K-Drama Update, Summer 2015

So, here are the Korean drama series (K-dramas)that I’ve watched so far. Links are to full reviews.

Full House. Romantic comedy with an implausible premise but irresistible characters and romantic scenes.

Queen Inhyunâ€™s Man, aka The Queen and I. This one is an historical/time travel romance. A modern actress falls for a medieval (late 1600â€²s) hero who has a magic scroll that transports him back and forth in time.

King 2 Hearts. In an alternate history Korea, South Korea has a king with an irresponsible little brother, Prince Jae Ha. North Korea is still communist, but the two countries are trying to make peace by means of participating in a military contest together with a joint Korean team. Hang Ah is the star of the North Korean military contingent, and she and Jae Ha spar and eventually come together in an attempt to bridge the cultural gap between North and South. This drama is still my favorite K-drama ever.
Headmistress at The Common Room on King2Hearts.

City Hunter is a superhero drama, an Asian take-off on Batman with complications. Actor Lee Min-Ho is Yoon-sung, a young man who has been trained from birth to take revenge on the men who killed his father. Kim Nana is a complication who threatens to sidetrack Yoon-sung in his program of revenge, but he maintains his secret identity as City Hunter to protect Kim Nana from his sad, dangerous, and lonely mission.

Iris (Season 1) Unusual for K-dramas, this series has at least two seasons. I’ve only watched the first one. A spy thriller, lots of violence, fascinating, conflicted characters. My Semicolon review here. I think I’ll try the second season soon, which I’ve heard is even better than the first one.

The Greatest Love is a much lighter romantic comedy, a mash-up of Pride and Prejudice, A Star Is Born, and several soap opera plots. It was rather disconcerting to see actress Yoo In-na, who was the cute and perky leading lady in Queen Inhyunâ€™s Man, playing the bad girl in this romcom. Doko Jin, the Darcy character, is way too proud for his own good, but he does eventually come down to earth, and the eventual resolution of the conflict is rewarding and fun to watch.
Reviewed by The Headmistress at The Common Room.

Flower Boy Next Door. Enrique Geum (Yoon Si Yoon) is a popular video game star from Spain, and Go Dok Mi is a reclusive writer who guards her heart because she has been hurt deeply in the past. When Enrique catches Dok Mi spying on him —with binoculars–the fun begins as he pursues her. The boy next door, Jin Rak, is also interested in Dok Mi, but she just wants to be left alone–or does she? Dok Mi has one mood throughout: sullen and pouty and depressed. Nevertheless, the story was fun, and Enrique/Yoon is cute.

I Miss You Terribly sad melodrama dealing with sensitive themes such as child and spousal abuse, desertion, bullying, kidnapping and rape. It’s also about identity. Who am I? Am I who I decide to be? Is my family the people to whom I was born or the people I decide to make my family? And what about redemption and forgiveness? The ending, which is what I’ve learned you have to watch for in K-dramas, is heart-rending, but satisfying.

That Winter, the Wind Blows is a melodrama about a poor little rich blind girl who has no one to trust. Her father has just died (in mysterious circumstances). Her “step-mother” is really her father’s mistress and may be after her money. Her fiancÃ© also may have ulterior motives. So she goes looking for her long lost brother from whom she was parted at the age of five, before she went blind. Unfortunately for her, the brother she finds isn’t her real brother. Complications ensue. The cinematography is beautiful in this one, and the acting is excellent, except when they linger too long on the hopeless, longing looks. But the ending is (warning!) really, really ambiguous and unsatisfying.

Dream High is a rom-com set in a performing arts high school. The Headmistress compares it to the American TV series Fame. Lots of competition, winning and losing, who’s the best singer/dancer/composer/performer. And there’s some cute romance among the (older) teachers and parents and among the students.

King of Dramas is a drama about making K-dramas. The leading characters are all K-drama writers or actors and actresses or producers. The Headmistress says it’s filled with inside jokes, which obviously went over my head, but I enjoyed the sort-of inside look at the industry anyway. The ending is rather unbelievably sappy, but I didn’t mind. It was much better than a more realistic ending would have been.

