How NOT TO DIE AGAIN in "Marry My Husband"

It's April 2023 in Seoul, South Korea, and you're a marketing assistant who lives with her husband and former co-worker Park Min-Hwan and his mother. One day, you get one of the worst possible news: you got stomach cancer and the life-saving surgery that you need is unaffordable.

As if that wasn't enough suffering, one day, you come back home and find your husband in your bed with your best friend and self-proclaimed "other half" Jeon Su-Min. Not only did they betray your trust, they are also talking about how they wish for you to die soon, so you step in and confront them.

This backfires and Min-Hwan pushes you against a glass coffee table. The last words you hear are Su-Min saying you would die anyway.

Then, you wake up in your bed. It's 2013, and the universe has given you a second chance to live and you don't want to miss it again.

Now, I understand that this might not be your classic horror story, but what's horrific is exactly the fact that it is something that could very much happen in real life - not to the extreme extent that we see in the drama, but you get my point, nobody wants to live a stressful life that ends up permanently damaging their health.

So, in this article, I will tell you what the protagonist Kang Ji-Won did right and wrong in order to not die again in 2023 in the Korean drama "Marry My Husband".

Being a K-drama, part of the success that Ji-Won manages to acheive to get her good ending is due to her hot rich boss Yoo Ji-Hyun, who has had a massive crush on her since they were university students. Realistically, you might not have that kind of support during your second life, so in the article I will not take this aspect into consideration.

Step 1: As soon as you wake up...

You woke up ten years before your death, which is quite a generous amount of time to change things up. Despite this, there are some things that you have to do once you realize that you're back to life. The first one is to check a calendar or your phone to see what date it is, so you know that you're back in time and how much time you have left.

Before your very first interaction, or before leaving your house, grab pen and paper and try to write as much as you remember from that date to the day of your death - this will give you a clue on what needs fixing. Remember to date every moment so that you know roughly when they are going to happen.

In the drama, Ji-Won did a similar thing when she wrote an action plan to improve her life. However, she did so a bit later into the drama, after she had a grasp of how destiny worked. For this list, instead, we are just dumping events and memories on paper, so we don't have to know how destiny works yet.

Step 2: How are you?

A few moments after she woke up, Ji-Won had a fit in the stomach and remembered that, around that time in 2013, she had had gastritis and got a medical check-up.

While you might not get the same early warnings of your destiny, it is important that you do a first check on how you feel physically and mentally. Yes, it's a relief that you got another chance, but you still got betrayed by your best friend and killed by someone who was supposed to be the love of your life, which can be a very overwhelming experience, so feel your feelings, cry your eyes out if you need to, and get a medical check-up and treatment if you feel anything weird.

Step 3: Learn how destiny works.

While at work, Ji-Won quickly learns the dynamics that control her destiny. She remembers that, on that day in her previous life, she had got injured and tried her best to prevent it, only to get the same minor injury in a different way. That's when she realizes that destiny occurs no matter what, so improving her life is going to be pointless unless she manages to pass her destiny onto someone else.

At that point, after her shift, she commits to passing her destiny onto her fake friend Jeon Su-Min, and in order to do so, she brainstorms a series of things that need to improve. Let's see what we can use as a model:

Improve your financial situation

One of the first things Ji-Won decides to improve are her finances. Indeed, towards the end of her first life, her husband Min-Hwan had quit his 9-to-5 job as a marketing assistant to do full-time stock market trading. His project ultimately did not lead to the outcomes he expected, so Ji-Won ended up in debt and overworking herself to provide for both of them, and once she got cancer, she didn't have enough money to get surgery in a private clinic so she got stuck on the waiting list of the public healthcare system.

In a heavily capitalistic country like South Korea, it is necessary to create you own financial stability and security in order to survive. To do so, Ji-Won cleverly researches on investments and the stock market, and you should do this, too. Indeed, by looking at her financial situation right before her death, it's clear that the income from her 9-to-5 job as a marketing assistant is not enough to grant her the stability that she would need. Therefore, you should also build a diversified portfolio of investments in order to ensure yourself an extra income without overworking yourself.

On the other hand, you should not quit your 9-to-5 job right away. Since you do not have your rich boss by your side, you will probably need to become a rich boss yourself, i.e. try to climb the corporate ladder. Sure, you could job hop, but this would prevent you from fully using one of your unfair advantages. Since you already lived the years from 2013 to 2023, you know in advance all the corporate scandals and power moves that occurred throughout this decade. There are a few ways you could use them to your advantage, which are also shown in the drama:

• Giving advice to your trusted managers: during the drama, Ji-Won remembers previous scandals that occurred to the managers of several companies, and uses them to advice their managers for or against pursuing business agreements with said companies, which shed a positive light on her performance. This, however, should only be done with the managers that treat you well from the start, so this could not be the case with manager Kim who constantly criticizes you while barely working on the company goals himself.
• Using the scandals in your favor: during the drama, Ji-Won tries to propose to her supervisors a new product, namely a meal kit for single people. In her previous life, the idea had got stolen by Su-Min, but in this new life she is willing to fight to keep her name on the project. At first, she seems to fail, since Su-Min had seduced Manager Kim into including her and excluding Ji-Won, but the protagonist remembers a scandal involving a major executive of the company being violent towards stewards and stewardesses during a flight, and decides to make it happen in that moment by complaining to him on the phone and triggering his anger, which resulted in a whole investigation leading to Manager Kim being suspended and her name being put back on the project.
• Improving your investments: remembering these scandals and occurrings will help you make better investments, as you already know which stocks are going to grow and which are going to flop in the long run.
• Standing out during business activities (in moderation): in order to get a promotion, you could also use this information to stand out more during business meetings and to craft better business proposals. However, if you manage to survive past april 2023, you will lose this gift and it might get awkward for your colleagues to see such a huge shift in such little time, so use it in moderation in order to avoid this weird scenario.

