Awl — A labor-rights battle that turns a Seoul megastore into a crucible for conscience
Introduction
The first time I met Lee Soo-in on screen, I felt that knot-in-your-throat recognition—have you ever watched someone follow a rule so faithfully that it suddenly breaks their heart? Awl begins with a quiet man who refuses to fire people who did nothing wrong, and that refusal detonates his life in the most ordinary, fluorescent-lit place imaginable: a big-box store. The story is based on a hit webtoon drawn from a 2007 labor struggle, which means the drama’s bruises don’t feel fictional—they feel familiar in the era of mass layoffs and “temporary” contracts that never seem to end. Anchored by Ji Hyun-woo and Ahn Nae-sang, backed by a powerhouse ensemble, and told across 12 dense episodes, this is one of those rare workplace dramas that makes you feel braver about your own life by the end. It’s a fight drama, a family drama, and a conscience drama, all in one. If you’ve ever wondered where decency fits inside modern capitalism, Awl asks the question and dares to answer.
Overview
Title: Awl (송곳)
Year: 2015
Genre: Workplace drama, human drama
Main Cast: Ji Hyun-woo, Ahn Nae-sang, Kim Hee-won, Yesung, Hyun Woo, Lee Jung-eun, Kim Ga-eun, Baek Hyun-joo, Lee Bong-ryun
Episodes: 12
Runtime: 70–80 minutes per episode
Streaming Platform: Viki
Overall Story
Lee Soo-in is the kind of manager who believes rules are promises, not weapons. When his boss orders him to fire a group of “irregular” workers at Fourmis Mart, he hesitates, asks why, and then says no—the one word corporations hate more than any other. That decision costs him status and safety almost overnight. He’s reassigned, isolated, and made an example of, yet he still can’t bring himself to treat people like inventory. The tension is not just professional; it’s moral, and the camera lingers on small humiliations that add up: the cold meetings, the clipped emails, the shifts nobody wants. In a world of automated checkout lanes and polite announcements, the cruelty arrives with a smile.
The workers he refuses to discard are not slogans—they’re people we quickly come to know. Kim Jung-mi has a mother’s patience and a paycheck that can’t be late; Hwang Joon-chul is younger, bright-eyed, and already learning how fear shapes a schedule; Moon So-jin is practical and sharp, counting minutes and pennies; Han Young-sil is the veteran who has seen policies change more than people do. We hear about “irregular” contracts, see the subtle pressures of cut hours, and watch supervisors speak in euphemisms that mean exactly the opposite of what they say. The sociocultural background matters: South Korea’s retail boom thrives on precarious labor, and Awl refuses to blur that reality into drama gloss. As the layoffs rev up, everyone starts doing math that hurts—rent, tuition, winter coats. What does a rule book mean when groceries are due Friday?
Enter Goo Go-shin, a labor-rights counselor who dresses like he’s allergic to offices and talks like a man who has seen every trick in the book. He runs a small, scrappy labor law center and immediately throws cold water on fantasies of quick fixes. “You’re thinking about winning,” he tells them, “but first you have to decide not to lose yourselves.” He teaches them how to document, to vote, to speak, and—most dangerously for management—to stand together. His relationship with Soo-in is the spine of the show: the idealist who believes rules can save people meets a veteran who knows rules are often written to break them. In late-night strategy sessions, the workers turn fear into meetings and meetings into a union, one signature at a time.
Organizing is messy. Some workers join immediately; others hover at the edge, calculating risk. Management plays the greatest hits of union-busting—mysterious schedule changes, peer pressure disguised as “team spirit,” sudden evaluations that ding you for things no one ever tracked before. At home, family members ask the questions that sting: What if you’re blacklisted? What if you’re wrong? Soo-in doesn’t have an answer, only a feeling that if he obeys now, he won’t recognize himself later. Have you ever stood at that exact crossroads—safety on one side, self-respect on the other?
