Strong Girl Bong-soon: What happens to Bong-soon’s superhuman strength?

Summary:

• Bong-soon loses her powers temporarily after a kidnapper tricks her into accidentally hurting an innocent. This breaks the condition that she cannot use her powers to harm an innocent, so she loses her powers.
• Bong-soon later regains her powers when she prays to her ancestors to give them back. She wanted to use them to save lives.

Strong Girl Bong-soon is a K-drama that’s really close to my heart, as it breaks an important stereotype about female characters across popular media.

The protagonist, Do Bong-soon, is a young woman with hereditary superhuman strength who wants to help people secretly with her powers. She is not portrayed as a damsel in distress heroine who is saved by her male partner.

Instead, Bong-soon works as a bodyguard for Min-hyuk, the male lead in the series. She is the one who saves him multiple times. The series has a strong message about women’s empowerment that makes it different from other K-dramas.

However, Bong-soon’s journey is not as flowery as it seems. She has to prove herself and deal with a lot of issues throughout the show. The main premise features Bong-soon going after a kidnapper who has been picking up girls in her town.

In this article, we’ll talk about how the kidnapper hurts Bong-soon and how she gets herself out of it. So, in case you’ve not finished watching the series, this is your hint to go back to binging the episodes if you don’t want spoilers. 

Does Bong Soon lose her powers?

Bong-soon loses her powers temporarily in Strong Girl Bong-soon. She loses them after accidentally hurting an innocent with her powers, as it was a condition for losing them.

As explained in the show, Bong-soon could keep her powers as long as she did not use them for unfair things. She could not use her powers to do anything wrong.

When Bong-soon finds out that women are being kidnapped in her city, she is determined to save them and put an end to the criminal. The kidnapper also attacks her best friend, making it personal for Bong-soon.

Bong-soon goes after the criminal as she always wanted to be a vigilante and use her strength to save people, albeit secretly. However, the kidnapped finds out that Bong-soon will lose her powers if she uses them to hurt an innocent and uses this condition to his benefit.

The kidnapper tricks Bong-soon into using them to hurt an innocent. She accidentally hurts an innocent, leading to her losing her powers.

For a while, Bong-soon feels helpless without her immense strength. However, her downfall is short-lived.

Does Bong-soon regain her powers?

Bong-soon regains her powers when she prays to her ancestors to return them to her in order to save Min-hyuk’s life before a major bomb blast. Her powers come back as she wants to do something selfless with them.

After Bong-soon loses her powers, she takes a while to adjust to not being different. Her mother gives her a TED talk about the same, where she says she will be fine even if she is feeling empty without her powers now.

But unlike her mother, Bong-soon did not lose her powers for using them unfairly. So, it was clear that she would get back her powers sometime.

Meanwhile, the kidnapper returns to target Min-hyuk. He hijacks the Ainsoft headquarters and threatens Min-hyuk to find him before he blows up the building in 15 minutes.

He straps the bomb to Bong-soon’s body and locks her up on the roof. He reminds her that she is no longer the superhero and savior but another damsel in distress.

Although Min-hyuk finds Bong-soon on the roof, he is unable to break the door and reach her. Bong-soon feels helpless without her strength and prays to her ancestors to return the power so that she can save everyone’s lives.

I found the moment quite comical. Bong-soon gets her powers back out of nowhere just by praying and then rips off the bomb and throws it into the sky. The bomb explodes in the air as though it were a firework or something.

It’s strange how a bomb that was supposed to destroy a building suddenly became fireworks, but we move. After all, the superhero Bong-soon is back to breaking stereotypes about the portrayal of a female character as a damsel in distress in popular media.

About Strong Girl Nam-soon

 

Strong Girl Nam-soon is a 2023 South Korean television series starring Lee Yoo-mi in the title role, along with Kim Jung-eun, Kim Hae-sook, Ong Seong-wu, and Byeon Woo-Seok. The series serves as a spin-off to the 2017 series Strong Girl Bong-soon. It aired on JTBC from October 7 to November 26, 2023, every Saturday and Sunday at 22:30 (KST) time slot. It is also available for streaming on Netflix in selected regions.

 

The series received audience acclaim, with its final episode recording 10.42% in nationwide ratings.