The thing that stuck with people about My Name (Korean: 마이 네임, Mai Neim) wasn’t the plot — it was watching Han So-hee (한소희) throw and take punches like she meant it. The 2021 South Korean action-noir landed on Netflix on October 15, 2021, ran eight episodes under director Kim Jin-min (of Extracurricular), and quietly became one of the year’s most-watched non-English titles on the platform. More to the point, it flipped Han So-hee from romance-drama lead to genuine action lead almost overnight. Cold, wet, mean: it belongs to the lineage of Korean revenge cinema, and it’s one of the most physical entries the small screen has produced lately.
What It Is and Where to Watch
It’s a Netflix Original, so it streams everywhere Netflix operates, with subtitles and dubs across plenty of languages. Eight roughly hour-long episodes make it a true one-weekend binge. Fair warning on tone: this is mature-rated, the violence is close-up and bruising, and the hand-to-hand choreography plays more like a film than a cozy weeknight K-drama.
The Premise (No Big Spoilers)
Yoon Ji-woo is a teenager whose whole world is her father. He’s killed outside their home, the police give her nothing, and the grief hardens into a single objective. So she goes to Choi Mu-jin (최무진) — the drug-ring boss her father once worked under — and asks to be made strong enough to find the man who did it. He trains her, hollows her out, and slips her into the police force as a mole under a new name, Oh Hye-jin. What follows is a knot that keeps tightening: loyalty, suspicion, the truth she’s chasing and the one she’s standing on. The real engine is a question — the closer Ji-woo gets to an answer, the less sure she is about whose side she’s actually on. Watching that question turn is the whole pleasure, so the reveals stay sealed here.
Lead Cast and Characters
Han So-hee (한소희) carries it as Yoon Ji-woo / Oh Hye-jin (윤지우 / 오혜진), and she trained for months to do most of the brutal fight work herself — it shows. Park Hee-soon (박희순) is the find here: his crime boss Choi Mu-jin (최무진) is unreadable and oddly gentle, the kind of mentor whose kindness always comes with an invoice attached. Ahn Bo-hyun (안보현) plays detective Jeon Pil-do (전필도), Hye-jin’s by-the-book partner on narcotics and the conscience of the thing. Rounding it out: Kim Sang-ho (김상호) as dogged unit chief Cha Gi-ho (차기호), and Lee Hak-joo (이학주) as Jung Tae-ju (정태주), Mu-jin’s volatile right hand.
Why It Matters and How It Was Received
My Name shared its release year with Squid Game, and it caught the same global tailwind into the Netflix Top 10 across dozens of countries. The fight scenes got the loudest praise, along with Han So-hee’s near-wordless, all-physical performance — but Park Hee-soon is the one critics kept circling back to, one of the most quietly menacing antagonists Korean TV has served up in a while. It carries a solid IMDb score and tends to get recommended as the entry point for viewers who’d rather have Korean action than Korean rom-com. A caveat, stated plainly: this is not a comfort watch. The bleakness and the forward drive are the point.
Real Filming Locations in Busan
Nearly the whole shoot happened in and around Busan (부산), and especially the harbor district of Yeongdo-gu (영도구), which is where the show gets its rusted, sea-fog look. A few of the real spots fans can actually walk:
- Kangkangee Arts Village (깡깡이마을) in Yeongdo, a historic ship-repair quarter named for the clang of hammers on hulls, stood in for the gang’s gritty home turf.
- Busandaegyo Bridge (부산대교) in Yeongdo features in pivotal scenes between the protagonist and her adversaries.
- Busan Coast Guard / Maritime Police complex (부산해양경찰청) by the water doubled for the seaside police station.
- Haedong Yonggungsa Temple (해동용궁사) in Gijang, a seaside temple with roots in the Goryeo era, was chosen for scenes echoing the show’s theme that revenge comes full circle.
Line them up and you’ve got an easy Yeongdo-and-coast day for fans — with Haedong Yonggungsa worth the trip on its own merits, drama or no drama. (Filming-location details per the Korea Tourism Organization’s VisitKorea guide.)
Korean Food in the Show
Don’t come to My Name for the meals — it’s a lean, violent thriller, not the kind of series that pauses for a long table scene, and there’s no signature dish it’s remembered for. No point inventing one. That said, if you want to eat the city it’s set in, Busan obliges: the harbor neighborhoods near these locations are stacked with fresh seafood, dwaeji-gukbap (the pork-and-rice soup that’s a Busan signature), and milmyeon cold noodles.
Should You Watch It?
For a short, intense, character-first revenge story — sharp action, and the role that made Han So-hee an action lead — yes, easily. Just walk in expecting noir, not romance, and it gives you exactly what it says it will.
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