When the first official retaliation lands—wages delayed for union members—the floor falls out. People whisper the phrase “wrongful termination” even before anyone is fired, because everyone understands the direction of the wind. A few frightened members drop out, and the remaining workers try not to resent them. Goo Go-shin calls it normal; fear is part of the fight, not a betrayal of it. The scene aches because it’s true: solidarity is easy to applaud and hard to practice. Soo-in’s leadership shifts here—he learns that being right isn’t enough; you have to be kind, persuasive, and ready to absorb blows meant for everyone else.
The union files complaints, seeks mediation, and prepares for court, consultations that sound dry until you realize each form stands between a family and chaos. This is also where the drama will have U.S. viewers Googling phrases like employment lawyer, labor rights attorney, and what counts as workplace discrimination, because the tactics feel eerily familiar. The legal track doesn’t erase the daily grind: people still have to clock in, smile for customers, and watch managers pretend nothing is happening. Negotiations sputter—management offers “voluntary resignations” with thin severance and veiled warnings about future prospects. Goo frames every offer for what it is: a bet that people are too tired to keep caring. The store becomes a chessboard; every shift change is a move.
Soo-in, once obsessed with being a good employee, becomes a good steward of other people’s fear. His military past (discipline, duty, chain of command) collides with a new understanding of responsibility: you don’t protect your team by obeying—you protect them by standing between them and harm. Relationships deepen in the strain. Joo Kang-min grows from hesitant follower to frontline organizer. Kim Jung-mi, soft-spoken and steady, becomes the union’s heart, translating policy into plain language. And yes, there are moments of humor—Goo’s dry sarcasm lands like oxygen in rooms that have forgotten how to breathe.
The middle episodes push the conflict into the aisles—literally. Customers wander through pickets; kids in school uniforms hand out flyers explaining why “overtime pay” isn’t a luxury; a local reporter sticks around long enough to be moved. When security intervenes, the workers step back but don’t scatter; the choreography is careful, legal, learned. The point isn’t to ruin a store’s day; it’s to make the store look at the people who make days possible. Watching, I felt that subtle switch from pity to respect—have you ever realized a neighbor you underestimated is braver than you thought?
Corporate pressure tightens: surveillance increases, friends stop making eye contact, and rumor campaigns paint the union as selfish. Soo-in makes his hardest call—he tells the union to expect a long fight with short wins. The decision hurts, because every long fight risks people peeling off in exhaustion. Goo calls it “the cost of conscience,” which sounds poetic until you’re the one paying it. The drama never pretends that courage erases consequences; it shows you how people carry them. That’s why the victories land with such force.
By the time the final episodes arrive, the union has lost some members and gained something harder to measure: a voice that can’t be ignored. A court ruling and a series of negotiations produce partial wins and formal recognition; not everyone gets their old life back, but no one has to pretend nothing happened. The show refuses an easy fairy tale and offers something sturdier: the knowledge that people who stood up together are different now, and so is the place that tried to silence them. In the last stretch, Goo explains the title: an awl isn’t a hammer; it doesn’t smash—it pierces. Make a small hole, and the fabric of indifference starts to tear. The drama ends not with a trumpet, but with a door opening for the next person who refuses to look away.
Highlight Moments
Episode 1 The order. In a claustrophobic back office, Soo-in is told to fire “temporary” workers before a sale weekend. He asks for cause, documentation, anything, and gets only a directive—do it by morning. The camera then cuts to each worker he would erase, letting us see the birthdays on lunch calendars and the layaway receipts pinned to corkboards. When Soo-in says no, it’s not defiance played for cheers; it’s a quiet, devastating line in the sand. From here forward, the show is about the cost of that line.
Episode 3 The meeting with Goo Go-shin. The workers gather in a cramped room at the labor law center, expecting a pep rally, and get a lesson instead: document everything, vote on everything, expect nothing quickly. Goo begins to translate their fear into steps—what’s legal, what’s smart, what’s survivable. This is also where U.S. viewers will hear terms that hit close to home—wrongful termination, retaliation, collective bargaining—and feel how the language of rights can steady the room. In one brilliant beat, Goo slides a small metal awl across the table and says, “We don’t break; we pierce.”
