My Love From Another Star: American Cast

Apparently, ABC is going to make an American version of the superhit Korean drama, My Love From Another Star. I've already kind of reviewed the drama before (verdict: very good). If you want a quick synopsis, it's essentially a romantic comedy that asks what would happen if a Superman (who chooses to hide his powers) and a famous actress fell in love. If you're a fan of Korean dramas, go see it.

Generally speaking, American remakes of Korean entertainment have been reliably putrid (e.g. My Sassy Girl, The Lakehouse, Oldboy), so I don't have high hopes for this one. Nor will I be disappointed when, inevitably, all the things that made the original popular are lost in translation and the end product is a bland rom com. Besides, with sites like Viki and DramaFever, anyone can go directly to the source and cut out the American remake middleman, (subtitles included for all the non-Korean speakers).

But it'd still be fun to speculate as to what the ideal American cast would be. So here are my choices.

The Jun Ji Hyun Character

The JJH character is the biggest celebrity in her country. If there's a huge Chanel billboard in Times Square, then she's on it. If there's a hit TV show or movie, then she's the star. She is beautiful and always has a parade of suitors that she has fend off. And she knows all this, meaning she has a very, ahem, healthy ego and won't hesitate to tell you about it. But she's not perfect. She has a bad temper and is easily irritated because she's very used to getting what she wants. She's been in show business all her life, so she's not all that knowledgeable or curious about the world outside her spotlight, which often results in her exposing her ignorance. This doesn't mean that she's a bad or dumb person, though. In fact, she has strong principles and never fails to stand up for those whom she loves. She's just been in a pretty toxic industry for too long and doesn't have many people whom she trusts, including her own mother.

In casting the JJH character, two things are most important: she has to be believable as a beautiful superstar actress, and she has to be funny. She has to simultaneously be able to be strong and ditzy, without being annoying. If I were in charge, I'd cast Lizzy Caplan. She's obviously gorgeous, she can do comedy (Janis Ian from Mean Girls!), and she can pull off "attitude." Also, she is around the same age as JJH. She's established her prime time TV credentials with Masters of Sex, so she'd fit right in with another TV series.


The Kim Soo Hyun Character

The KSH character is actually centuries old, so he's more intelligent and experienced than any human being alive. Plus, he has Superman-like powers, everything from super-strength to super-speed to time-stopping. Problem is that he's learned over the many years that revealing his powers will only bring pain and suffering not only to him, but to those around him. So he has chosen to hide his abilities and bide his time on Earth until he can return to his home planet. As a result, he has also chosen not to establish any meaningful relationships. As a professor at a university, his youthful appearance, due to a slower aging process, also works against him as it causes others to not take him as seriously as they should. Including the JJH character.

For the KSH character, the actor needs to be able to play the straight man since the JJH character will be initiating most of the comedy. He has an affected sense of detachment that is often betrayed by how easily he's flustered, especially in emotional situations. I think Nicholas Hoult would work. He's already played "bespectacled brainiac" as Hank McCoy in the X-Men movies, so we'd buy him as a young clean-cut professor type. He's done comedy before in About A Boy, which was a fantastic movie, as well as TV with Skins. And the age gap between him and Lizzy Caplan would be almost exactly that of KSH and JJH. This perceived age gap is very important because it's a crucial element to the comedy between JJH and KSH. In the beginning, JJH treats KSH like a junior, which he clearly looks like. Of course, he is extremely annoyed by this since he is hundreds of years older than she is, but has to play along in order to maintain his cover.

***

It feels almost impossible to expect the American remake to capture what made the original so popular. Trying to successfully translating certain cultural norms (e.g. Korean celebrity culture, formal vs. informal speech, references to other dramas, the whole chicken and beer thing) might as well be a pipe dream. Moreover, a famous actress like JJH already has an established reputation among Asian audiences, so she could play with or against type for (meta) comedic effect. In an international remake, that's much harder to duplicate.

So in hopes of getting you more acclimated to the original, I'll end this post with a music video of the show, even though it makes it seem like a pure melodrama when it's more of a comedy (at least in the beginning). Enjoy!

My Love From Another Star: New Crack Drama!

I like to consider myself a person of my times, but I'm not always "with it." Take music, for example. I wish I could say that I keep up with current music, but I mainly listen to what has now become my college soundtrack. I once listened to "What Makes You Beautiful" and thought, 'Wow, what a catchy new song!' In 2013.