Heirs is a fairly new K-drama (fall 2013) starring Lee Min-ho, an incredibly cute and popular actor who also starred in City Hunter and a popular one I couldn’t get into, Boys Over Flowers. Lee Min-ho was good in this drama about high school puppy love among the rich and famous, actually rich boy and poor girl. The girl was a little bit annoying with all the pouting and enduring sadness. The girl’s mom was mute, and I enjoyed her character. The actress who played the mom was excellent. The rich dads in this drama are all horrible, and the rich moms aren’t much better. And yet the children try really hard to respect and obey their villainous parents. It’s a Korean thing, and I’m not sure it’s a bad Korean thing since most parents aren’t nearly as autocratic and manipulative and unreasonable as the parents in Heirs. At least, parents in the USA aren’t that bad, and I hope they aren’t in Korea either. I liked Heirs, and I agree with what The Headmistress says about the relationship between the brothers. However, the American in me really wanted both brothers to walk away from their dictator daddy and start their own company. They nearly did, but all is forgiven in the end.

I tried to watch You Who Came from the Stars—three different times—on the strength of recommendations from lots of K-drama fans, but I just couldn’t get interested in the same way that I fell into most of the above. I must have missed something that everyone else loved, but I don’t know what it was. I watched several, actually many, episodes, but the magic just wasn’t there for me.

Th K-dramas I’m going to try next: IRIS 2, God’s Quiz, It’s Okay That’s Love, Marriage Not Dating, Scent of a Woman, What’s Up?, Shut Up Flower Boy Band, When a Man Loves, and Pasta. Most of these suggestions I got from this post at The Common Room.

IRIS (1), K-Drama Review

Jun19

I just finished the final (20th) episode of the K-drama, IRIS, last night, and it was indeed a roller coaster of a television series. IRIS is a spy thriller with LOTS of violence. Engineer Husband, who heard the show’s soundtrack coming from my Kindle as I watched, commented that there certainly was a lot of gunfire. I could have told him, but didn’t, that there was also a lot of blood, gore, and death in the program. I think as a movie in the U.S. it would get an “R” rating just for the violence.

So why did I continue to watch? Well, the characters were fascinating. Best friends Kim Hyun-Jun (Lee Byung-hun) and Jin Sa-Woo (Jung Joon-ho) are training to become some kind of Special Forces soldiers in the South Korean Army when they are recruited to become part of NSS, a fictional counterpart to American CIA (although Korea does have an NIS, National Intelligence Service which is similar to the NSS portrayed in the TV show). During the recruitment process they both, unbeknownst to the other, meet and fall in love with Choi Seung-Hee (Kim Tae-hee), who is already an NSS agent. Hyun-Jun is the one who finds that his affection is returned by Seung-Hee.

The remainder of the series finds Hyun-Jun and Seung-Hee and Sa-Woo weaving in and out of alliances and (violent) confrontations as they work within and without NSS to fight against the super-powerful, super-secretive, evil IRIS organization. The three fellow agents encounter traitors within NSS and unusual alliances, specifically with North Korean agent Kim Seon-hwa (Kim So-yeon), outside. There’s also some doubt about whether Hyun-Jun, Seung-Hee, and Sa-Woo are traitors allied with IRIS themselves at any given time during the series.

The themes of the series seem to be enduring love and loyalty, friendship, and the legacy of violence. Hyun-Jun is a conflicted character, believing himself betrayed by his own country, but also in love with Seung-Hee who is a part of the organization that betrayed him. The violence is the series intensifies over the course of the twenty episodes, and Hyun-Jun becomes as much a perpetrator as a victim. All of the characters, in fact, are caught up in a spiral of violence, and Hyun-Jun at least is not sure what it all means or why he does what he does. Is he seeking revenge? Maybe. Is he trying to protect Seung-Hee? To some extent. But he says a couple of times something to the effect, “I didn’t join NSS to do good or to be patriotic. I just wanted to enjoy doing something that I do well.” He’s good at “spy stuff”, so he takes up the invitation to join NSS. In doing so, he places himself in a web of violence and deceit that can only be unravelled or ended by more death and bloodshed.

Matthew 26:52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

I found IRIS fascinating, even though it had a few dropped plot threads and holes. And, warning, the ending is horrid, although maybe appropriate in both its ambiguity and tragedy. The filmography is beautiful, with scenes taking place mostly in Seoul, but also in Japan and in Hungary. There is a second season of IRIS, with different actors for the most part, but I’m not sure it will be worth all the blood and bullets that must be waded through in this series. I would recommend season 1 for those who don’t mind the violence (and some strongly implied premarital cohabitation).

Headmistress, Common Room reviews IRIS and does an episode-by-episode recap.