Episode 5 The overnight sit-in. After wage delays hit union members, the group sleeps on cardboard in a corridor between bulk rice and detergent. Parents rotate childcare; college kids prep flyers; the night-shift guard leaves a thermos like a silent vote. The stillness is political—no chanting, just being present where they were told they didn’t belong. When dawn workers arrive, nobody moves; they greet them like colleagues, not enemies. It’s a protest that looks like a workplace because that’s what it is.
Episode 8 The fracture. Management’s pressure campaign works: some members drop out to protect their families, and resentment flares. Kim Jung-mi quiets the room with a reminder that solidarity is not a purity test; it’s a practice that accounts for fatigue. Her words turn anger into empathy, and you feel the union regain its center. The show refuses to villainize the people who leave, which makes the ones who stay feel even more human. It’s one of the most emotionally intelligent hours in the series.
Episode 10 The negotiation. Jung Min-chul, the executive face of the company, arrives with numbers, smiles, and a trap: generous-sounding packages tied to silence. Soo-in listens, breathes, and chooses to keep bargaining for those who can’t afford to take the deal. Goo’s proud, worried look says it all—leadership is the art of absorbing consequences. The stakes become concrete: mortgage payments, medical bills, the risk of being quietly blacklisted. This is where the phrase labor rights attorney stops sounding theoretical and starts feeling like a lifeline.
Episode 12 The aisle march. In the finale’s signature image, the union moves slowly through the store—past seasonal displays, into the heart of a place that tried to forget them. There’s no triumphant soundtrack, just shuffling shoes and the hum of refrigeration units. Small victories settle in, and so does the knowledge that the fight will outlast the headlines. Goo half-smiles; Soo-in nods to workers and customers alike; the camera lingers on faces that have learned how to look back. The ending feels earned because it is.
Memorable Lines
“If a rule is unjust, following it is the easiest way to do harm.” – Goo Go-shin, Episode 2 Said in a cramped office stacked with case files, it reframes the series from obedience to ethics. Goo is telling them that legality and morality often diverge, and the drama will stand with the latter. It also signals his mentorship of Soo-in—he won’t teach him to rebel for rebellion’s sake, but to choose people over policy. From this point on, every decision weighs cost against conscience.
“I won’t call them traitors; I’ll call them tired.” – Lee Soo-in, Episode 9 After a wave of dropouts, the room wants to shame those who left. Soo-in’s line punctures that impulse, reminding everyone that exhaustion is not betrayal. It’s a turning point for his leadership; he stops being the man who simply refuses an order and becomes the one who protects the dignity of those who can’t keep marching. The union’s moral authority grows precisely because he refuses to shrink anyone else.
“They call us temporary, but our bills are permanent.” – Kim Jung-mi, Episode 6 She says it during a meeting where members debate whether to accept “voluntary resignations.” The sentence is a thesis statement for the entire show: precarity is a policy choice, not a personal failure. It also connects powerfully with global audiences who know the math of rent and childcare too well. The line lingers as both indictment and invitation to keep going.
“An awl makes a hole where there isn’t one.” – Goo Go-shin, Episode 3 He uses the tool as metaphor, sliding it across the table to show how pressure and patience can open space inside something that looks seamless. It’s the drama’s craft philosophy in miniature—no grand speeches, just persistent, purposeful force. The line turns a simple object into a rallying image the characters and viewers can hold. By the finale, you’ll hear it in your head every time someone chooses to speak up.
“I was a manager who never managed to protect anyone—until now.” – Lee Soo-in, Episode 7 This confession arrives after he absorbs blame meant for his team. It’s an admission of past complicity and an embrace of new responsibility. The drama treats the word “manager” not as a title but a duty: to care, not to control. From here, Soo-in’s arc is less about winning and more about becoming the kind of person others can trust with their fear.
