I was on my third re-watch of the drama Start-Up and thought it’d be fun to sort the characters w/ Sorting Hat Chats’ system--it’s such an interesting way to build/disseminate fictional characters. There are a lot of characters in this drama, but I’ll just be sorting the main and second leads. It’s a long read, though. (Minor spoilers ahead!)
1) Main female lead, Seo Dalmi
(Side note: Dalmi is probably one of my favorite K-drama characters to date because she knows what she wants and gets after it with everything she’s got.)
I think she has a Snake primary. A lot of her character-defining actions are driven by the desire to help her most-beloved individuals or people in the world who remind her of those individuals. She refuses to leave her father when her parents divorce, because she thinks it’d be tantamount to betrayal. Early in the show, Dalmi’s grandmother tells Han Jipyeong that Dalmi got into a good university--which is extremely difficult to do in Korea--but when Dalmi’s grandmother sold her hot dog shop to pay for Dalmi’s tuition, Dalmi promptly dropped out and worked until she could buy her grandmother a food truck. She talks about being motivated to create a seeing-eye app and self-driving cars because she wants to help vision-impaired individuals like her grandmother, and to ensure accidents like the one that killed her father wouldn’t happen to other people. Dalmi’s projects are undoubtedly selfless, but they’re inspired by her own special people. I think this is also why she’s so torn-up after finding out the letter she thought were from Nam Dosan were actually from Jipyeong--her inspiration and sense of purpose is so strongly drawn from the individuals she holds dear, finding out a major source of her inspiration was attributed to the wrong person is earth-shattering for her in a way it probably wouldn’t be for a non-Snake primary.
I went between Lion and Badger a lot for Dalmi’s secondary. She’s relentless to the point of desperation, but how much of that is because she’s so hellbent on making her start-up(s) work? She overtly dislikes having to lie, and people around her (primarily the two male leads) seem to be drawn to her for her explicit drive and belief in herself.
But ultimately, I think she’s a Badger secondary. Although Dalmi bluffs a lot without feeling uncomfortable about doing so, she’s pretty bad at it, with a lot of post-bluff panic that I feel like Lion secondaries wouldn’t have. Instead, we see her (happily) grinding a lot: picking up books on management and start-ups, putting in her best efforts at her temp job, staying up late with Dosan when the other team members take a break, asking Jipyeong a million questions all at once over the course of a night. We also see her doing a lot of that Badger-style “just show up” thing in her relationships, like bringing Jipyeong a specific trash bag and pine nut noodles after he mentions them. A pivotal point in the show--when Dalmi walks miles of country roads to find Dosan--also seems Badger-y to me.
2) Main male lead, Nam Dosan
Originally posted by seoul-leaf
Dosan is another favorite K-drama character! Actually, he’s probably my favorite K-drama first male lead of all time, mostly because the bar is so low. But anyway...
I thought Dosan was a Snake primary like Dalmi because he’s so devoted to her and inspired by her, but I noticed that pre-Dalmi, he didn’t really have such special individuals and was pretty content living that way. He cares a lot about his parents and friends, as well as the people Dalmi cares about, but he doesn’t live and die for them the way Dalmi or other Snake primary characters do. I also considered Badger and Lion because he’s shown to be very kind to strangers for no apparent reason, to the point that his parents dub him “Living Buddha.” He impulsively attends the event Dalmi invited him to, seemingly just because he feels like it’d be the nice thing to do. When Dosan visibly pulls ahead of his peers--whether figuratively in an academic way or literally on a running track--he purposely falls behind to protect their feelings. Never to the point of handicapping himself, but just enough that they feel better...again, for no apparent reason.
But when I looked at Dosan some more, I decided that he’s an ever-elusive Bird primary. To outsiders, his way of doing things might seem wonky, but he has a strong internal logic for his actions. When he gets angry, he systematically begins knitting. When he hears people talking about blood types and personality, he launches into a thorough explanation (involving the brain, bloodflow, etc.) of why the two can’t be linked, seemingly with the expectation that if he explains, they’ll see why he’s right and agree. On a more serious note, Dosan has a really clear idea of how he fell for Dalmi, tracing it back through specific scenes: the fireworks he saw on the night they met, quotes from the letter Jipyeong showed him, the trust she has in his hands. Of course, much of this might stem from cinematic convenience, but I think it lends itself to character-building as well. (We don’t get this consciously thematic reminiscence from the other leads, after all.)
His secondary was easy, because Dosan is as Badger secondary as it gets. He liked coding and got genius-level good at it, shows up for his friends when things get rough (Chulsan’s virus debacle), and conveys his affection through diligent work (fixing the bug in their hackathon product and creating an entire app for Dalmi).