Greatest computer game
of all time

Or computer games. I've pretty much stopped playing games made past the mid-2000s, and I look all the way back to 1998 as the pinnacle era of gaming. Half-Life, Starcraft, Fallout 2, Thief: The Dark Project, and Grim Fandango? Come on, game over.

And as for TV shows, I've rarely ever followed a show as it was concurrently airing. Last season's Game of Thrones was an exception. And this year, with Breaking Bad, though I had watched all 4.5 seasons before the home stretch, I let the final half-season pass me by until I rushed to catch up at around the series finale time. Same thing with Korean dramas. Every time I've started a show, I've had the option to marathoning it because the series was over, often by a number of years. I could go as quickly or as slowly as I liked.

With Man From The Stars, I'm experiencing for the first time what it's like to have to wait while being in the dark about what will happen next. It's thoroughly frustrating because Man From The Stars is a very good show and I haven't experienced a "crack drama" like this since History of the Salaryman from a few years back. It's been a while since I've felt compelled to watch 5+ straight hours of a show, but this one made me do it.

Opening intro from the show

Man From The Stars (also known as You Who Came From The Stars) is romantic comedy about a 400+ year old alien who falls in love with a superstar actress. Yes, this was a concept that could've gone very badly very easily. I admit that, based on its paper pitch, I most likely wouldn't have watched it had I not seen a few scenes in passing on TV. As odd and silly as a central premise may be, it's hard to turn away Jun Ji Hyun and Kim Soo Hyun are on screen together, shot in beautiful hi-definition.

Jun Ji Hyun is more than just a pretty face... She's really funny too

Kim Soo Hyun isn't too bad-looking either, and he can hold his own against JJH

The basic story is that Do Min Joon (DMJ, played by Kim Soo Hyun) is actually an alien who got stranded on Earth about 400 years ago in Joseon Korea. He has incredible powers, including super strength, the ability to teleport, and the useful skill of freezing time for everyone except himself. However, he has learned to live life quietly (until the day he can finally leave) so as to not attract attention and to not interfere in the lives of others, especially since he believes in fate and wants to let things happen as they are meant to happen. He's kind of like Isolationist Superman.

CSY and DMJ are next door neighbours and they constantly fight

Flash forward to modern day Korea. DMJ has accumulated vast wealth and knowledge over the centuries and now works as a professor, which is belied by his youthful appearance since he hasn't visibly aged. Meanwhile, Chun Song Yi (CSY, played by Jun Ji Hyun) is the biggest female star in Korea who is far from the graceful and elegant beauty that her management company tries to portray her as. Despite all efforts by her managers, she constantly and publicly reveals herself to be vain, ignorant, and foul-tempered. Somehow, just as DMJ has found an opportunity to return to his home planet, he and CSY meet and potentially complicates his desire to leave, especially since she greatly resembles a girl whom DMJ fell in love with 400 years ago.

You can tell you're watching a bad drama when you don't even care to root for the protagonists. Perhaps you even want them to fail because they constantly in stupid, torpid, or unrealistic fashion. And you can tell you're watching a good drama when you become invested in even the secondary or tertiary characters.

DMJ and Lawyer Jang's conversations are some of my favourite in the show

Man From The Stars does the latter. There are the likes of Lawyer Jang, who is DMJ's sole friend and confidant. Even though Lawyer Jang is now an old man and DMJ is actually several centuries old, they interact almost like schoolboys and it's very funny. Also, there's Hwi-Kyung, who's far more entertaining than the typical second male lead because he's such a sheltered ditz. And there's Miss Hong, the unfortunate proprietor of a comic book store who's forced to serve the same 2 ill-mannered geeks who haunt her establishment 24/7.

But the main attraction (and not just physically) is the chemistry between the two leads. Relative status is important in Korean society, but it's completely upended here because while DMJ is much older and more learned than CSY, he looks barely older than a college student. Meanwhile, CSY is a superstar celebrity who is supposedly older. But she's also much more childish compared to him (being 400 years younger tends to do that), not to mention much less knowledgable about everything.

More bickering ensues

If you've seen the movie The Thieves, you'd have seen a similar romance dynamic between Jun Ji Hyun and Kim Soo Hyun, except he was much more lovestruck in that role. I think the makers of this drama wanted to capitalize on that chemistry, and it's been working well so far.

Not only that, but the character of CSY on her own is awesome as well. As mentioned before, she has a lot of personality flaws, but she's also loyal, honest, and not afraid to speak her mind. She reminds me of some of my favourite K-drama heroines like Kim Sam Soon (from My Name is Kim Sam Soon) and Baek Yeo Chi (from History of the Salaryman). Watching her get angry or cranky is one of funniest parts of the show.

