Save the Last Dance for Me (TV series)

Save the Last Dance for Me

Promotional poster
Also known as The Last Dance is With Me
Genre Drama, Romance
Written by Ma Jin-won
Jo Yoon-young
Son Hwang-won
Directed by Lee Seung-ryul
Starring Eugene
Ji Sung
Ryu Soo-young
Lee Bo-young
Composer(s) Edward Chun
Country of origin South Korea
Original language(s) Korean
No. of episodes 20
Production
Executive producer(s) Huh Woong
Producer(s) Park Young-soo
Editor(s) Kim Mi-kyung
Running time 60 minutes
Saturdays and Sundays at 21:45
Release
Original network Seoul Broadcasting System
Original release October 23, 2004 (2004-10-23) – January 2, 2005 (2005-01-02)
Chronology
Preceded by Magic
Followed by Spring Day
External links
Website

Save the Last Dance for Me (Hangul: 마지막 춤은 나와 함께; RR: Majimak Chumeun Nawa Hamkke) is a 20-episode South Korean television series that aired on SBS from October 23, 2004 to January 2, 2005 on Saturdays and Sundays at 21:45. Starring Eugene,[1] Ji Sung, Ryu Soo-young and Lee Bo-young. The drama revolves around two lovers who don't let amnesia get in the way of their romance.

Plot

Hyun-woo (Ji Sung) is the reluctant heir to his father's chemical company and engaged to be married to Soo-jin (Lee Bo-young). Eun-soo (Eugene) lives a simple life, running a bed and breakfast with her elderly father. Their paths cross one fateful night when, after a failed attempt on his life, Hyun-woo loses his memory in a car accident. Discovered on the roadside by Eun-soo and her father, they take him in, nursing him back to health. Over the course of his recovery, Eun-soo and Hyun-woo (whom she has named "Baek Chang-ho") fall in love.

On the day of their engagement, Eun-soo's father passes away. Following another attempt on Hyun-woo's life and a resulting accident, Hyun-woo regains his memory but forgets the year he spent with Eun-soo and leaves her to seek out his past life.

Eun-soo, in her determination to find her lost love, travels to the city where she meets Hyun-woo, who, in turn, gradually falls in love with her again. A close confidant of Hyun-woo, Tae-min is revealed as a traitor seeking to gain control of Hyun-woo's company. Tae-min is ultimately exposed and Hyun-woo regains ownership of the company.

In a final, desperate attempt to get revenge on Hyun-woo, Tae-min tries to run him over, but instead of Hyun-woo, Eun-soo shows up and this accident paralyzes her from waist down. Refusing to be a burden to Hyun-woo, Eun-soo disappears to work as a teacher at a home for physically challenged children, until after a year of searching, Hyun-woo sees a familiar drawing, and the lovers reunite. The final credits show Eun-soo learning to walk again with Hyun-woo's assistance.

Synopsis

The drama starts with a young woman named Ji Eun-soo who lives with her father in their villa called 'Dreaming Forest'. One day while Eun-soo was cleaning up the visitor's room, she found a passport belonging to a newlywed couple who had left early that morning for the airport. She rushes to the airport with the passport in hand, hoping to catch up with them. Meanwhile, Kang Hyung Woo, heir to a big, rich company, was on a return flight to Korea that very day, and heard that his father was sick in the hospital. As the plane lands, Hyun-woo sees a newscast of his father looking healthy, and quickly realizes that he has been tricked. As soon as he gets off the plane, he tries to escape the pursuers his father had sent. As Hyun-woo was running away, he bumped into Eun-soo but continues without a word of apology and it was the pursuers who stopped to help her up. Their leader, Jung Tae-min, happens to be a friend and lawyer to Hyun-woo's family. Eun-soo didn't see Hyun-woo's face, and she gets up feeling flustered, and accepted the apology from those who were chasing after him.

Having escaped from Tae-min, Hyun-woo meets up with a good friend and soon-to-be fiancee Soo-jin, a sculptor at her studio but because of that, he finally got caught by Tae-min , who now takes him to see his father, Mr. Kang. He realizes that the real reason why he was tricked into coming back to Korea was because his father wanted him to marry Soo-jin as soon as possible as she was the daughter of an important business partner. Hyun-woo, who had no interest in marriage refuses but promises Soo-jin that on reaching his dream of becoming a photographer, he would return from America to marry her. And he gives her a bracelet that he bought in Africa a while back.

After a welcome party, Mr. Kang and Hyun-woo get into a fight, causing Hyun-woo to run away. In his desperatation to get away from his father, Hyun-woo stops at a shop to take out money from the ATM. As he was waiting for his money, he overheard a man behind him on a phone desperately looking for a ride somewhere. Hyun-woo then offered to help him, not realizing that it was ploy to take his life.

