Captain Park Jung Joon acknowledges his feelings for the free-spirited and playful, Young-Ok in Our Blues episode 4.
In the first three episodes of Our Blues, Young-Ok was introduced as a lively and charming woman. She is Eun-Hee’s best friend and she went to Jeju to work. Besides being a Haenyeo diver, she works at Eun Hee’s fish stall in the wet market.
Moreover, with her coquettish nature and with Park Jung Joon being the captain of the Haenyeo divers’ boat, it is not surprising how a tricky romance is hinted at between them.
Particularly in episode 4, viewers get to see a more straightforward Captain Jung Joon after much subtlety. As he contemplates his plan from now on, circumstances push him and Young-Ok to address the elephant in the room.
Nathan Llantos watches Our Blues on Netflix
Episode ratings: 
Episode recaps: First Look | 03
Our Blues Episode 4 Highlights
The episode starts by giving a glimpse of Seon-Ah’s current life. Seon-Ah (Shin Min Ah) is Dong-Seok’s (Lee Byung Hun) lost one-sided love. Dong-Seok is one of Eun Hee and Han-Su’s high school classmates.
Additionally, he is also a clothes and tools merchant in Jeju who sells his goods in a moving van. Episode two of the series briefly tells the past of these two characters.
In the present day, however, Seon-Ah is suffering from depression and is struggling to be a mother and a wife in the city. A brief overview of how her life is going so far is shown.
Moreover, brief instances of what is going on between Yeong-Ju and Hyeon—the kids of Eun-Hee’s classmates, In-Gwon and Ho-Shik. The story then highlight is the lives of Young-Ok (Han Ji Min) and Park Jung Joon ( Kim Woo Bin).
After Party Fuss
Young-Ok went to a bar with Captain Bae. Apparently, he is the one who keeps on asking Young-Ok to meet up with him because the obnoxious boat captain is obsessed with her.
After having too much to drink and much dancing, Captain Bae throws up outside the bar. Subsequently, he told her he was too drunk to go home and so they better stay at a motel for the night.
Young-Ok does not really pay attention to the drunk captain and nonchalantly agrees to whatever he is saying. Overjoyed, Captain Bae rides the car with her.
However, Young-Ok is smarter than she seems. She asks the designated driver to take them to her street. In particular, at Eun-Hee’s house because she has no intention of sleeping with Captain Bae.
When the drunk captain realizes this, he keeps on whining inside the car and pleads her aggressively that they should go to a motel. Their vehicle almost collides with Captain Jung Joon’s car on their way back.
She greets Jung Joon briefly. Once they got off the car, Captain Bae keeps bugging her to go to a motel. Consequently, this annoys Young-Ok and tells the loud captain he might wake up Eun-Hee.
Meanwhile, Jung Joon feels uncomfortable and concerned, seeing that Young-Ok was with Captain Bae. After parking his car, he walks toward Eun-Hee’s house to check up on her.
There he confronts the persistent Captain Bae and reasoned with him. He succeeds in making the lousy captain go home. Not just that, but he also reports Captain Bae to the police for drunk driving.
Midnight Stroll & Confessions
Young-Ok sees Jung Joon and asks him why he was still there. He responds that he was concerned that Captain Bae would come back, so he would stay for a few minutes on the front porch to keep him away.
Hence, she teases Captain Jung Joon that he must like her. Furthermore, Young-Ok receives a series of messages containing photos of sceneries, random stuff and locations of a house.
However, the sender of the photos was not revealed. Quite displeased with what she saw, she looks out the window again and asks Jung Joon if they could go out for a walk.
To this, Jung Joon casually agrees and tells her to come out. However, as he walks toward the gate, he could not stop smiling.
Young-Ok and Jung Joon casually stroll through Jeju’s quiet but well-lit street. Jung Joon walks over to face Young-Ok, and she suddenly asks him if he likes her.
Before answering, Young-Ok approaches him to measure his height and takes a smart guess of how tall Jung Joon was in centimeters. Happy seeing her in front of him, Jung Joon indulges in Young-Ok’s sweet small talks and questions.
Unfortunately, the bubble burst when Jung Joon realizes the real reason why she asked him to walk with her. Not long after the small talks, they exchange.
Young-Ok starts talking about all the men he used to date. There was a lot to reminisce about; thus, she was very detailed in speaking about them.
She tells Jung Joon stories about her past relationships and why they had ended. Back in his converted bus home, Captain Jung Joon wrote on the glass wall his current dilemmas about Young-Ok.
Young-Ok’s Puzzling Background
As Young-Ok went out to shop for groceries, the store owner paraded her with questions about his son. Apparently, Young-Ok told her before that her mom is an artist.
