SerpApi.Org
Choi Hoon
The author is a professor at Hallym University.
Last Friday evening, I met friends for drinks. Conversations among men in their 50s rarely produce great revelations, but the undisputed topic of the night was the SBS drama "Agent Kim Reactivated."
The series follows an ordinary office manager who once served as a special agent. After his daughter is kidnapped, he reunites with former comrades to rescue her. The premise is familiar: A man who has hidden his extraordinary past is forced by circumstance to confront villains and reclaim his former identity. Yet the show’s enormous popularity raises a question. Why are viewers, particularly middle-aged ones, so captivated by the protagonist?
Developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson described human life as unfolding through eight stages and argued that the defining task of middle age is generativity. Generativity refers to the desire to fulfill responsibilities to one’s family and the next generation and to leave something meaningful behind.
In reality, however, parents’ sacrifices are often taken for granted. Their efforts can become so routine that they pass unnoticed. Many middle-aged viewers may see themselves in the protagonist, who risks everything to save a daughter who had previously dismissed him. Beneath the action sequences lies a story about devotion that is rarely acknowledged.
What is striking is that the show has also attracted younger audiences. Young people tend to question established authority, but they also instinctively seek a secure base that can protect them in moments of crisis. For a generation that often feels insufficiently supported by both family and society, that longing may be especially strong.
Perhaps younger viewers see in Mr. Kim and his friends the image of a genuine adult. The men place themselves in danger without hesitation, abandoning everything else to protect a child. Their actions suggest a kind of maturity that many people feel is missing from contemporary society.
Popular entertainment often serves as a mirror reflecting the desires of its era more clearly than anything else. The middle-aged men in glasses who ended a Friday night by saying, “Let’s go watch ‘Agent Kim Reactivated,’” and the exhausted young workers who return home from part-time jobs and turn on the drama may appear to have little in common.
Yet both groups could be responding to the same impulse: a longing for adults who are willing to take responsibility for others and stand firm when it matters most.
