With average viewership ratings of 25.3% and a peak of 31.4%, Phoenix was among the top-rated Korean dramas that aired on MBC in 2004.

Jang Sae-hoon is a poor, intelligent and hardworking college student on scholarship with a part-time job at a gas station.

For fear that her family will succeed in breaking them apart, Ji-eun purposely gets pregnant with Sae-hoon's child so that they would be allowed to get married.

After the wedding, spoiled Ji-eun is ill-accustomed to Sae-hoon's shabby living conditions, causing constant fights between the young couple.

At a traffic stop during a red light, her father steps out of his car and tries to catch her attention, but a motorcyclist sideswipes him.

In a reversal of fortunes, Ji-eun is now the world-weary breadwinner of her family while Sae-hoon triumphantly returns to Korea as a highly paid executive of Seo-Rin Group.

At the same party, playboy and Seo-Rin Group heir apparent Seo Jung-min tries to pick up Ji-eun and becomes seriously intrigued after she repeatedly turns him down.

Unaware of the connection, Mi-ran invites her old high school friend Ji-eun to meet her fiancé Sae-hoon.

Afraid that Sae-hoon is still in love with his ex-wife and that he would leave her once he knows that she can walk, Mi-ran conceals the truth from him and lies that she is still crippled, helpless and totally dependent on him, thereby assuring that he's tied to her by the bonds of guilt.

Instead he discovers the quietly proud, mature and capable woman the trials of life has molded her into and can't help but admire her.

She grows to care for him and they are happy for a time, and their relationship weathers several storms including Jung-min bitterly finding out that she was married to Sae-hoon.

The more Sae-hoon continues to encounter Ji-eun at work (she is hired as a temp at Seo-Rin Group), the more he falls in love with her and realizes he never really got over her.

When Sae-hoon finally finds out that Mi-ran can walk and that she has been feeding him so many lies for so long, he breaks up with her for good.

After countless crazy and vicious acts, Mi-ran commits suicide by swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills then calling Sae-hoon and Ji-eun to her side.

To save his father, Jung-min kidnaps Ji-eun to force Sae-hoon to give up proof of Mr. Seo's culpability in Mr. Lee's death.

Then he lost his father to a car accident and started working as a part-time job at a gas station to make his living.

After a series of all kinds of ups and downs, he accomplishes the "American Dream" and becomes a newly polished person, William Jang.

Her father is a successful CEO of a textile group and her mother is a hopeless and immature lady who only knows her luxurious world.

After their divorce, upon hearing that Sae-hoon is leaving Korea, she drives like crazy to the airport thinking it would be her last chance to get him back.

With her father's sudden death and the fall of her family, hopeless Ji-eun picks up the phone and calls Sae-hoon who, without knowing her situation, coldly turns her down.

With a manic-depressive mother and a trouble-making sister, she has now become the breadwinner of the family: this is a big change from the once reckless little brat who didn't even know how to turn on the stove.

Daughter of a rich real estate agent, she grew up wealthy and has a carefree lifestyle, left to her own devices by her doting father.

He seems to have everything - the colorful background as the heir of Seo-Rin, perfectly good-looking face, gentleman-like manners, talent in every sports.

He felt guilty about the accident ever since and as a form of self-punishment, he lives the life of a debauchee much to the consternation and fury of his father.