As a result, the store owner bugs her to answer her queries about his son, who is an aspiring artist. Moreover, the store owner prods that she thought it would be better if his son could attend a prestigious university in Seoul.
Young-Ok, however, is not really paying mind to the store owners’ queries. Thus, she answers half-heartedly. The store owner was in disbelief when Young-Ok frankly tells her that she did not think her son was that talented.
This angered the store owner, and she shouts as Young-Ok’s car was driving away. She questions if Young-Ok’s mother is really an artist as she claims and challenges her to show her mother’s works to prove it.
Additionally, the elderly female Haenyeo divers are also starting to be agitated. Not only are they curious, but they are also irritated with how Young-Ok has been lying about her background.
They have found out how Young-Ok tells different stories to different people. Mainly, they raved about how Young-Ok flirts with all the men around their neighborhood.
A Haenyeo Emergen-Sea
The following day at the boat, Young-Ok greets Captain Park. She innocently asks if he was ignoring her. Moreover, despite the reminder that Haenyeo divers must come up on time, she did not rise from the water.
It alarms Captain Jung Joon that the divers were all assembled on the boat checking their harvests, but Young-Ok was nowhere to be found.
Consequently, everyone on the boat starts calling out to Young-Ok to resurface. Captain Jung Joon is particularly panicking as he sounds the siren and calls the coast guard.
A while later, they found Young-Ok, who went out of bounds to get more abalone. Thereafter, Young-Ok was scolded when they returned to the Haenyeo divers’ center.
All the elderly scorn her, even their leader Chun-Hui who is usually silent. When the elderly went home, Young-Ok rants about how sensitive they were.
She is indignant about what she had done, claiming she was only delayed by 10 minutes. Contrary to the consolation she was expecting; even their youngest Haenyeo diver lectures her about why she was wrong.
It was a matter of life and death for Haenyeo divers if they did not resurface on time. The tides change, and the waves can be deadly.
Even if Young-Ok reasoned her buoy drifted away, and she had to retrieve it, the youngest diver did not buy her alibi. She claims that Young-Ok had an awful lot of abalone harvested for someone who accidentally went out of bounds.
Captain Park Jung Joon’s Resolve
Back at the auction site, Jung Joon sells and delivers the abalones harvested by his Haenyeo divers. There he was confronted by Captain Bae, who retorts about how he spent a huge sum of money and efforts to woo Young-Ok.
He complains that Jung Joon reported him to the police and asked Jung Joon if he thought Captain Bae was a pushover.
Ticked off by how Captain Bae talks ill about Young-Ok, Jung Joon almost launched his fists on Captain Bae. The latter arrogantly engages in a fistfight even though he is clearly at a disadvantage. He was even pushed down easily by Jung Joon. However, the fight was prevented by Ho-Shik’s intervention.
That night, Jung Joon visits Young-Ok. She calls him asking if they could meet, and Jung Joon said they could after his work. Hence, Young-Ok waited outside of his bus.
When he arrived, he invites her inside and offered her a drink. Young-Ok compliments the artistic and rustic vibe of Jung Joon’s bus home. Afterwards, Young-Ok also sees Jung Joon’s writings on the glass wall about her.
She asks Jung Joon if those writings were about her and read the three notes. Consequently, she requests Jung Joon for the answer to one particular question. Suppose he could or could not love a woman like her.
Jung Joon straightforwardly answered, ” Let’s go out.” Young-Ok replied that he would get hurt.
With that said, Jung Joon said, “Then try not to hurt me.” and asked her why is she so determined to hurt him.
Moreover, he wonders if Young-Ok needed time to think about his confession. However, Young-Ok replies she does not. She gives a bitter-sweet smile and stood up to kiss Jung Joon.
Our Blues Episode 4 Musings
Intriguing Narratives
Our Blues continues to demonstrate how effective it is as an omnibus series. Each episode successfully weaves the lives of the characters without confusing the viewers.
The transitions are seamless and intriguing since while each episode is focused on the narrative of certain characters, viewers get a glimpse of what is to come for the other characters.
Mainly, episode 4 was able to pique the interest of viewers about what is going to happen to Yeon-Ju and Hyeon, as well as Seon-Ah whose current lives were briefly foreshadowed.
Not just that but, this episode delivered a very natural and convincing story about the unaddressed circumstances of Young-Ok.
Moreover, the series does not lack in the cinematography department. In fact, consistently since the first episode, Our Blues continue to amaze viewers with the beautiful and compelling stories and sceneries of Jeju.
Learn valuable life lessons and relate to the stories of the Jeju Folks in Our Blues. Episodes are released weekly on tvN and are available for streaming on Netflix.
Photos: tvN
[wpedon id=”2271″ align=”center”]
