Narco-Saints: Is Based On A True Story: The Korean Drug Lord Who Inspired The Netflix Series
Among the Korean series you’ll want to binge on, Narco-Saints is now available, a new K-drama ideal for fans of ‘Narcos’ and ‘Narcos: Mexico‘. The Netflix series revolves around Kang In-gu, a businessman who is involved in a secret operation of the South Korean police that aims to catch Jeon Yo Hwan, a criminal who runs a drug trafficking network from Suriname up to Europe. To fulfill his objective, the businessman must travel to South America, but catching the drug dealer is a more difficult mission than he thought.
Narco-Saints is a K-drama that features several stars from the Korean entertainment industry, but among all of them the presence of Park Hae Soo stands out, an actor recognized for bringing Sangwoo to life in ‘Squid Game’ and Berlin in Money Heist: Korea, both Netflix productions. What very few know is that the new Korean crime drama series took its inspiration from a real-life event, specifically a South Korean criminal who planned his drug empire in South America.
Narco-Saints: The True Story Of The Korean Netflix Series
On June 20, 2011, the ‘Korea Times’ newspaper reported that a South Korean man, then only identified by the surname “Jo”, had been charged with smuggling cocaine from South America to Europe, using other citizens of the Asian country as carriers or “mules”. The man from South Korea had Suriname, a small Caribbean country with neighbors French Guiana, Guyana, and Brazil, as its headquarters.
According to the South Korean media, the Seoul Prosecutor’s Office explained that the suspect had hired 12 men to deliver almost 110 pounds of cocaine to European countries between 2004 and 2005. ‘Korea Times’ explained that the smuggled drug, enough for 1.6 million doses, has a market value of 160 billion won (the South Korean currency), or 140 million US dollars. The media ensures that the suspect was arrested in Brazil in 2009 and extradited to South Korea. According to authorities, Jo paid the “mules” between 4 and 5 million won (nearly $350), and three of them were captured in France and the Netherlands.
Narco-Saints: The Korean Series That Was Born As A Movie
Series director Yoon Jong-bin told a press conference in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, on September 7 that Narco-Saints was meant to be a movie, according to the Korea Herald. Instead, the idea of the real-life drug lord who was based in Suriname became a 6-episode miniseries of just under an hour each.
“When I first heard about the story, I thought it was really interesting. But when I got the script for the movie, there were a lot of things missing, like the things that caught my interest at first. It seemed to be difficult to grasp the entire story in one time of execution of two hours”, commented the filmmaker according to ‘Korea Herald’.
Actor Ha Jung-woo, who has been part of the project since its development stage, explained that from the beginning he saw potential in the story of Narco-Saints.
“I thought this story based on real life has great energy. A Korean who goes to a small South American country and becomes a drug dealer, in itself, feels like a movie. Because the story was powerful, I knew it would become a series at some point,” said the actor.