Also, while improving your position, do not forget to avoid overworking yourself too much. If I were you, I would use my knowledge about the future to budget my entire dream life with the worst inflation rate of the decade, and then climb the corporate ladder until I reach the position whose annual salary matches said budget the most, while increasing my budget for investments as my salary rises.

Network and get a social life.

During the drama, it has been shown time and time again how networking is important. In the company, we see the heroes and the villains cooperating, consipring, but also having fun with other characters.

Indeed, Ji-Won stated from the very beginning that she admires her senior colleague, but in her first life she never acted on it. However, by trying to make connections and ultimately by inviting her to give her approval and work together on her project, she earns not only a trustworthy colleague and manager, but also a new friend.

While approaching managers might be a bit harder, approaching colleagues is actually pretty easy. Just read the room and help those in need, like Ji-Won did with Hee-Yeon when she forgot her pad while in the restrooms of the cafeteria.

Having a group of friends and trusted people will not only provide you with a support network in case of necessity, but it will also help you heal from the trauma of having everyone around you constantly use you. You will not survive if you're not convinced that life can be different!

Moreover, going to social events such as the high school reunion will give you the opportunity to flip the malign narratives that Su-Min spread about you and expose her lies.

Train for strength and self-defence.

Now that you know that Min-Hwan is definitely capable of killing you, you should absolutely learn how to defend yourself. He does not take confrontation or rejection lightly, so you will need to defend yourself in case of an escalation.

In the drama, Ji-Won learns judo, which is great for her self-confidence as well, but I think she forgot some details. First, she relied only on confidence for her strength, which is a bit limiting against someone who has no problem with taking violence too far. Second, while judo is good for self-defense, I still think that she should have been trained to fight unfairly as well. As seen during the final fight with Min-Hwan, he did not try some judo moves, he went straight for her throat, trying to choke her. Luckily, Ji-Hyun managed to help her, but if you don't have your boss by your side, you'll likely have to defend yourself, and learning to fight unfairly is key to making it out alive.

Place some baits if needed.

Sometimes you need to force the course of the events a bit in order to reach the outcome that you wish, especially if you wish to dump someone like Min-Hwan in a nonviolent way.

In the drama, after breaking the marriage upon meeting his parents, Ji-Won places a bait in order to get as many people on her side as possible and force Min-Hwan to come forward about his affair with Su-Min. Specifically, she pretends to have found red, lacy pants in his car as a proof that he was cheating, and she calls him out in front of all their colleagues. While this still prompts a violent reaction from him, it still proves effective to gain sympathy and let everyone know that you're not together anymore, thus increasing the chances that someone will intervene if he tries to corner you in some ways.

This proves that placing baits and subtly manipulating certain events, such as the matchmaking efforts that Ji-Won makes during the drama, is an effective strategy in changing your fate.

Since you do not have a rich protector by your side, you might feel the need to manipulate the situation a bit more than Ji-Won, and you should absolutely do so. However, be mindful of these strategies and how often to use them. Indeed, by placing too many baits and spreading too many rumors, you might get a bad reputation yourself as a liar.

Moreover, it's important not to expose yourself too much, especially after you finally get rid of Min-Hwan. Indeed, in the drama Ji-Won decides to seduce him after he married Su-Min in order to pass her fate to her ex-friend completely. However, after rejecting him again, Min-Hwan attacks her when she's alone in her office and almost chokes her to death. While I liked Ji-Won's character overall, I think this decision was extremely stupid and unnecessarily dangerous. At most, I would have tried to set him up with another colleague, but I would not have gone this far, especially after all the hard work that we had to do to leave him definitely and make him accept our rejection.

These were my tips for surviving in "Marry My Husband" without a wealthy and powerful partner by your side. I am aware that the concept of a partner was made on purpose as a way to teach Ji-Won that she can trust people again, but realistically, what would your chance be of having such a person by your side if this happened to you? Little to none, honestly, so I hope you enjoyed this different take on the drama.

Have you watched Marry My Husband? Would you add other tips to the ones I mentioned? Tell me in the comments and subscribe to stay updated on my new articles!

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I would like to conclude with a disclaimer: this is meant as a survival guide for a fictional series and it is NOT to be intended as a way to tell victims of abuse what they should (or shouldn't) do, the reality is indeed way more complex than this drama, so it's better to leave such tips to the professionals.

If you wish to support this cause, click here for a list of domestic violence helplines and charities to donate to.