Most importantly, he cares a lot about his “integrity of method.” Dosan won a major math competition as a middle schooler competing against high schoolers, but he always felt that he didn’t deserve the win because he accidentally saw the start of a fellow competitor’s solution for a problem he was stuck on and that helped him solve the problem. Others have noted that the first line of someone else’s solution isn’t enough for the average person to solve a math competition problem--you still have to be an incredible mathematician to do that. And who’s to say that Dosan wouldn’t have solved the math problem himself eventually, or that he would’ve won with the other problems he’d already solved correctly? But Dosan doesn’t care about that, because he thinks there’s a proper way to win and he didn’t do it.
(Side note, but Dosan and I have the same sorting! I almost never see Bird Badgers in media so this was fun.)
3) Second female lead, Won Injae
The heart rendering thing about Injae is that she’s a Loyalist primary like her sister Dalmi, but while Dalmi’s primary shines with happy fulfillment, Injae’s not doing great and probably hasn’t been doing great since their parents’ divorce.
Dalmi is healthy and happy because, while she evidently values herself a lot, she also has people around her to dote on--namely, her grandmother, father, and Dosan. (She even doted on Dosan when he didn’t exist as a real person to her!) We see by the show’s ending that Injae is actually just as family-oriented as Dalmi, but she hasn’t had any family to orient herself toward for a long time. Injae tells Dalmi that going with their mother when she remarried a wealthy man would’ve been the smarter move, yet Injae views their mother’s “money obsession” with contempt. She doesn’t love her patronizing stepdad or unintelligent stepbrother either, and since she doesn’t have friends (just colleagues), Injae ends up being lost for a long time.
I thought Injae might be a Snake primary like her sister, but after thinking more I decided that she’s a Badger primary. Kind of an unexpected example of one, considering how cold she is. But I noticed that her salvation comes in the form of reconnecting with her family--Dalmi, their mother, and their grandmother--and choosing to go back to her original surname, “Seo of the Dalseong Seo clan.” (Side note: I don’t even understand Loyalist primaries all that well but that scene made me bawl!!)
While Dalmi is loyal to her inner circle individually, Injae values it for being her small community. She is also loyal to certain ways of living--which is why she chose to go with her mother’s money, which would allow her to continue attending private school and school trips, rather than her father’s uncertain entrepreneurship (as Dalmi does). Injae is very self-focused, but it doesn’t come from a place of wanting to survive as herself. She wants to prove that she can win when she plays by the start-up community’s rules.
Like Dalmi, Injae’s secondary was difficult for me to figure out, but in reverse. Where Dalmi is an obvious hard driver, Injae moves like a silent knife. She doesn’t have issues with lying to get what she wants, as with her application to Sandbox. She also leads her start-up team with quiet authority that’s based on her previous CEO experience and socializes with strangers easily. Ultimately, I think she’s a Bird secondary. Injae relies a lot on her prior knowledge and has the detached propensity to think of everything (including people) as discrete tools. She’s also not great at thinking beyond her established framework, which alarms her mentor when she’s so blasé about being egged by laborers that her startup’s software would displace. Injae has no interest in building communities, inspiring others, or shifting her stance to new opportunities. Girl’s got no friends or improv skills! But she’s very invested in being an excellent CEO, and knows what tools she needs for that, as well as how to use them.
4) Second male lead, Han Jipyeong
Originally posted by kimkim-jipy
Ahh...Jipyeong. He reminds me of some of the kids I’ve tutored. But moving on:
His primary was also hard to discern, but for him it’s because he’s so burnt. Jipyeong doesn’t know what he wants for like two-thirds of the show and even then it takes him another few episodes to really figure things out.
But like Injae, his salvation comes in the form of being together with family. Jipyeong initially gets involved with Dalmi’s start-up because he wants to repay her grandmother, and then he continues his involvement because he develops a crush on Dalmi. That looks Snake-y, but when I look at his happiest moments, it’s when he’s held gently within a group, whether that’s when he’s playing Go-Stop with the Samsan Tech crew or making jeon with Dalmi’s family. When I look at what he longs for, it’s also community. There’s a scene where the young Jipyeong looks longingly at a TV showing a happy family. I think Dalmi’s grandmother had such a strong effect on him because her actions of kindness toward him, a literal stranger, are what he wishes he could do but can’t. Eventually, we see him finally getting to that point himself, when he agrees to invest in a start-up with little profit potential but large probable social impact for orphans like himself. Jipyeong looks his happiest when he’s with a family or helping a community--that feels like a Badger primary to me.
His secondary is really easy, though. Jipyeong is an obvious Lion secondary: happiest when doling out blunt truths, willing to run over social conventions to get what he wants, and almost pugnaciously earnest. I suspect this secondary is what his character so appealing to audiences as a love interest--it’s far flashier than Dosan’s Badger secondary, although in my opinion it’s not nearly as effective in giving Dalmi what she needs/wants. (I’m also inured by the fact that my mom has a lot of Lion secondary traits and I know their downsides firsthand.)
Summary:
Seo Dalmi: Snake/Badger Nam Dosan: Bird/Badger Won Injae: Badger/Bird Han Jipyeong: Badger/Lion
