu Ru and Na Mu both mean trees), the amazing moments at the aquarium while Geu Ru observes mantas and the ending. In the last scene, Geu Ru meets a young woman who wants to take the service for herself because she is going to die. Slowly, a butterfly sits on her head.

Butterflies have many significations: transformation, lightness, spiritual life… but they generally announce a positive change in someone’s life. This element alone brings light in the drama and hope for Geu Ru and his family’s future. All in all, Move to Heaven is an ode to life and its beauty.

What are the themes tackled?

One of the best things about Move to Heaven is that it is actually based on true facts, more or less. The story refers to an essay explaining the usefulness of trauma cleaners for the Korean society. This and the fact that all episodes focus on a different societal issue/situation are enough to make us want to see the drama.

Here are some of the themes present in the drama:

Episode 1: A young man works for a factory, that exploits him. One night, he is asked to fix one of the machines and ends up wounded. Because of his financial situation and his parents’ lack of resources, he decides not to tell anyone. A week later, he is found dead in his room at a boarding house. He died because of his infected injury. His parents are naturally devastated because they realize that their son didn’t want to cause them any problems. That’s why he kept quiet and didn’t go to the hospital.
Themes: work exploitation / parental love

Episode 2-3: In this episode, the “Move to Heaven” team arrives in an apartment where an old lady has died. She was abandoned by her family, who only seems to care about the inheritance she left. The old lady’s son and his wife are completely blinded by money, greedy and disrespectful towards the dead woman. They even become aggressive when they learn that her accounts are empty. Later on, her son is consumed by regrets, when he discovers that his mother used her precious money to buy him an expensive tailor-made suit.
Themes: Fight over inheritance / Abandon of elderly people / parental love

Episode 3-4: Geu Ru, Sang Gu and Na Mu are missioned to clean a crime scene. Apparently, a young woman has been killed by her fiancé after a violent fight between them. Though this is the official version, Geu Ru manages to solve the mystery and to prove that the so-called fiancé was actually a stalker who killed the woman out of anger and jealousy.
Themes: Stalking / Dating violence / Obsessive love

Episode 5: A doctor is killed by a drug addict at the hospital, while trying to protect a nurse. Our trio is asked by his parents to rapidly clean his room. Among the belongings, Geu Ru finds a love letter, that the man’s father burns out of anger. Geu Ru tries to save it but fails. He decides to chase after the mysterious lover and learns that he is a famous male cellist. He and the doctor were involved a year ago but had to split up eventually.
Themes: Homosexuality / Music / Acceptance

Episode 6: “Move to Heaven” is called by a social worker Son U Rim (Choi Soo Young) in order to take care of the belongings of an old couple. The wife was sick and the husband decided to commit suicide with her. They left together, but this action creates tension among the characters.
Themes: Power of plants / Power of love

Episode 7: This episode puts the emphasis on Sang Gu’s story and especially his brotherly relationship with Su Cheol. It also shows the terrible consequences of their illegal matches with Su Cheol being in a coma and Sang Gu in prison.
Themes: School bullying / Friendship-Mentorship / Boxing

Episode 8: The 8th episode focuses on Sang Gu’s past as a child, the domestic violence he went through and his relationship with Jeong U. Moreover, it also tackles one of the most tragic accidents in South Korean modern history: the collapse of Sampoong Department Store in 1995 (if you don’t know about it, you can check it out; Reply 1994 briefly mentions it too).
Themes: Brotherly love / Domestic abuse / Abandonment / Foster system / Sampoong Department Store

Episode 9: Mr Green’s story told in this episode is probably the most heartbreaking one. He was abandoned by his mother as a baby. Then, he was adopted by a family in the US but the family dissolved the adoption because of his many and costly heart problems. Matthew Green was then deported to his “home country”, South Korea, which was not really a home for him because he had been raised in the States. He ended up in a foreign land, ignorant of the language and without family. That’s why he decided to find his biological mother. But she continuously refused to see him. He died because of his heart condition, alone in his shabby room. Meanwhile, Sang Gu discovers that Geu Ru was also adopted by his brother.
Themes: Adoption abroad / Deportation / Being stateless / Foster care / Parental love

Episode 10: This last episode focuses on Geu Ru’s past and more precisely on his adoption by Jeong U. Geu Ru was abandoned by his mother in a basement. Jeong U, a firefighter at that time came to rescue a cat but found a baby instead. It was immediate love between Jeong U / his wife and Geu Ru. They adopted him and despite Geu Ru’s Asperger syndrome, they provided him with all the love he needed. Geu Ru knows that he was adopted and has accepted it.
The episode also contains Sang Gu’s last fight to protect his family and get his house deed back, as well as Geu Ru’s final goodbye to his father.
Themes: Familial love