Full House, K-Drama Review

Jun5

I’m going to blog this one as I watch.

Episode 1: Ji Eun, the leading lady in this romantic drama, is sort of an “I Love Lucy” klutz. And I find it difficult, if not impossible to believe that she would just let her friends steal her house, clean out her bank account, and leave her stranded in China, without pressing charges. But Rain, the actor who plays the male lead, Young Jae, is really good-looking. Oh, Young Jae buys Ji Eun’s house from her thieving friends, not knowing that the house is stolen property.

Episode 2: Young Jae likes Hye Won. Hye Won likes Young Jae’s friend, Min Hyuk. Ji Eun just wants her house and her life back. Ji Eun’s “friends” just want an easy life on somebody else’s hard work and money. Gotta get this all sorted out by episode 16.

Episode 3: Ji Eun and Young Jae sign a marriage contract. It’s a marriage of convenience, a way for Young Jae to stay out of “scandals” and protect himself from his desire for Hye Won (who says they’re just friends, but shows up to spoil romantic moments between Young Jae and his “bride”, Ji Eun.) For Ji Eun, it’s a way to get her house back. Young Jae promises that the two of them will divorce within six months, and the house will be hers. Young Jae and Ji Eun get married, go on a honeymoon, ride bicycles, and fight.

Episode 4: Young Jae and Ji Eun fight. Ji Eun is a ditz, and Young Jae is a jerk. They make up, and Young Jae buys Ji Eun a recorder for her writing career as a birthday present. But he still orders her around like a jerk.

Episode 5: Young Jae is even more of a jerk. He calls Ji Eun a birdbrain and makes fun of her writing. He goes to meet Hye Won, who is just pulling his chain, at a bar, and he leaves Ji Eun waiting for him at the mall. He doesn’t even CALL, for Pete’s sake. He tries to make it up to Ji Eun by going to a movie with her, but Hye Won calls to say she’s in the hospital, and of course, Young Jae goes running to comfort her. Ji Eun tags along and sees her (platonic) “husband” holding Hye Won’s hand. This hand-holding thing is apparently very meaningful in Korean culture. Holding hands=he really likes her, not Ji Eun? Pretty boy jerk!

Episodes 6-9: More Young Jae moon-eyed over Hye Won. Hye Won is beautiful, but rather pitiful. The actress who’s playing Hye Won doesn’t seem to have much range: playful or tearful. That’s about it. More Ji Eun getting teated poorly by Young Jae. Did I mention that Young Jae (actor:Rain) is seriously good-looking, but the character he plays has issues with emotionally abusive behavior? More fighting between Young Jae and Ji Eun. But now Min Hyuk, the guy that Hye Won really likes when she’s not jerking Young Jae’s chain, likes Ji Eun. Ji Eun’s thieving friends continue to poke their fingers in the pie, mess things up, and provide comic relief.

Episode 10: Young Jae actually apologizes to Ji Eun! But his behavior doesn’t get much better. The couple sign a revised marriage contract with lots of new requirements from Ji Eun for Young Jae to fulfill (at least 105), including Young Jae has to help with the housework, and he must bring Ji Eun roses on Wednesdays. Young Jae signs the contract without reading it because he wants only one thing: for the contract marriage period to be extended to three years. He’s in love with Ji Eun but still hasn’t admitted it to himself. Ji Eun, on the other hand, is about to give up on Young Jae and go for Min Hyuk.

I knew from the beginning that Ji Eun and Young Jae were going to be together, for real and not just because of a contract of convenience, by the end of the series. But if I were advising Ji Eun at this point, I’d tell her to get herself away from Young Jae and think seriously about Min Hyuk. Young Jae tells her that she’s a birdbrain and an idiot at least five or six times per episode. The only thing he has going for him is his family, which I haven’t mentioned. Grandma (Halmoni) is a hoot, and the family loves Ji Eun. Young Jae, not surprisingly, is not on great terms with his family, especially his father who wanted him to be a doctor instead of an actor. Here’s a scene where Ji Eun gives a gift to Young Jae’s family—priceless:

Really though, what kind of man has a huge, bigger than life-size, model-type photograph of himself, bare-chested, hanging in his bedroom entryway? Narcissistic much?

The series did go on to end as I thought it would: Young Jae and Ji Eun together at last! I still think she would have been better off with the other guy, but you watch and form your own opinion. (I’ll reiterate that Rain, the actor who plays Young Jae, is a good-looking guy, but his behavior as Young Jae leaves something to be desired.)

