'Typhoon Family' Episode 12 Recap & Ending Explained: Did Mi-Seon Survive The Fire? 

Episode 12 of Typhoon Family is another slow one. This time, the focus completely shifts at the beginning of the episode to Nam-Mo and Mi-Ho’s story. This kind of breaks the momentum a little bit with regard to the surgical gloves plotline, but it also makes it feel more stretched out, which is not great, because we’re more interested in other things beyond the details behind how this trade is going to happen. Additionally, I think by now I’m a little bit tired of the fact that things keep going wrong for Tae-Poong and the gang, almost proving that he shouldn’t be doing this business thing at all. While the point here is that Tae-Poong needs to overcome all of this to live up to his dad’s name and his trust in his son, that’s also something that’s been dragged on too long. We now have 4 episodes left, and the Pyo storyline still hasn’t been tackled, so I guess that’s what the focus of the last 4 episodes is going to be. But with that said, let’s jump straight into episode 12.

Spoiler Alert

How Does Typhoon Trading Manage to Underbid Hyun-Jun?

We could tell right from the end of the last episode that the bidding war wasn’t going to be easy for Typhoon. Pyo Merchant Marine comes into the competition with a massive advantage; they have their own warehouses and shipping set up, which means they don’t have to pay overhead for those costs, allowing them to place cheaper bids. When the team at Typhoon starts actually doing the math on what they can bid, even with as low a profit margin as 3%, it just doesn’t make any sense, financially. An American company called Blaze Eagles has a monopoly on the manufacture of surgical gloves, meaning they get to dictate prices, i.e. negotiation is off the table, so both Typhoon and Pyo have to pay the same rates if they want those gloves. It gets to the point that Ma-Jin pulls Tae-Poong to the side and asks him to seriously consider giving up on this contract, even though he knows they don’t have any other work available. 

But Tae-Poong gets some encouragement from Nam-Mo (the new Typhoon office is his former chicken restaurant, and Nam-Mo still hangs out in the kitchen) and gets his head back in the game. He realizes that if they can’t buy from Blaze Eagles, they can buy from the factory the Americans outsource their production to, which is based in Malaysia. With two days to go to the bidding, poor Bae Song-Jung gets sent off to contact the factory directly, but it turns out the factory now manufactures pillows instead. Even though the telephone service is awful and neither side can hear each other, Mi-Seon makes a breakthrough by remembering one of the fundamentals of being a trader: always check on inventory.

All this takes time, though, and by the time Song-Jung manages to send a telegram directly to the Public Procurement Office, the bidding has already started. Mi-Seon had a whole list of potential bids listed, with profit margins right next to them, and Mr. Koo does some kind of mathemagic and works out that a 9% profit margin is the optimal bid, but Tae-Poong wants to wait until the telegram comes. It’s not until 12 minutes into the 15-minute bidding period that the telegram arrives, and it initially seems like a cryptic series of numbers, but Tae-Poong works out that Song-Jung means he’s secured 5111 boxes of surgical gloves at a 40% discount from the leftover inventory of the factory in Malaysia, meaning their operating costs just went way down. We later find out he managed this by buttering up the foreman with Korean food and begging and scraping for him to save his job, but it was worth it, because Typhoon Trading ultimately wins with the most competitive bid.

Does Mi-Ho Break Up With Nam-Mo?

Mi-Ho and Nam-Mo have been the sweetest couple on the show so far; even with all the chemistry between the lead couple, Tae-Poong comes across a bit pushy, and Mi-Seon is maybe a bit too reluctant for theirs to be a relationship that makes you smile the whole time. But the trouble with our second lead couple starts when Nam-Mo’s mom sees a picture of him with Mi-Ho and realizes he’s dating the girl she works with at the department store. She takes the opportunity to tell him to date a girl for more than her looks, believing that’s all Mi-Ho has to offer. Last episode, we’d seen Mi-Ho engage in a random act of kindness and fix Nam-Mo’s mom’s hairpin at work when she’d noticed it out of place, which is when they’d first gotten acquainted. Later, she has a peek in Mi-Ho’s locker when it falls open and comments about how skimpy her clothes are, comparing one of her tops to a facemask (yikes). 

She’s come to her own conclusions about Mi-Ho, and one day she talks to her in the locker room and asks to speak to her outside, revealing she’s Nam-Mo’s mother. Initially, Mi-Ho’s optimistic, but nothing could have prepared her for the disgusting words she’d be hearing. When Mi-Ho is asked to break up with Nam-Mo, she asks why the woman hates her, and she replies, in not so many words, that she doesn’t hate her; Mi-Ho’s just too poor for her son, and she doesn’t want him to take on a burden like her. She tries to tell her that her decision is influenced by the early death of her own husband, which meant everyone in society started saying she had bad luck, and she doesn’t want either Nam-Mo or Mi-Ho to make a bad decision this early in their lives. That really doesn’t make anything better, and by the time Nam-Mo shows up, Mi-Ho’s in tears. He defends her and tells his mother that the reason their family’s in poverty in the first place is because of their own stupid decisions: him overprioritizing his singing and his mom investing in a scam and losing all their money. 

He contrasts this with Mi-Ho, who’s actually talented, and whose family is housing Tae-Poong’s family right now, which is allowing Tae-Poong to rent their old chicken restaurant and put some money on Nam-Mo and his mom’s table. Having said his piece, Nam-Mo grabs Mi-Ho’s hand and walks away, but she’s not in the mood to be dragged around. She walks off angry, telling Nam-Mo she’s not sure yet if she’s going to break up with him or not. Mi-Ho knows her worth as a person, but she can also see why Nam-Mo’s mother would be reluctant. I don’t think she’s going to break up with him. 

Does Mi-Seon Survive The Fire? 

After Typhoon Trading wins the bid for the surgical gloves, Mr. Pyo is absolutely furious at Hyun-Jun; they were never supposed to bid to supply surgical gloves in the first place; Mr. Pyo had sunk $150,000 into American-imported orange juice, and now it’s just sitting around not going to anyone, a senseless loss. He’s so mad he threatens to shut down Hyun-Jun’s office at Pyo Merchant Marine and send him to the US to get an education and make something of himself. Hyun-Jun stands up for himself, though, saying it doesn’t matter how many jabs Tae-Poong lands on him; he’s waiting to deliver the ultimate punch that’ll finally shut down Typhoon Trading for good.

Later, we see him meet with Ms. Cha, who really doesn’t want to be there. He starts threatening her, telling her how his father has files on not just her and her coworkers but her family too, leaving it vague as to what awaits them. This is when Ms. Cha slips up and mentions the promissory note to him, and it seems he didn’t know about it before this point. All of a sudden, he has leverage over her that he didn’t before, and she’s mortified. It’s not clear what he does with this information immediately, but things go wrong later, when Typhoon Trading are tallying their surgical glove supplies in the warehouse.

In the ending of Typhoon Family episode 12, when it’s just Mi-Seon in the warehouse, a fire starts, and the door is barred from the outside, making it clear this is a deliberate act of arson. Tae-Poong sees the smoke from a distance and makes a run for it, burning his hands trying to get the door open, but when he does get in, Mi-Seon’s stuck behind some shelves, and he rushes to get her out of there. Sadly, the episode ends before he manages to get to her, and we see more shelves toppling over. Despite the cliffhanger, it’s clear he’s going to manage to save her, but the mystery’s going to be about who was responsible for this act. Hyun-Jun’s been a true villain so far, but he obviously didn’t know Mi-Seon was in there, right? Plus, we still have to see if Typhoon Trading will manage to salvage their bid somehow next week. 

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