If you’ve been tuning into the latest season of Single’s Inferno, then you know all about the show’s latest star player: Choi Mina Sue.
The former pageant queen walked into Inferno in Episode 2 as a surprise contender, and she’s been shaking things up (either intentionally or not) on the island ever since. Unlike her hot, young single peers on the show, most of whom chose to pursue either one or two potential love interests, Mina Sue came in with a more multi-pronged approach.
She immediately couldn’t decide between Song Seung Il, Lim Su Been, and Lee Sung Hun, all three of whom gave her their first impression votes to show their interest in her. Mina Sue switches her attention between the three of them throughout the season, even choosing to spend a night in Paradise with Su Been and Seung Il (and she may go to Paradise a third time with Sung Hun, but he’s been her safety option since Day One). She’s also confessed to finding other contenders like Shin Hyeon Woo and Woo Sung Min attractive, but she hasn’t followed through with these feelings just yet.
I’ll say this right now: there’s nothing wrong with how Mina Sue is playing the game. Single’s Inferno is, at its core, a dating show, and the whole point of signing onto a show like it is to find the contestant you like best. If anything, Mina Sue has one of the best problems that any single, straight woman could have: deciding which of these hotties to take to Paradise tonight.
Unfortunately, the problem lies in how Mina Sue’s indecisiveness is affecting everyone else, from the other contestants to the show’s five panelists, and to audiences worldwide. If she pursues Su Been, she runs the risk of clashing with Park Hee Sun, another female contestant who’s had her sights on the boy since the start of the show. But if she pivots to Seung Il, then she butts heads with his other main love interest, Kim Min Gee, the latter of whom got so fed up with Mina Sue’s flip-flopping that she had a tense “heart-to-heart” with her in Episode 9.
“I don’t think you know yourself,” Min Gee told Mina Sue in Korean after calling her out for being so unsure about what she wants. “How can you be in a relationship if you don’t even know yourself?” The conversation left Mina Sue in tears, and the cameras panned to her sobbing behind the all-girls cabin after Min Gee had walked away.
The show’s panelists have also been vocal about their feelings toward Mina Sue, saying they struggled to sympathize with her in earlier episodes. However, after watching her cry alone, the five used their airtime to publicly apologize to Mina Sue.
“All I keep wondering is how angry she must feel at us panelists,” said Hong Jin Kyung. “We’ve been saying a lot of things about Mina Sue.”
“The one thing I really like about Mina Sue,” said panelist Kim Jin Young, “is that her conversation with Min Gee had gotten her all riled up. But rather than letting things escalate in the moment, she held it together and then cried in private later. [I] don’t think I could do that.”
While it does feel like the panelists are experiencing a change of heart a little too late in the game, hopefully it will change how viewers of the show have been bashing Mina Sue online. Fans have described Mina Sue as toxic and insecure, with some even posting public comments on her Instagram to lash out at her.
It’s easy to forget that the people who sign onto a dating show are, in fact, real people, but it feels like the recent backlash against Mina Sue is starting to cross a line. Yes, she’s not perfect, and there are times when I find myself screaming at the screen because she can’t make up her mind. She’s also not very good at reining in her jealousy when she sees her favorite men talking to other people, but you know what? Same. And if I were on the island, I would be just as confused and as fickle as Mina Sue, because why bother joining Single’s Inferno if you’re only going to talk to one contestant the entire time?
We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out for Mina Sue in Inferno, but I hope that she’s turned her phone off and isn’t listening to any of the hate that’s aimed at her. Shame on us for being so cruel to her, and she definitely deserves a happy ending come the season finale on February 10.