As they drive deep into the countryside, the stranger suddenly takes out a pocketknife, forcing Hyun-woo to pull over. The two of them engage in a fight and in the end, Hyun-woo got stabbed in the stomach and thrown off the side of the road. The stranger quickly took his watch and wallet and fled the crime scene only to get into a car accident that killed him instantly. Because his body was found with Hyun-woo's watch and wallet, Hyun-woo's family quickly accepts the fact that their son was indeed dead.

Meanwhile, Eun-soo and her father, who were driving back from hospital, nearly crash into a badly injured Hyun-woo. The two of them quickly take Hyun-woo to the nearest hospital - saving his life - only to find that Hyun-woo has lost his memory. With no means of identification or family contact, Hyun-woo has no choice but to live with Eun-soo and her father, who hesitantly accepted him into the family.

For two years, Hyun-woo went by the name 'Baek Chang-ho', which was given to him by his caregivers. During that time, Eun-soo and 'Chang-ho' fall in love and to prove that he really loved her, he made a bird house or mail box, nailing it to a tree on top of a hill overlooking the villa with a love letter inside. Eun-soo's dad who discovers the love affair decides to step in and end it before it grows any further. He confronts 'Chang-ho' telling him that one day he will regain his memory and in the end it'll be his daughter, Eun-soo, who will be hurt. On realizing this, 'Chang-ho' lies to Eun-soo, telling her that he doesn't want to live with them anymore and that he wants to go to the city to make money to live on his own. This angers Eun-soo who, by now, was madly in love with him.

As 'Chang-ho' was alighting from a bus, debt collectors come to the villa to get the money that Eun-soo and her father owed them. In an attempt to help her father from being harassed by the debt collectors, Eun-soo throws herself into the fight and ends up getting injured. Luckily, 'Chang-ho' returns just in time to save them but Eun-soo's father falls unconscious and they rush him to the hospital and where Eun-soo finds out that her father's illness is getting worse. 'Chang-ho' then tells Eun-soo that he'll never leave her side again. Eun-soo asks him why he returned when he left willingly and he explains that he had forgotten the letters that Eun-soo gave him. Eun-soo realizes that 'Chang-ho' does love her and finds out from her father that it was he who told 'Chang-ho' to leave.

After this incident, 'Chang-ho' decides that he'll stay with them in their villa forever and protect them. One night as Eun-soo and 'Chang-ho' sat under the tree where their love mailbox is, he gave her a couple necklace saying that there is a curse on it, whoever is the first one to take it off will obey the other one forever no matter how far away that person is and the only way to get rid of it was to read the piece of paper inside the locket to each other. 'Chang-ho' takes it out and reads "even if I can't get my memories [sic] back, no, even if I remember and return to the unfamiliar reality, I will love you forever. This I promise you." They both kiss and thereafter get engaged shortly before the death of Eun-soo's father.

Meanwhile, back in Seoul, Tae-min was asked to go to 'Dreaming Forest', the villa that Eun-soo resides in. Mr. Kang wanted buy their property since it was the last one in the area that had to cleared before they could execute one of their construction projects. Tae-min arrives and finds that Hyun-woo aka 'Chang-ho' had been living there for the past two years and that he did not recognise him either. At this point, it is revealed that it was Tae-min who had sent the villain in the first place to get rid of Hyun-woo so he could inherit the company since he, Tae-min, was almost like a second son to Mr. Kang. After returning to Seoul, Tae-min hired goons to kidnap Hyun-woo and kill him, but fails again. Whilst escaping from his would-be killers, Hyun-woo regains his memory and quickly returns to Seoul, shocking everybody at home, including Tae-min.

Hyun-woo was taken to the hospital where Soo-jin watched over him. She notices that Hyun-woo was wearing a necklace and took it off. When she opens the locket and reads it, she realizes that Hyun-woo must have loved a woman before coming back home and hides it hoping that he would not remember that woman again. What she had hoped for came true because Hyun-woo had no recall of anything that happened in the past two years since he went missing.

Later that night, when 'Chang-ho' didn't return, it struck Eun-soo that 'Chang-ho' had probably regained his memory and had returned to his former life. Sad and depressed, Eun-soo's friend Jang Mi comes to comfort her at the villa and finds that her throwing away every memory of 'Chang-ho', burning every picture she has of him. Jang Mi, who has never seen 'Chang-ho', tells Eun-soo that she forget about him if she moves to the city with her - not knowing that 'Chang-ho' is Hyun-woo, the director of the company where Jang Mi works.