Must Be a K-Thing

May6

In the K-dramas (Korean TV) I’ve been watching, I’ve noticed certain repeated idiosyncrasies and bits of business that show up over and over. All of these things seem odd to my American sensibilities, but I suppose they’re normal in Korea, or at least on Korean TV.

1. Nosebleeds. In a crisis or sometimes at the most inconvenient times, the lead actor or actress gets a nosebleed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American actor with a nosebleed. Koreans must have sensitive noses.

2. Sticking out the tongue. In the U.S., five year olds taunt each other by sticking out their tongues. Much older than that, and it just isn’t done. Kim Na Na (yes, that’s her name) sticks out her tongue at Lee Yoon Sung in City Hunter. The serious and mature Hang Ah sticks out her tongue at the very immature Prince Jae Ha in The King 2 Hearts. Korean girls poke fun by sticking out their tongues at the young man they’re flirting/sparring with? (Headmistress at THe Common Room: “Our experience in living in Japan and visiting Korea is that Asians really like cute a lot. Itâ€™s not just for kids.”) See #8 for more examples of the “cuteness” dealio.

3. Short skirts and high heels. All of the young ladies are quite chaste for the most part, no passionate kissing or PDA or cleavage, but they wear really, really short skirts and high heels all the time, even when a girl is running away from the bad guy. It looks uncomfortable to me–and bad policy if you’re trying to make a quick getaway. Sometimes the leading lady falls off her heels, or the shoe breaks, which may lead to:

4. The twisted or sprained ankle. This sort of accident, apparently very common in the course of a Korean romance, causes the hero, or sometimes the heroine, to come to the rescue with bandages and sympathy. If not a twisted ankle, some other bump or bruise can provide an opportunity for romantic first aid.

5. Romantic flashbacks: Lots of flashbacks with music to romantic moments between the couple who are fated to be together but can’t quite seem to get together. Sometimes it’s a montage of several near-miss and sentimental incidents. Sometimes they’re playing in a fountain or a park, or the girl falls asleep with the guy gently moving a strand of her hair away from her face. But these flashback moments all have in common that they are taken out of context. Usually, the interlude ended in a misunderstanding or a fight, but the reminiscing person never remembers that part.

6. Cellphones. Cellphones are ubiquitous in all the K-dramas I’ve watched. Yeah, I know they are pretty common here in the U.S., but the K-drama characters take it to another level. In Queen Inhyun’s Man, the cell phone becomes almost a central character or Hitchcockian MacGuffin.

7. Spunky girls and rude guys. I think the spunky girl with martial arts skilz would work in a U.S. romantic comedy or drama, but the rude guy who turns out to be sweet and honorable underneath would be outa there in a New York minute.

8. Piggyback rides. Really, grown-up guys are frequently giving their significant other lovely lady a piggyback ride. It seems . . . odd, but kind of cute. Other romantic situations in K-dramas: falling asleep on the guy’s couch (or shoulder), riding a two-seater bicycle together, running through a fountain, feeding each other (preferably feeding each other Ramen).

9. Actors as main characters and “play within a play”. Queen Inhyun’s Man is about an actress who is playing Queen Inhyun in an historical drama. In the series called The Greatest Love Doko Jin is an immensely popular actor, and his love interest is a singer/actress trying to make a comeback. I just started watching Full House, and the main guy is . . . an immensely popular actor.

10. Wrist-grabbing. The guy will grab the girl’s wrist to fend her off or express his displeasure. It doesn’t seem to be as rude and almost-abusive to the Korean girl in question as it looks to me.

11. Time travel and amnesia both show up frequently.

I’m not an expert on K-dramas, but I have become somewhat fascinated and maybe slightly addicted. I’m not sure what the draw is. My progeny certainly can’t fathom the attraction. Anyway, here are the ones I’ve watched with comments:

Queen Inhyun’s Man, aka The Queen and I. This one is an historical/time travel romance. A modern actress falls for a medieval (late 1600’s) hero who has a magic scroll that transports him back and forth in time.

King 2 Hearts. In an alternate history Korea, South Korea has a king with an irresponsible little brother, Prince Jae Ha. North Korea is still communist, but the two countries are trying to make peace by means of participating in a military contest together with a joint Korean team. Hang Ah is the star of the North Korean military contingent, and she and Jae Ha spar and eventually come together in an attempt to bridge the cultural gap between North and South.