Why It's Special
There are dramas you watch and forget, and then there are stories that burrow under your skin and stay. Songgot: The Piercer is the latter—a grounded, compassionate workplace saga about one decent manager who refuses to fire temporary workers and instead learns how to fight alongside them. Before we get lost in the feelings and the craft, a practical note for your queue: availability can vary by region; as of January 2026 it is streaming on TVING in South Korea and also has an official listing on Google Play TV & Movies in the United States. Catalogs shift, so check your preferred service before you press play.
What makes Songgot: The Piercer special is its heartbeat: everyday people confronting unfairness with shaky hands and stubborn courage. The show is adapted from Choi Kyu-seok’s acclaimed webtoon and based on a true labor dispute, which gives its quiet scenes—meetings in cramped offices, whispered worries in back aisles—a lived-in authenticity you can feel. The premise never sensationalizes struggle; it dignifies it, showing how solidarity is built cup by cup of instant coffee and conversation by conversation.
Director Kim Seok-yoon shapes this into a character-first narrative, choosing close, unglamorous frames and letting silence hang long enough that we hear the anxieties people rarely say out loud. The pacing is patient rather than slow: each episode earns its crescendos by spending real time on small workplace rituals and the moral math of saying “no” when everyone around you says “just do it.”
The writing (by Lee Nam-gyu and Kim Soo-jin) favors the kind of dialogue that sounds like normal speech until a line lands like a gut punch. It’s a drama that trusts you: it never shouts its themes, yet every choice—who sits where in a meeting, which door a character chooses—feels like a thesis on power. Have you ever felt this way, weighing your salary against your sense of self? That’s the show’s secret power: it keeps asking the question without wagging a finger.
Tonally, it’s a blend you don’t see often: part underdog procedural, part moral investigation, part found-family story. When the union slowly forms, the genre subtly shifts from “will they fight back?” to “how can they stay human while they fight?” The soundtrack even threads hope through the grit—look out for the tender, aching ballad performed by Yesung that drops mid-run and reframes a character’s emotional arc.
Acting is the anchor. Performances avoid melodrama in favor of steady burn—the kind where a clenched jaw says more than a speech. That restraint lets the big moments truly sing: a refusal to sign a paper, a hand on a colleague’s shoulder, a sudden burst of laughter in a break room that temporarily feels like a home. It’s catharsis by accumulation, not fireworks.
Finally, Songgot: The Piercer understands that justice is rarely a one-episode climax. It treats organizing as a craft—messy, tiring, full of setbacks—and finds surprising warmth in the process. If you’re in the mood for a story that respects your intelligence and rewards your empathy, this is the late-night drama that will have you sitting up, asking yourself what kind of person you’d be in that aisle.
Popularity & Reception
Songgot: The Piercer aired on cable network JTBC in late 2015, where it drew modest ratings but a steady wave of word-of-mouth from viewers who recognized their own workplaces in its aisles and corridors. It became one of those “you have to try this” recommendations passed between friends who love character-driven dramas—especially fans of realistic office stories.
Critics in Korea praised the series for breaking from conventional formulas, noting how its realism and social conscience set it apart during a weekend lineup that often leans romantic or sensational. The conversation often centered on its courage: a drama willing to look at temporary labor, subcontracting, and the ethics of management without flinching.
Internationally, early buzz grew through K‑drama communities and blogs, where viewers highlighted the show’s quiet tension and the unexpected tenderness of its ensemble. It wasn’t the flashiest title abroad, but it had staying power; years later, fans still use it as a gateway recommendation for anyone wanting a grounded, socially aware K‑drama.
Industry recognition followed. At JTBC’s inaugural network awards, Ji Hyun-woo earned Best Actor—an acknowledgment that aligned with what viewers were already saying about his career‑best turn as a manager who learns to lead with conscience first. That win helped cement the drama’s reputation as a critical darling.
Cast-driven press also helped the show travel. Coverage of Yesung’s screen debut drew K‑pop fans to tune in for his character’s arc, and post‑finale interviews spotlighted the cast’s film‑like working process, with scripts prepared in advance to let performances breathe—details that endeared the production to discerning viewers abroad.