So if you're looking for a big, expensive, and star-laden Korean drama and don't want to have to resort to watching The Heirs (sorry, can't help but hate), give Man From The Stars a try.

DMJ has the pimpest apartment ever

PS If people are wondering where they can watch all these dramas that I talk about, go to www.viki.com. The availability and video quality are great, and they all have subtitles (for any non-Koreans).

PPS Kim Soo Hyun is very good at rocking the skinny tie. I am very envious.

Classic Drama Review: Attic Cat

Having first aired in 2002, Attic Cat is pretty dated by now. In terms of visual technology, it looks almost like someone's home video, at least when compared with modern Korean dramas with their cinematic sheen. Also, fashion-wise, the show bears a lot of distinctly '90s iconography such as bucket hats, wide-legged pants, and flashy-coloured fabrics. If it weren't for the strong characters and sympathetic realism of the show, these factors may have rendered Attic Cat unwatchable today.

I watched Attic Cat many years ago, sometime around 2004 or 2005, I think. And still to this day, I haven't watched a Korean drama that depicts a relationship between two young people with as much honesty and empathy as this show does. The characters are refreshingly plain: Jung Eun (played by Jung Da Bin) is a young woman with only a junior college education who's trying to just find a full-time job, and Kyung Min (played by Kim Rae Won) is a struggling law student who can't quite devote himself fully to his classes and exams. There are no heirs/heiresses, or orphans with convoluted tragic backstories, or celebrities-in-disguise...

The plot is relatively simple as well. Jung Eun wants to rent a small place of her own in Seoul, but her down payment money gets stolen. Kyung Min, who comes from a more financially secure family, offers to lend her the money because he wants to impress Jung Eun's friend whom he has a big crush on. A few misfortunes later (e.g. gambling debts), Kyung Min finds that he has nowhere else to go but Jung Eun's little rooftop apartment, to which he claims partial ownership since he made the down payment. So the two of them end up unexpectedly (and secretly) living together out of sheer mutual desperation.

Not your typical Korean drama glamour

And things get complicated.

The show is essentially an observation of two young and broke people who aren't ready for relationships trying to make things work, often with horrible timing. Both of them have a lot of growing up to do, in opposite directions: Kyung Min is spoiled and selfish, while Jung Eun lacks self-confidence and doesn't know what to do with her life. It can sometimes be frustrating to watch 16 episodes of them making false starts in terms of personal growth, but that's the realism that I enjoy so much. People, especially young people, don't develop in consistent and linear fashion; rather, they grow in spurts, then regress, or remain stagnant in doing the same dumb things over and over again that harm themselves and those around them.

It's clear that Jung Eun and Kyung Min have a lot going for them as a couple, but their youthful shortcomings and naivete often sabotage their chances. It's both very amusing and aching to watch.

But here I go, making it seems as if Attic Cat is some super serious character study into contemporary Korean youth culture or something. It may be some of that, but it's also damn funny. Most of the best humour comes from the fact that Jung Eun and Kyung Min have to keep their living arrangement a secret, especially from their very conservative parents and grandparents. Obviously, in a society where most young people live at home until they get married, an unmarried couple that lives together will have a lot of explaining to do.  The cultural and generational clashes between the young main characters and their parents and grandparents are handled with just the right touch of slapstick comedy and serious drama.

The chemistry between the two leads is excellent as well. They constantly fight due to their polar opposite personalities (she's the hard-working ant, while he's the fiddle-playing grasshopper), but it is through these fights that you can get a sense of how much they care about each other and what the other thinks. I also think that Kim Rae Won does a great job of balancing out his character's immature self-centeredness with enough earnest thoughtfulness and goofy charm so that the audience can see why someone like Jung Eun would fall for him despite his many flaws.

Yes, the show bears many of the standard cliches of classic Korean dramas: the love square, the constant misunderstandings that are usually caused by accidental eavesdropping, the very repetitive soundtrack, the evil stuck-up second female lead, the saintly second male lead who just can't spark enough chemistry with the heroine, etc.

The theme song: "Come Back To Me"

But Attic Cat executes these familiar elements perfectly. For example, the soundtrack is repetitive, but the music is chosen very well so that it doesn't become irritating. The theme song has just the right blend of upbeatness and a tinge of bittersweetness that underlines this drama. And the second male lead isn't some wimpy lovesick fool, but rather, more of a mentor figure who's truly a nice guy instead of a Nice Guy™.

