Gender/Sexuality

      

(TOP: A picture of Seung-Hee working in NSS as a psychologic analyst
BOTTOM: A picture of Sun-Hwa chasing Hyun-Jun for her survival)

In this drama, the two main female characters, Seung-Hee and Sun-Hwa, are exceptionally professional and multi-talented. Despite their feminine physical characteristics, both are extremely tough and powerful. Seung-Hee is the top female agent in South Korea's NSS team, and Sun-Hwa is the most skilled female figure in North Korea's security system. Throughout the series of "Iris," the two characters represent female charismatic power and courage.

The video clip below is from episode 10, and it shows the battle of the sexes in "Iris." Seung-Hee fights a North Korean spy that intrudes in the NSS. This is an intensely violent scene in the drama between a man and a woman, and it shows how skilled Seung-Hee is in fighting. In this drama, Seung-Hee is portrayed as a astute professional profiler, as well as an adept fighter. The fact that she is a female does not seem to make her weak or fragile in this scene. As a top NSS agent, Seung-Hee is a strong, self-independent female that represents power and audacity, regardless of gender.


      A video cut of Seung-Hee's fight with a North Korean spy

In episode 7, there is even a battle scene between Sun-Hwa and Seung-Hee on a moving train. This is when they first meet each other as enemies. Both have the same goal: to find Hyun-Jun. However, Seung-Hee and Sun-Hwa cannot trust each other because of how they have been trained and taught not to trust the enemy.


                                 A video clip of the battle between the two strong female characters

In-Depth Analysis of Sun-Hwa

Sun-Hwa Kim is a professional North Korean security agent that obeys the assigned orders so that her country would not abandon her mother and her siblings. For her, the importance of her family eventually has built her into a heartless killer to overcome the pain of her own murders.

In "Iris," Sun-Hwa seems to always carry a gun for her protection

As she faithfully trusts her country and successfully accomplishes given missions, Sun-Hwa becomes the nation's one of the best security agents. In episode 1 of "Iris," Sun-Hwa is actually the one who jumps into the North Korean prime minister as she catches a bullet coming at him, and thus gets hit by the bullet. Although she is badly injured from the shot, she does not get knocked down; Sun-Hwa follows her North Korean security team to chase after Hyun-Jun, who is the one that has shot the bullet for his assigned mission. From episode 1, the audience is able to know how stouthearted and strong she is. To her "Iris" fans, Sun-Hwa has established herself as South Korea's new icon of female warrior.

Sun-Hwa : the female warrior in "Iris"

Seung-Hee: The New Femme Fatale Figure

A picture of Seung-Hee during her fight with Hyun-Jun

As Sun-Hwa has gained popularity from the fans of "Iris" as the new symbol of female warrior, Seung-Hee has impressed the audience as a femme fatale figure. Seung-Hee Choi seems to be an ideal woman, who has possessed an immaculate beauty, intelligence and acuteness, the ability to transform, as well as her ability to speak many languages. As a professional profiler of NSS, she tricks Hyun-Jun and Sa-Woo before they admit into NSS so that she can pull as much information as she can before choosing them as NSS's new agents. She transforms herself into an ordinary student as a classmate of Hyun-Jun's graduate school and seduces him so that she can get some vital information about him. Then, she plans out to bump into Sa-Woo at a bar. Both Sa-Woo and Hyun-Jun are drawn into Seung-Hee at the same time but both do not know that they love the same person. From the beginning, Seung-Hee succeeds in setting herself as a seductive, cunning femme fatale character in "Iris."

Seung-Hee as the femme fatale character in "Iris"

As Hyun-Jun and Sa-Woo become the secret agents of NSS, each of them realizes that Seung-Hee has tricked herself to pull information out of them. But their shock towards Seung-Hee does not end here; as the three of them are given a mission to spy on a Japanese weapon dealer, Seung-Hee completely beguiles herself in the casino yet again to a alluring, bewitching figure so that she can get to spy on him. In the casino, she successfully draws the dealer's attention, and in the dealer's private room, while she sends him off to shower, Seung-Hee secretly extracts information from his cell phone. The video clip below shows how Seung-Hee can handle transforming into numerous characters in order to accomplish her mission.


Here, Hyun-Jun and Sa-Woo are shocked to see Seung-Hee transform

In this drama, Seung-Hee Choi overall represents femme fatale, and she is portrayed as a powerful, multi-talented character.