The Greatest Love is a much lighter romantic comedy, a mash-up of Pride and Prejudice, A Star Is Born, and several soap opera plots. It was rather disconcerting to see actress Yoo In-na, who was the cute and perky leading lady in Queen Inhyun’s Man, playing the bad girl in this romcom. Doko Jin, the Darcy character, is way too proud for his own good, but he does eventually come down to earth, and the eventual resolution of the conflict is rewarding and fun to watch.

Full House. I just started this one and can’t tell you much about it, other than it’s rather implausible. In the first episode, the main character’s “friends” just sent her on a wild goose chase of a trip to China and sold her house while she was away. It looks as if the girl, Ji-eun, is fated to cross paths (repeatedly) with famous actor, Young-jae, who turns out to be the one who bought her house from the unscrupulous friends.

Actually, implausibility could be another Korean drama trope. North Koreans and South Koreans making nice with each other over joint military maneuvers? Doko Jin the famous actor mooning over a potato plant? A revenge-seeking superhero with mommy and daddy issues? Time travel via Buddhist scroll and cellphone?

However, I am addicted nonetheless, and I willingly suspend my disbelief and watch with bated breath to see what will happen next.

Les Militaribles

Mar21

The South Korean Air Force does a parody of Les Miserables:

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and King 2 Hearts

Mar17

War and peace is a recurring theme in literature, in movies and television, and in history. Seraphina, winner of the Cybil Award of 2012 in the Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy category, is about trust and mistrust between two different species, dragons and humans, in the kingdom of Goredd. My latest (second) K-drama, The King 2 Hearts, is about war and peace, trust and mistrust, between North and South Korea. Both the book and the TV series share some commonalities:

Tough-as-nails, but tender on the inside commoner girl meets insecure, but charming prince. Romance ensues.

Cultural differences create misunderstandings and lead two nations to the brink of war.

Evil villain tries to provoke war between the two groups.

Relationship between the girl and the prince mirrors the uneasy relationship between the two countries. Danger lurks everywhere, and almost all of the main characters come near to death multiple times in both Seraphina and King 2 Hearts.

There are also differences between the two stories. In the book, the dragons are emotionless, mathematical, and super-rational, unless they have taken on human form in which case they must be on guard against getting tripped up by human emotions. Yes, the dragons can transform into human bodies. (No, the humans can’t get dragon bodies–which doesn’t seem quite fair.) And Seraphina, our young protagonist, has a very special problem: she hides a secret that would, if revealed, turn everyone, both dragon and human against her and perhaps cost her life.

So, there’s a lot of interplay in Seraphina between the supposed opposite ways of viewing life: artistic and emotional or mathematical and rational. Unfortunately, Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk did it better. The idea of bridging cultural differences and making peace by bringing together two cultures is more interesting. Seraphina brings together the two cultures in the book because she has a unique identity, (POSSIBLE SPOILER) half dragon and half human. In King 2 Hearts the attempt to bridge two cultures is embodied in the proposed marriage of the South Korean prince to a North Korean bride. Of course, reconciling two disparate cultures is difficult, whether it’s an internal conflict or recurring discord and confrontation between two people who actually love each other.

It’s the conflict that keeps the story fresh and compelling. King 2 Hearts consists of 20 episodes, a length that I’m told is common for Korean dramas. It probably could have been improved by being shortened by about five episodes and tightened up. Some of the characters—the “psycho” super-villain, his stoned hired assassin, and the U.S. government official with the speech impediment, in particular–were rather unbelievable and cringe-worthy. But the series itself was addictive; I kept thinking I’d watch just one more episode, then one more, then one more . . .

If you want some (mostly clean) romance embedded in a story with Important Stuff to Say about war and peace I’d recommend Seraphina if you have a few hours to read a fantasy novel, and King 2 Hearts only if you have about twenty hours to invest in a roller-coaster of a TV show, with sub-titles and loads of Korean politics, mores and traditions. Consume both if you’re a glutton for political drama, fantasy, spy thrillers, romantic sparring, and a surprising but satisfactory resolution.

I hope to write more about King 2 Hearts and the other K-drama that I’ve watched, Queen In-hyun’s Man, soon. Suffice it to say I think I already have a K-drama problem, and I can’t, can’t, can’t start any more shows anytime soon or else I might be accused of family-neglect.

With an Accent: The King 2 Hearts.
The Common Room: A Few of my Favorite Korean Dramas.

Semicolon