Often with Korean dramas, we're witnesses to a fantasy full of wealthy men, poor but beautiful women who'll have multiple handsome men fighting over them, wicked in-laws, celebrities who mingle with lucky commoners, time-travelling royals from the Joseon Dynasty, and so forth. But occasionally, we're treated to a gem like Attic Cat that tries to portray what it's like to be young, foolish, broke, and regrettably in love with someone whom you can't help but fight with every other night.

I wish there were more dramas like this.

Making subtitles for fun

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I embarked on a pretty ambitious summer project: to make English subtitles for the movie, Architecture 101. I know that I could easily just download an SRT file somewhere, and even if it's out of sync, it wouldn't be too hard to match up the time settings because I understand both languages. But the point is not to actually have the subtitles; it's to make them.

Subs Factory: The program that I use to create subtitles

In the past, I used to try to subtitle various Korean TV shows as an exercise to not only improve my Korean vocabulary, but also to try to explore the almost-inexpressible subtleties between the Korean and English languages. The never-ending struggle in subtitling (and translation in general) is to strike that balance between faithfulness to the original dialogue/text and natural speech in the translated language. If you make too direct a translation, then the result will be awkward, stilted, and possibly comical. But if you take too many liberties, you may actually end up significantly altering the source material.

An example of a Korean word that I find very difficult to translate is "놈", which is pronounced "nom" (with the "o" sounding like "Ohm", except not drawn out). It's kind of a swear word, but it's also not. If you say it to a stranger, you'll probably start a fight. But friends use it with each other to just joke around, as do parents with their children. What's the English equivalent? Maybe "bastard"? But if you put that in subtitles, it can look extremely harsh, especially when you have a father character saying it to his kid.

Our very own artisanal handcrafted subtitles!

In fact, some of the hardest stuff to translate happens when parents talk to their kids. For example, there are lots of half-cute/half-chastizing words in Korean that a parent can use when his/her kid does something stupid. But if you translate that into English, they tend to come out as "Idiot", "Fool", "Dumbass", etc. It ends up sounding very cruel and abusive when it's not.

When I make subtitles, I also realize how much is irretrievably lost in translation. That saddens me because that means no matter how well a French, Chinese, or Turkish movie is subtitled, I am probably losing at least about 50% of what makes the movie good. Even if I were somehow to magically become fluent in the relevant language, I would probably miss out on all the cultural stuff that you can only get from growing up in that culture. I mean, I grew up in a Korean household with immigrant parents who always spoke to me in Korean, and I understand most stuff in TV shows and movies, but I'm still not in tune with the culture-specific stuff because. For example, I never went through the Korean school system, served (or had to think about serving) in the military, etc.

Like when I was watching Answer Me 1997, I wasn't able to directly relate to the epic H.O.T. vs. g.o.d. fanwars that ensued in the 1990s. And I'll never be able to. Sadness.

Anyway, the program I use is called Subs Factory, and it's free to download. The only bothersome thing about it is that it can only play MP4 videos, I think. Therefore, if you have files like AVIs and MKVs, you'll need to download/buy a video file converter to change them to MP4s.

Drama Reviews, Pt. 2

Boys Over Flowers

Man, it's embarrassing to admit that I watched this. Not only did I watch it, I finished it. All 25 episodes.

To be fair, I watched it way back in the fall of 2010, which was the beginning of what would be my two-year stay in Korea. I had no idea what was popular here, so I just did some quick research and went for the drama with the most buzz.

Boys Over Flowers makes NO SENSE. The characters are ostensibly high school students in contemporary Seoul, but the universe they actually live in defies laws of physics, chance, behaviorial logic, etc. They go to school but there are never any teachers or even adults around. They go home but there are hardly any parents around, and if there are, those parents are wildly irresponsible and incompetent. It's kind of like an adolescent fantasy where the world truly does revolve around 17-year olds because they are really just that important.

The protagonist, Geum Jan Di (played
by Gu Hye Sun), is the only girl in
her school who is willing to call
out the F4 for the sadistic creeps that
they are and slowly get them to
change their ways

Not that I didn't enjoy the drama, especially as an introduction to Korean pop culture. I also know it's not aimed at me because the show is about a lower-class, pretty-but-not-too-pretty schoolgirl who somehow ends up being at the center of not one, not two, not three, but four hot guys' universe.

