Tempest, on Hulu

Seo Mun-ju sort of wants to be like Margaret Chase Smith or Mary Bono, but instead of succeeding her late husband Jang Jun-ik in office, she intends to replace him as a presidential candidate. It will be rather tricky, because he represented the hawkish party, while she was appointed UN Ambassador by the incumbent president, the standard bearer of the dovish party. Fortunately, she has the backing of Jang’s powerbroker mother, but the services of her mysterious bodyguard will be even more important in the political K-drama Tempest, written by Jeong Seo-kyeong, which premieres Wednesday on Hulu.

Apparently, Seo and Jang were not like Mary Matalin and James Carver. They could not dismiss their political differences so easily. Frankly, they never really got along so well, but Seo had resigned herself to loyally standing by him during the upcoming campaign. That is why she resigned from her post at the UN—or maybe she just didn’t complain when Pres. Chae Kyung-sin fired her.

Regardless, she is genuinely horrified when Jang is assassinated in a spectacularly public fashion. Coincidentally, it happened just as Jang adopted a more conciliatory tone towards reunification. Even more disconcerting, he seemed to be expecting it. Consequently, he secretly transferred his family’s entire fortune to her. Seo wants to know why Jang was killed and her candidacy obviously shakes up the establishment and foreign powers—judging from all the work it generates for Baek San-ho.

Baek, formerly of the U.S. Special Forces, now works for Valkyrie, which sounds a lot like Caddis in Butterfly. He also has ties to the North Korean underground railroad through the Catholic priest, who was also happened to be Jang’s spiritual advisor. Baek apprehended the assassin, but could not prevent his cover-up-facilitating suicide. Eventually, Seo agrees to hire him as her chief of security, but Baek has another client who wants him to protect the widow-candidate—at least for now.

Based on the first three episodes provided for review, Jeong and company clearly sympathize with the doves rather than the hawks. Yet, perhaps ironically, the series takes North Korea’s imminent collapse as a given. That seems debatable, since Kim Jong-un has become the leading supplier of arms and enslaved soldiers to Putin.

Regardless, in the world of Tempest, the question is whether the DPRK provokes the U.S. into nuking it out of existence or somehow the South manages to peacefully integrate the North. Unfortunately, Baek learns her husband’s source in the White House, Assistant Secretary of State Anderson Miller, has reason to believe the Trump-like President Houser will soon agree to the former (even though a Hawkish posture towards North Korea is embarrassingly un-Trump-ish).

Frankly, the politics are rather confused in these early episodes, perhaps because Jeong is trying to keep the intrigue murky. However, Seo’s relationships with both Jang and Baek are quite engagingly complex. In fact, Gianna Jun Ji-hyun is perfectly cast as the emotionally reserved and somewhat standoffish Seo. Likewise, Gang Dong-won is steely, but in a sensitive brooding kind of way, as Baek.

Of note for the American market, John Cho portrays Miller, but so far, his work is not very taxing. However, Spencer Garrett’s work as Houser is a ridiculous caricature. (It is worth noting Garrett also appeared in the overtly anti-American Turkish film, Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, wherein Turkish commandos hunt American military personnel as payback for the so-called “Hood Event,” in which coalition forces captured Turkish soldiers and a suspicious cache of explosives in Iraqi Kurdistan.)

So far, the primary cast-members are quite strong, but the plotting seems more connected to Jeong’s worldview than the actual state of global affairs. Director Kim Hee-won keeps a lot of balls in the air, but it cannot match the gleefully Machiavellian twists of Chief of Staff. Clearly rough around the edges, but still showing future promise, the first three episodes of Tempest start streaming Wednesday (9/10) on Hulu.