Eun-soo moves to the city and tries to get over 'Chang-ho'. Jang Mi also helps by trying to hook her up with one of her co-workers. Eun-soo mistook Tae-min as the co-worker that Jang Mi had hooked her up with and tries to reason with him only to find that he wasn't the guy. She befriends Tae-min in the process who later helps her to get a job at Hyun-woo's company.

One day, as Eun-soo was on her way to visit Jang Mi at work, she notices Hyun-woo who looked a lot like 'Chang-ho'. She gives chase and throws herself in front of Hyun-woo's car and telling him that he is 'Chang-ho', her lover, the one she had been searching for months. Hyun-woo tells her that he is not 'Chang-ho' which angers her as she doesn't understand why 'Chang-ho' would suddenly seem like a stranger. She slaps him causing him to misunderstand her. Thinking that she is a madwoman, he drives off as a security guard comes and holds Eun-soo back.

Eun-soo tells Jang Mi that 'Chang-ho' is Hyun-woo, and Jang Mi realizes that it might be impossible for Eun-soo to get him back as he was soon to get engaged to Soo-jin, his former lover. Depressed and sad, the beautiful and sweet Eun-soo meets with Tae-min, by chance, a couple of times, causing him to fall in love with her.

As Eun-soo continues working in the company, most of the female staff grow to hate her because of the attention she gets from male co-worker, Park Ho Jin, the one whom Jang Mi had tried earlier to hook her up with and not to mention Tae-min, who was the general manager of the company. Eun-soo was always given the heavy duty assignments and as she worked late one night and encounters an injured Hyun-woo who also stayed back late taking inventory. Hyun-woo misunderstands her again thinking that Eun-soo probably wants something from him but she tells him that she just wants to work in the company forever.

One day Eun-soo and her co-workers get together to hike towards a mountain for a one-day break. One of the company cars had broken down and one person had to stay behind. All the girls, especially the leader of the group want it to be Eun-soo and she stays back. Hyun-woo, who was earlier invited on the trip meets up with the group and asked if they could use his car. Park Ho Jin aka Mr. Park states that Eun-soo was squeezed out so she could pair up with Hyun-woo. Jang Mi then takes the chance to push Eun-soo into the car pushing the rest into the other two cars to everybody's displeasure.

On the ride to the mountain, Eun-soo and Hyun-woo don't talk much because of their earlier misunderstandings although she tries to break the ice by offering him some kim-bap (Korean sushi), which he promptly rejects. When they make it to the mountain, they immediately start off with a hike. The leader of the group who is not a nature girl climbs with heels and sprains her ankle. Eun-soo who has lived in the countryside all her life quickly solves the little ordeal and they all quickly abandon the trip. Hyun-woo begins to see Eun-soo differently and he even starts liking her.

Late that night as everybody was inside drinking and eating, Hyun-woo goes outside to make a phone call, Jang Mi seizes this chance to bring Eun-soo and Hyun-woo together. She tricks Eun-soo to go outside and then quickly runs back inside saying she needed to use the bathroom. As Eun-soo waited for Jang Mi she notices a poor man standing by the street trying to sell roasted sweet potatoes. She watches as the man makes a call home lying to his wife that business was going great while, in fact, was he was not selling at all. Feeling sorry for the man, she attempts buy all of them only to find that she didn't have enough money on her. Hyun-woo, who witnessed everything, buys them and then asks why she bought it all. She replies that she wanted the man to return to his family as quickly as possible because you never know when your loved one will disappear. Hyun-woo then realizes that maybe Eun-soo wasn't as bad as he had thought she was.

They meet again by a lake at night where they engage in another conversation where Eun-soo lies to Hyun-woo that 'Chang-ho' has died causing her to go up in tears where she walks away from him before he could notice. She gets drunk and coincidentally runs into Hyun-woo, who takes her back to his room. As he watches her sleep, he notices the necklace that she wore. He opens it and reads the paper inside, and although not recognizing it, he felt that something was odd about the necklace.

The following day, as they returned to the city, Hyun-woo's opinion of Eun-soo changes dramatically. Days go by and Soo-jin, his fiancee discovers that Hyun-woo has changed and noticed that he's taken a liking to Eun-soo. She realizes that Hyun-woo may have feelings towards her and this proved to be true one day at a party. Two friends of Soo-jin find out that Eun-soo is the girl who is causing Hyun-woo to stray and push her into a table holding an ice sculpture that nearly hits her before Hyun-woo rescues her. Hyun-woo then quickly drags Eun-soo out of the party.