And if you're a guy and you feel a little annoyed at this concept, imagine how every girl and woman feels when they watch, uh, every other show and movie ever in which attractive women inexplicably orbit around one remarkably ordinary male protagonist.

Oh, you may want to know the basic storyline, which is based on a Japanese manga. Geum Jan Di becomes a "charity" admit to the exclusive Shinhwa School after she saves a suicidal student from that school. Shinhwa unabashedly caters to the super-wealthy and is kind of an autocratic Lord of the Flies-esque hellhole ruled by the F4, a quartet of the wealthiest and most attractive guys at the school. Jan Di, however, is not impressed by them, and the whole show is about her butting heads with its leader, Gu Jun Pyo.

I think the drama ultimately outdid itself when Jan Di was forced to work as Jun Pyo's servant (complete in a French maid outfit) due to his mother's evil schemings...

Yes, the show doesn't even seem to try to achieve any suspension of disbelief. Yes, the soundtrack is way too repetitive and seems to becoming a running joke. And yes, the plot gets way too ridiculous at the end with kidnappings, secret arranged marriages, and the whole indentured servitude thing.

If I were to watch it now, maybe I'd actually hate it. But I have too many fond memories of it being my first foray to modern Korean pop culture, so I'm probably not being as neutral as possible here. Go watch it, ironically if you have to.

This is basically "Entourage" for tween girls

City Hunter

Based on a Japanese manga, City Hunter is about a young man who is raised by his ex-special forces father to exact revenge on the country that betrayed and abandoned his unit many years ago. Yoon Sung (played by Lee Min Ho, who was also in Boys Over Flowers) grows up in the forests of Thailand amidst outlaws, and his father, Jin Pyo, trains him to be a lethal and remorseless killing machine. When he comes of age, he is sent to Seoul so that he can hunt down and kill all the high-ranking officials who were responsible for that failed military operation.

What City Hunter does superbly is sell the desire for revenge. Without it, the whole premise of the drama would be undercut and we'd just be watching a murderous father-son team with whom we can't sympathize. But the first episode gives real meat and weight to Jin Pyo's bloodthirstiness. It also humanizes him, because you realize that he needs this revenge because it's all he has left after having lost his best friends and his faith in serving his country.

Of course, Yoon Sung doesn't actually become a murderer, and his disillusionment with never-ending revenge becomes another point of conflict as he has to fight back against his father.

The question of who the antagonist actually is in this drama is never fully resolved, even at the end, and I think that's what made this show compelling. Is Jin Pyo a ruthless psychopath, or do the corrupt government officials and captains of industry deserve to be brought down? The storyline also benefits from its episodic nature: Yoon Sung has five targets to kill, so every few episodes, a new and easily identifiable goal is apparent. This prevents the drama from becoming lost in its objectives and sagging in the middle.

In his defense, Superman was even lazier with
his disguise

The drama also scores high because of its quality action scenes. It's obviously not at the level of a blockbuster film, but it doesn't seem cheap, cheesy, and obviously fake. Lee Min Ho may have played a foppish rich boy in Boys Over Flowers, but he's fairly convincing as a lethal weapon here.

Oh, and the soundtrack is awesome and varied as well. Yim Jae Beom and Kim Bo Kyung sing two of the drama's main songs, and there are some well-done orchestral/instrumental pieces, which lend to the drama's cinematic feel.

There are hardly any negatives to this drama. One minor quibble is that Lee Min Ho's wardrobe seems to get progressively more outlandish. It's hilarious enough that he's supposed to be an MIT-educated computer genius with that kind of K-pop hairdo. But then he starts wearing pink pants and unnecessarily ornate jackets, and I was, like, "Come on."

Oh, and it's kind of ridiculous of nobody knows the identify of the "City Hunter" when it's CLEARLY Lee Min Ho in a surgeon's mask. I mean, he doesn't even bother to ugly up his hair.

But I'm just taking potshots right now. This is an excellent action drama that's genuinely free of any stooopid factors. Characters behave in believable and motivated ways, and that's what makes the difference.

Elephant = Meaning business

Secret Garden 

   

I never got into Secret Garden, which was an epic mega-smash back in late 2010, early 2011. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing its signature ballad or seeing some version of the infamous track suit that Hyun Bin's character wears in the show.

Joo Won (played by Hyun Bin) in his running joke of a track suit, and
Ra Im (Ha Ji Won)

The drama is well-written, and its cast is uniformly excellent. Hyun Bin may not be the most versatile actor in the world, but he's pretty unbeatable when playing the cold, rich jerk who's actually kind of a dork behind all the fronting. And there aren't many Korean drama actresses who could convince me that she was a professional stuntwoman, but Ha Ji Won is one of them.

