Autistic genius lawyer in Netflix K-drama makes it a global sensation – why Extraordinary Attorney Woo, starring Park Eun-bin, gets everything right
- Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a Korean drama series centred on autistic lawyer Young-woo’s life and burgeoning career, has had huge success in Korea and abroad
- A critic says it’s a hit because it takes a popular genre, puts a woman at the centre of it, and ‘presents a socially valuable character who has a disability’
Characters on the autism spectrum pop up in Korean dramas and films from time to time, but it seems very rare for those characters to be placed in the spotlight, as more often than not they occupy peripheral roles.
However, the recent series Extraordinary Attorney Woo not only challenges such notions by having a lawyer on the autism spectrum as the lead character, but it has also proved that it can hit the right note and become a sensational hit series.
The Korean legal series on Netflix revolves around a character named Woo Young-woo (Park Eun-bin), who is an autistic genius and a newbie at a top law firm.
Starting her first job after graduating top of her class from a prestigious law school, Woo tackles challenges and prejudice in and beyond the courtroom with the help of her colleagues, including paralegal Lee Jun-ho (Kang Tae-oh) and senior lawyer Jung Myung-seok (Kang Ki-young).
The 16-part series kicked off with a 0.9 per cent viewership rating on June 29, but soon became the talk of the town with its rating skyrocketing to 9.6 per cent by the time the sixth episode had aired last week.