As Soo-jin watches them go out she feels hopelessly lost and then notices something glimmer on the floor, which turned out to be the same necklace that she had found on Hyun-woo at the hospital. Because she still has that particular necklace, she realizes that the necklace belonged to Eun-soo.

Hyun-woo and Eun-soo make it outside where he tells her that her plan of looking so helpless so as to make him sympathetic towards her and fall in love with her had worked. Eun-soo who was really hurt by these words and tells him that she doesn't need his sympathy and would disappear from his life forever. With this Hyun-woo becomes confused and realizes his true feelings for her. He goes to look for her and tell her that he doesn't want her to leave and that he loves her.

The relationship starts but no one agrees to the idea as everybody wanted Hyun-woo to marry Soo-jin. Soo-jin on the other hand falls into a deep depression to the point where she attempted suicide but luckily was saved at the last moment and taken to hospital. This angers Soo-jin's parents and causes a rift between the Joons and the Kangs. Eun-soo knows that it's her fault and after being summoned to Mr. Kang's office, she tells him that she'll leave Hyun-woo. However, Mr. Kang went ahead to lie to Hyun-woo, telling him that she was a bad woman who manipulated them for money. Eun-soo later meets Hyun-woo for the last time on a date and quietly leaves.

Soon thereafter Mr. Kang gets sick and is taken to the hospital after Tae-min reveals to Mr. Kang that he is the son of a man that Mr. Kang had betrayed. After this, a problem arose in the company causing Hyun-woo to lose his position as director - Tae-min takes the position and pushes him aside.

Hyun-woo knows that in order for him to get the company back he has to find a shareholder of company's stock with Soo-jin's help in order to gain the company back. The shareholder then tells Hyun-woo that he has to prove himself before he can help him, leaving Hyun-woo hopeless. As they leave, Hyun-woo notices that Eun-soo was on a date with Tae-min. He goes to question Eun-soo as to why she would do this. She lies to him and telling him that she was only after his money. He tells her that he loved her and would have given her as much money as he would but she shakes him off saying that it's over between them, leaving him heartbroken.

As the engagement date of Hyun-woo and Soo-jin draws closer, Hyun-woo begins having dreams of the past. He would see the night where he and Eun-soo made a pact under the tree but had no idea that the girl in his dream is actually Eun-soo. He questions his family whether he had on a necklace or a ring on him when he returned but his mother replied with no. When the engagement party day came, Eun-soo returned to her villa and Hyun-woo reluctantly goes to the party with the vision of him and the girl getting clearer.

Soo-jin and her mother also make their way to the party but Soo-jin forgets her box of jewelry she was to wear at the party and her mother insists that she goes to get it. Instead of grabbing the box of the engagement jewelry, she grabs the box that has Hyun-woo's necklace in it. Hyun-woo goes to see Soo-jin in her room where she is preparing for the party and she tells him to wait for her while she goes off to attend something. Hyun-woo sits there obediently and hears a knock at the door. It was a worker who brought the box of jewelry sent by Soo-jin's mother. Hyun-woo takes the box and puts it on the side of the counter and instantly gets a phone call from his mother telling him to come out to greet visitors. He complies and gets up to leave but accidentally knocks over the box of jewelry. As he quickly picks up the jewelry, he notices a particular necklace and as he holds it up, memories of him with Eun-soo fill his mind. Quickly opening up the locket, he finds the piece of paper that was so familiar to him and realizes that Eun-soo was the girl of his dreams and that he was 'Baek Chang-ho'. At that moment, Soo-jin he enters the room and was confronted by a furious Hyun-woo. Soo-jin admitted that it was she who hid the necklace and that Eun-soo was the girl of his past. Hyun-woo walks out and goes to look for Eun-soo.

When Hyun-woo gets to Dreaming Forest Villa, he finds that Eun-soo had taken some customers to the airport so he devises a plan with an aunt who had lived with Eun-soo and her father when Eun-soo's father became ill. Eun-soo returns from the airport and finds a note saying that her aunt had left a surprise by the mailbox. She quickly runs to the mailbox to see what it was only to find the letters that she had written to Hyun-woo after he went missing. Sadly she takes out the letters and turns around to leave only to be stopped by a voice asking her if she had found the gift. She turns around to find Hyun-woo who was smiling back at her. At first she pretends to be hateful until he mentions to her about the curse of the necklace. Quickly turning around she finds that he was also wearing the necklace. Hyun-woo tells her that he finally remembers, causing her to go up in tears. He promises to never leave Eun-soo's side ever again and after staying with Eun-soo at the villa for a couple of days he finally remembered that Tae-min had found Hyun-woo when he was still 'Chang-ho' at the villa. When he makes it back to the city with Eun-soo, he finds out that Tae-min was the one who caused everything and the reason for it was revenge for Tae-min's parents. When Tae-min was still a boy, Mr. Kang had deceived his parents causing them to go bankrupt, ending in suicide and leaving Tae-min an orphan. But even after this discovery, he wouldn't be able to get the company back, so they created a new item in Hyun-woo's own small company which rose above other companies. In the end, all the shareholders return to help Hyun-woo and giving him back his position as director. Tae-min was also found out to have been committing fraud with company shares but he escapes, becoming a fugitive.