I think I just wasn't captured by the classic "love square" format that was reminiscent of all the classic Korean dramas. The characters are pretty
stock as well, with the wealthy guy and the poor girl. There is an element of fantasy when the notorious body switch between Joo Won (Hyun Bin) and Ra Im (Ha Ji Won) happens, but for the most part, the drama is the classic love square story. No matter how funny or sharp the drama was, it felt a little too familiar and stale.

Cue that Baek Ji Young theme ballad that was everywhere in late 2010 and early 2011

You're Beautiful

There are a couple of problems with the basic plot idea of a girl pretending to be a boy in order to fit into a group. In You're Beautiful, Park Shin Hye plays a girl who needs to pretend to be a boy in order to join a famous band so that she can be reunited with her long-lost family.

First, it's just very hard to believe that anybody would mistake Park Shin Hye for a boy, especially if they are around her for a long time. You can't hide that kind of pretty! Plus, you know, the abnormally high-pitched voice for a dude? It's like how Coffee Prince was almost made completely silly by the notion that someone as hot as Yoon Eun Hye could be mistaken for a dude just because she had short hair.

Yeah, I totally watched Les Miserables and Amelie thinking that Anne Hathaway and Audrey Tautou's characters were both men.

But okay, maybe you could argue that while their feminine features may not make them look like men, their features make them look like little boys, especially since they're shorter than the guys around them. That brings us to the second problem: then why the hell are these male characters hanging around those whom they genuinely believe to be little boys?!

There were other problems that prevented me from liking this drama too. For example, the main male character (played by Jang Geun Suk) was just way too unpleasant at the beginning. There's First-Male-Lead-In-A-Korean-Drama jerkiness, and there's Just-Plain-Jerk jerkiness. He was more of the latter. And his bandmates were just irritating. There's your typical supremely boring manservant of a second male lead (played by CN Blue's Jung Yong Hwa) and the overacting "comic" relief whom you just want to shoot with a double-dose tranquilizer (played by FT Island's Lee Hong Ki).

I never went past the first few episodes, and I won't go back to this one.

Drama Reviews, Pt. 1

Remember these? 

The first Korean dramas that I can ever remember watching were Star In My Heart and Autumn Fairy Tale. Those were truly the olden days, so in order to watch them, my parents would have to go to the local Korean supermarket and rent home-recorded VHS tapes, still in their generic off-white covers. I think there was one obscure cable channel that occasionally relayed Korean network TV all the way to North America.

Now, all I have to do is go to a website like Viki to have easy access to HD quality of every Korean show out there. And after watching it, I can go to Dramabeans for a recap in case there were some things that I missed, and see how others felt about this and that.

What a different world it is now.

Answer Me 1997

Answer Me 1997 is about a boy band-obsessed teenage girl named Shi Won. She lives in Busan with her parents. She and her father constantly fight, especially because he thinks her beloved pop stars are ridiculous. The show follows the lives of her and her friends through their high school years before jumping to depict them as a adults in their 20s.

Shi Won and Yoon Jae: Childhood friends and... future lovers?

What makes this show work is that it stays as grounded as possible and pays very close attention to its time period. While it may be a little silly to refer to a 90s-centered show as a period piece, there were very distinct and unique elements of that era, especially in a rapidly-changing society like Korea's. Of course, I didn't grow up there so most of the attentions to detail were lost on me.

But even so, it was easy to tell that this show was dedicated to telling an honest story. There are no gimmicky plot points or high-concept ideas that could easily be converted to an elevator pitch. This is "just" a show about a pretty normal teenage girl who's obsessed with pop idols and finds school to be a struggle, both in terms of academics and personal relationships. Her story isn't particularly exceptional or different from those of others like her, but a story doesn't need the bizarre or the extreme to be interesting.

It's the characters who make stories, and this drama has plenty of good ones. You can tell if a show has solid characters if you can envision each one being the protagonist of his or her own show. That's evidence that the characters, even the supporting ones, have enough depth and motivation to not simply be plot devices for the leads around whom everything in the universe revolves. Every character here is well-defined, so much so that viewers become emotionally invested in the little life events that are familiar to us all.

