Castaway Diva (무인도의 디바) is a Romantic Comedy Korean Drama which premiered in October 2023 on TvN. It is available on Netflix in selected regions.
Seo Mok-ha (Park Eun-bin) dreams of becoming a diva. To be discovered as a singer, Mok-ha recruits her classmate Jung Ki-ho to film a video for a competition. She wins the competition and goes to Seoul for an audition, but an unfortunate accident leads her to be stranded on a deserted island. After 15 years, Mok-ha is rescued by two brothers Kang Bo-geol (Chae Jong-hyeop) and Kang Woo-hak (Cha Hak-yeon) and reenters society, helping her childhood idol Yoon Ran-joo (Kim Hyo-jin).
Castaway Diva provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Both the main leads have one.
- Mok-ha's father is a drunk who destroys her shrine to Ran-joo and beats her when he learns she plans on reporting him for child abuse. Ki-ho's father calls Mok-ha's "acting out" being "eighth-grader syndrome" and that it'll pass and she'll regret it, but Ki-ho tells her he knows what it is and she'll die like a fish in the tank either being cut with a knife or suffocated unless they do something. She escapes her father thanks to Ki-ho's help, ending up stranded on an island instead.
- Ki-ho's father beats him despite his pleas when he finds out he's saving up money to run away and find his mother in Seoul, and continues to haunt him even years later as Ki-ho lives under the constant underlying fear of being found out by his father. Flashbacks make it clear that Ki-ho was the only one in their family who had the courage to stand up against his abuse, thus earning him the majority of his father's wrath. So much so, that when Ki-ho confronts him in the present timeline, the first thing his father does is start beating him horribly the moment he finds out the recording device on him.
- Beneath the Mask: On the surface, Bo-geol appears aloof, quiet and nonchalant. It is only when it's hinted at, and later revealed, that he is Ki-ho, that the audience comes to know of the emotional baggage he has been dealing with all his life, and how it shaped him into the person he is in the present.
- Broken Tears: Bo-geol in Episode 9, after taking a beating from his biological father, sits in his car and tries to tamp down on his emotions, eventually failing and giving in to loud sobs. It's heartbreaking.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Ki-ho and Chae-ho's stepfather was a civil servant who had them and their mother take the identities of a family with two sons that went missing for 20 years and were never reported, as back then their father could find them even if they changed their names simply by using the family registry.
- Determinator: Both Bo-geol and Mok-ha in spades.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Not foolish per se, but Woo-hak is definitely the more outgoing and reckless sibling, while Bo-geol is the reticent and responsible one. This probably has to do with the fact that Woo-hak lost the memories of their abusive father early on, while Bo-geol has been living with all that repressed trauma for fifteen years, having to conceal away a lot of himself to protect their current identities.
- Foreshadowing: Plenty of hints leading up to The Reveal that Bo-geol is Ki-ho:
- Ki-ho said the first thing he'd do when they came to Seoul was buy Mok-ha new shoes. Which is what Bo-geol does after Mok-ha is rescued.
- Bo-geol often volunteers doing clean up at islands, which would make sense for Ki-ho to do after Mok-ha fell off the ship and was gone for 15 years.
- In school Ki-ho edited videos, doing so for Mok-ha's contest submission. In the present Bo-geol is a reality show producer.
- Ran-joon tells Bo-geol that he looks familiar. Later in the same episode Ran-joon tells Mok-ha that she met Ki-ho when he came to her home and asked her to give Mok-ha a chance and hug if she ever met her.
- Good Parents:
- Bo-geol and Woo-hak's mother and father. And their love and care extends not only to the sons, but Mok-ha as well.
- A separate mention for Lee-uk, the boys' step father, as he is more of a parent to them than their biological father ever was.
- Identity Amnesia: Woo-hak forgot all his memories 15 years ago which makes him think that he could have been Jung Ki-ho. He lost them from a head injury by his father. His mother said it was a gift from God who felt sorry for giving such a terrible father to a kind boy and their family should fill up the empty space with kind memories.
- Internal Reveal: In Episode 7 Mok-ha learns Bo-geol is Ki-ho.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Ki-ho (or Bo-geol), full-stop. He will do anything to help Mok-ha achieve her dream, even if it means giving up his own happiness and interests for it. And he does it all without expecting anything in return, it really is Mok-ha's well-being that matters the most to him at the end of the day.
- I Will Find You:
- One of Mok-ha's goals is to find Ki-ho again after learning he ran away shortly after she was stranded on the island.
- The reason Bo-geol started the island volunteer work was to look for Mok-ha. He did it without any break for years till he finally finds her in Episode 2.
- The Reveal: Ki-ho is Bo-geol. Woo-hak was Jung Chae-ho, and lost his memory when he injured his head protecting Ki-ho from being beaten by their father when he tried running away while their family still lived in Seoul.
- Robinsonade: After falling into the water while trying to escape her father on the ferry to Seoul Mok-ha is stranded on a deserted island for 15 years, living in a hut and surviving off mostly fish and potatoes.
- Stepford Smiler: Bo-geol has the tendency to be one at times, likely a trauma response and a result of years of having to lie to his brother about their past.
- Title Drop: After Mok-ha performs on Heyday Again."Seo Mok-ha, 'The Castaway Diva,' is trending all over the internet right now."
- Tsundere: Mok-ha points this out about Bo-geol to his face when he asks her why she thinks he can't be Ki-ho:"At times, it feels like you're on my side. Then, you suddenly act so distant."
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Yoon Ran-joo was the top diva of her time who Mok-ha adored. In the present she can't sing as well as she used to, has pretty much been abandoned by her agency, and is broke and gets evicted from her basement room that was rented out to her by her former fans. Mok-ha lip-synching for her gets Ran-joo to have a resurgence in popularity.