Cast & Fun Facts
We meet Lee Soo-in through Ji Hyun‑woo, who plays him not as a saint but as a disciplined man learning the limits of solitary integrity. Watch how he calibrates posture and breath whenever authority looms; his refusal to sign off on unjust firings feels less like a grand stand and more like a person quietly discovering he can’t live with himself otherwise. The camera often lingers on his silence, and Ji turns those beats into the show’s moral pulse.
In the back half, Ji Hyun‑woo lets more vulnerability seep in—the tired eyes, the faltering voice when victory costs someone else’s peace. That evolution—rigid soldier to reflective organizer—arrives without sentimentality. It’s no wonder his performance became a career milestone and won him network honors; he makes principled courage feel relatable rather than remote.
Opposite him, Ahn Nae‑sang embodies Goo Go-shin, the grizzled labor consultant who turns compassion into a methodology. Ahn’s gift is understatement: a wry smile, a half‑shrug, a question that slices to the center of a problem. He plays Go-shin as part mentor, part realist, teaching that solidarity isn’t a slogan but a habit you practice.
Across episodes, Ahn Nae‑sang gives us one of the drama’s most moving through-lines: a man who has seen too many defeats still choosing to believe people can learn to stand together. The performance is so close to the webtoon’s spirit that long‑time readers remarked on the uncanny match—an adaptation choice that deepened trust with the fanbase.
For many, Yesung (Super Junior’s Kim Jong-woon) was the surprise of the cast, stepping into his first scripted drama as Hwang Joon-chul, the seafood-section worker run ragged by prejudice and precarity. He plays Joon-chul with tentative warmth—the guy who wants to keep his head down until life refuses to let him. You can feel the nerves transforming into conviction as he finds his voice.
There’s a sweet meta‑footnote: Yesung also contributed an OST track released during the run, and it lands like a diary entry from his character—lonely, resolute, bruised but not beaten. That musical echo, paired with his earnest performance, pulled in K‑pop fans who stayed for the drama’s humane core.
As the corporate heavy, Kim Hee‑won resists caricature. His Jung Min‑chul is not a mustache‑twirling villain but an efficient executive whose language is metrics and risk. Kim shades him with recognizably human logic, which is scarier: policies that hurt people rarely sound monstrous in the boardroom.
In later confrontations, Kim Hee‑won lets the mask slip just enough to reveal how fear—of audits, of higher‑ups, of losing face—drives cruelty. It’s a precise, unsettling performance that keeps the stakes grounded: the enemy isn’t one man; it’s a system that rewards his behavior.
If you love brilliant character actors, Lee Jung‑eun will steal your heart as Kim Jung‑mi, a veteran worker who becomes the union’s quiet backbone. Lee brings micro‑gestures to life: the way she folds a vest, the beat before she speaks up. Her scenes remind you that labor movements are built on steady hands as much as fiery speeches.
As the pressure mounts, Lee Jung‑eun gives Kim Jung‑mi a tender arc of self‑respect: from apologizing for taking up space to insisting on being counted. It’s one of those supporting turns that lingers long after the finale, the kind that prompts viewers to call their own coworkers and say, “Are you okay?”
A quick spotlight on the creative team: Director Kim Seok‑yoon and writers Lee Nam‑gyu and Kim Soo‑jin lean into a film‑like process—scripts prepared in advance, performance‑friendly sets—which the cast later credited for the drama’s emotional coherence. Their collaboration with webtoon creator Choi Kyu‑seok preserves the source’s moral clarity while finding fresh cinematic textures.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’ve been craving a series that respects both your time and your heart, Songgot: The Piercer is the rare drama that will make you feel braver about your own life. Queue it up, pour something warm, and let these characters keep you company on a weeknight when the world feels a little too loud. If regional catalogs get in the way while you’re traveling, a trustworthy best VPN for streaming can help you keep watching legally, and smoothing your connection with reliable home internet plans will make every episode feel like a small theater at home. Keep an eye on streaming TV deals, too—the right bundle can make revisiting favorites like this wonderfully easy.
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