Shi Won and her friends making good use of school time by perusing
through celebrity magazines

Answer Me 1997 is beautifully shot in warm cinematic tones, and it deftly moves from funny to sad to bittersweet to funny again. It deals with issues like homosexuality in a sensitive and fairly realistic manner, and the story is paced well so that it doesn't drag on towards the end as a lot of dramas do. The only flaws that I can think of is that the story becomes a bit less interesting once it shifts to their adulthood. Plus, they don't even change the kids' hairstyles. Come on, who keeps the same hairdo at 27 as they did at 17. Also, this is just due to my lack of Korean fluency, but the Busan accents made it difficult to understand what they were saying sometimes. It almost sounded like Japanese when I couldn't understand.

Very highly recommended.

School 2013

I was never educated in the Korean system, and I'm quite grateful for that fact because the stories of unbearable pressure and anxiety are rife and infamous. So I'm very curious as to what the actual experience is like.

School 2013 tries to examine the issues that contemporary Korean high school students face. The show revolves around 2 teachers of very different types. There's Teacher Jung In Jae, who believes that it's her job to instill a love of learning (especially her subject, literature) in her students, and that she should become emotionally invested in their personal development. On the other hand, Teacher Kang Sae Chan believes that his job is to maximize his students' test scores so that they can enter the university of their choice. He sees himself as working in a kind of service industry, and he is loath to get attached to any of his students.

Teacher Jung In Jae (left) and Teacher Kang Sae Chan (right)

Perhaps the dichotomy is a little heavy-handed and obvious here, but it does give us a chance to see the clashing of two diametrically opposed philosophies. And this isn't some fairy tale in which the effortlessly idealistic Teacher Jung magically inspires her demoralized and stressed out students with a few poem readings, thus vanquishing her cynical counterpart. The harsh realities of public education and the competition they engender in not only the students but also the administration are made apparent at every turn.

Two things made this drama particularly compelling. First, the give-and-take relationship between the two teachers provided the show with a strong heart. Teacher Jung isn't a totally naive, and Teacher Kang isn't completely heartless. They exasperate one another, but they also yield as well because they're not perfect people who have nothing to learn themselves.

Long-time friends Park Heung Soo (front) and Go Nam Soon (back)
have to deal with troubled home lives and constant run-ins with
the law

Second, I loved the show's panoramic treatment of the students. Almost every type of student is given a fair and rounded treatment, from the try-hard to the overachiever-with-the-crazy-mom to the bully to the joker to the drifter... The show even pauses to pay attention to the "nobody" students, the ones who lack any sort of distinguishing characteristic, whether good or bad, at that stage in their lives. I thought that that was a very insightful touch because high school stories tend to solely focus on the extreme personalities as if they're the only ones that matter.

I immensely enjoyed this drama because of its diverse portrayal of characters, and its realistic treatment of a complex problem. Some drawbacks are that a few of the young actors who play the supporting student characters aren't that great at acting, but they're not distractingly so. Besides, the drama is carried well by the two actors who play the teachers, as well as the two young actors who play the two main students. The actor who plays the bully is also very engaging as well.

Song Ha Kyung (left) is too much of an academic gunner, and
Lee Kang Joo (right) is always trying to help others, even
at her own expense

Another highly recommended drama.

Flower Boy Next Door

I was excited about this one because it's a TVN show (the same cable channel that made Answer Me 1997), and it stars Park Shin Hye. The story revolves around a reclusive girl named Dok Mi who rarely ever ventures out of her apartment and lives a frugal life as an underpaid copywriter. She has a crush on a man who lives in the building across from hers, and she likes to spy on him. Her neighbors are two struggling web-comic artists, one of whom starts a comic based on her because he's been secretly in love with her from afar.

Park Shin Hye: So cute! Even when she's
supposed to be a Howard Hughes-esque
creeper...

I stopped watching it because I didn't feel that the show had a sense of direction. It seemed to be mainly about this group of zany characters who existed in this claustrophobic little universe that revolved around them. It was hard to get a sense of who Dok Mi was because she was always hiding away or running away, and just being passive and quiet. If that's her character, then that's all well and good, but I needed more of an explanation as to why she was like that in order to care.

I really want to give this another chance, so I'll start from episode 1 again soon.

Queen In-Hyun's Man

I was drawn to this one after seeing how gorgeously shot it was (I guess I'm just a superficial jerk), and hearing how the chemistry between the female and male leads was great. In fact, they're dating in real life now, I believe. I also saw the lead actress Yoo In Na in the TV series High Kick 2 and the drama Secret Garden, and I liked her in both.