A friend of Tae-min's who had been helping him since the beginning goes to Eun-soo to ask her to talk Tae-min into turning himself in because he doesn't want to see look like a total wreck. Eun-soo agrees and goes to the meeting place, where the friend was supposed to initially take Hyun-woo so she could talk to Tae-min. Tae-min, who was hiding in the dark with his car was getting ready to run Hyun-woo over but doesn't know that the person walking towards him was Eun-soo. He turns on his car and pushes it at full speed, running her over and causing her to be paralyzed from waist down. Tae-min finally turns himself in after hurting Eun-soo.

Eun-soo on the other hand decides to disappear forever because she doesn't want to become a burden to Hyun-woo. A year passes by and there is no trace of Eun-soo anywhere. Hyun-woo's father wants to send him to America to manage their new company there, but Hyun-woo doesn't want to go until he finds Eun-soo. By now everything has calmed down and the rift between Soo-jin's and Hyun-woo's family is over. Soo-jin had moved on and even asked Hyun-woo to go to her gallery where she's hosting an art auction and donating the proceeds to disabled children. He goes to the gallery, looks at all the art and notices a particular piece where disabled children had gathered. Curious, he goes to take a closer look and sees a picture of Dreaming Forest Villa with a couple standing in front of it.

Eun-soo had taken up a job as a teacher of disabled children in the countryside. While waiting for the children to come back from the city where they had gone to see their painting, there was a knock on a door. Upon opening it, a limousine was waiting outside with a chauffeur saying that there was a problem with the van full of kids. Eun-soo, who was concerned for the kids immediately went with the driver. But they never reached the van full of kids. The driver had taken her back to Dreaming Forest where a ramp was nicely made leading up to the porch of the villa. The driver leaves and Eun-soo watches as Christmas lights lit up the whole house and Hyun-woo walks out of the villa. She asks him to don't feel sympathy towards her, only to get a scolding from Hyun-woo saying that even if she were disabled, nothing was going to stop him from loving her. The two of them hug each other and credits roll as Eun-soo is slowly able to walk again on crutches as Hyun-woo guides her.

Cast

Main characters

Eugene as Ji Eun-soo
Eun-soo falls in love with Hyun-woo while helping him recover his memory and they were engaged to be married before he vanishes. She searches for him and works in his company, determined to try to get him to remember the time he spent with her.
Ji Sung as Kang Hyun-woo
Hyun-woo is the heir to a large Korean conglomerate. He loses his memory after a failed attempt on his life by Tae-min, a rival who wants control of the company. He is affectionately called "Baek Chang-ho" by Eun-soo when he could not recall his name.
Ryu Soo-young as Jung Tae-min
Tae-min is a confidant of Hyun-woo's father. He is loyal to the family and is a hardworking guy but there's more to him than meets the eye. Every decision he makes is a ploy to deceive Hyun-woo's family in order to take control of the company. He falls in love with Eun-soo in the middle of the drama.
Lee Bo-young as Yoon Soo-jin
Soo-jin was Hyun-woo's fiancee-to-be. Even after the "death" of Hyun-woo, she's still devoted to him and waited for his return. At first she was nice and caring, until Eun-soo steps into the picture which drove Soo-jin to the point where she tries to commit suicide.

Supporting characters

International Broadcast

This programme was aired on ABS-CBN and also Studio 23 in the Philippines in the year 2005.

This programme was aired on Channel 3 in Thailand in the year 2008.[2]

Remakes

There are three unofficial remakes: Indonesia's Aku Bukan Untukmu ("I'm not for you") in 2005; Taiwan's The Prince Who Turns into a Frog in 2005; and Mainland China's Waking Love Up in 2015.

References

  1. ↑ Suh, Jung-bo (31 December 2004). "Singer and Actress Eugene's Wishes for the Year of the Rooster". The Dong-a Ilbo. Retrieved 2013-03-24.
  2. ↑ "Save the Last Dance for Me - ปลายฝัน..รักนั้นคือเธอ". blike.net (in Thai). Retrieved 2015-11-14.
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