The plot is pure fantasy: a Korean warrior-scholar from centuries ago somehow time travels to modern Seoul and just so happens to run into the actress who is playing the TV show version of the very queen that he served. This time travel conceit was all the rage last year in Korean dramas, and while I usually despise time travel as a premise, reliable reviews praised the show as being the most consistent and realistic in adhering to its own time travel rules.

The problem with the show is that I'm still not a fan of historical Korean dramas, and significant parts of the early episodes are set in old timey Korea where everybody speaks in very affected ways and act in manners that seem very theatrical to my gyopo eyes and ears. I liked the show when it stayed in the modern era, but whenever it went back to the time of swords and horses, I found my interest flagging and eventually, I stopped watching.

But the drama as a whole looked promising, so I will probably revisit it soon.

History of a Salaryman: Quite possibly my favourite Korean drama

Don't let this ironically dramatic promo shoot fool you; this show is a zany and irreverent
laugh riot from start to finish

Preface: Korean TV shows (usually referred to as "dramas") are usually 16-20 episodes in length. There are no seasons, so a Korean drama functions more as a very long mini-series, to put it into an American context.

Almost everybody in America these days would agree that right now, television is artistically superior to film. On TV, we have (or had) shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Game of Thrones, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Arrested Development. Meanwhile, on the supposedly more prestigious silver screen, audiences wait for the annual reboot or sequel to the tentpole blockbuster franchise movie.

Hey, this time, Superman is in a WHEELCHAIR! How revolutionary!

Yoo Bang (played by Lee Bum Soo), the unlikely hero of this Korean drama

In Korea, it's the exact opposite. There are almost no shows that penetratingly examine morality, race relations, or social artifice as the top American TV shows do. The best Korean films often push their medium's expectations to the boundaries (for example, the films of Park Chan Wook and Boon Joon Ho), but the best Korean TV is mainly still forgettable fluff starring attractive people doing the same thing that they do in all the other dramas.

I start to watch a lot of Korean dramas, but I rarely finish them. The driving narrative usually peters out by episode 12ish, and the last few episodes are usually just filler as writers are forced to manufacture conflict to prolong the show for just a little bit more.

Yoo Bang's initial nemesis and eventual ally is Yeo Chi (played by Jung Ryeo Won), the hyper-spoiled, tough-as-nails, and foul-mouthed granddaughter of the CEO

It also doesn't help that Korean dramas are often used to try to launch the acting careers of many young pop singers. Most of these people aren't very good at acting, at least at the beginning of their careers.

So I was extremely happy to discover History of a Salaryman, which is only one of 2 Korean dramas that I can honestly say is just as good as, or perhaps better than, the best that the likes of HBO or AMC has to offer (My Name is Kim Samsoon is the other one).

History of a Salaryman follows the story of a man named Yoo Bang (which apparently means "boobs" in Korean), a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of guy on the bottom rung of society. Through sheer circumstance, he gets caught in the middle of high-stakes corporate espionage, and instead of being played for a patsy, he uses his hitherto unacknowledged intelligence, resourcefulness, and leadership skills to emerge as a winner for the first time in his life.

This is how Yoo Bang honestly thinks hedonistic playboy heirs dress like

From what I've described, you may think that Salaryman is a dour morality tale, but it's actually a screwy comedy. The fact that the main character's name is "Boobs" should be a giveaway that the show didn't take itself too seriously. The satirization of Korean corporate culture is very sharp as well, and it manages to be so without becoming preachy.

The show is exciting and addictive because it's unpredictable. There are no clearcut bad guys (at least until the very end) as even the Big Bad Corporations are necessary evils because Yoo Bang dreams of becoming a hotshot CEO himself.

At over 22 hours of total viewing time required, History of a Salaryman is a big commitment, and those who are not already fans of Korean dramas may be unwilling to invest that kind of time in a foreign language show. But if you're curious about what the best of Korean TV has to offer, I can't recommend anything over History of a Salaryman.

Yoo Bang and his boss: The obligatory hero-piggybacks-his-drunk-girlfriend-home trope, with a small twist

PS Anybody who's been convinced by me to give this show a shot can find the torrent files at: http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/torrents.php/images/vss/viewtopic_http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/images/vss/viewtopic_p1294968.htm

PPS The show is shot beautifully, with cinema-like visuals. As more Korean TV stations invest in low-cost, high-quality video cameras like the Canon 5D Mk IIs, Korean dramas will hopefully leave behind the "home video" look that many shows used to have.