Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

Our family has never been a big fan of Korean drama shows. In the last seven years that we’ve been in Canada, homesickness has never expressed itself in the form of wanting to watch Korean TV shows. There are reasons besides just our lack of interest. Videotapes of TV shows are hard to come by where we live and until recently, the consensus was that K-drama just wasn’t all that good.

Recently though, my parents have been watching some K-drama. Perhaps it’s the lack of entertainment, or rather, headache my sister and I used to provide for my parents since we both left for college. Also, there’s been a lot of buzz surrounding a show called “Winter Sonata”. It has been a huge hit in Japan, and maybe that bit of international recognition sparked my parents’ interest. So my dad came home with 5 episodes of “Winter Sonata” on videotape. After playing with our VCR, which hadn’t been used since we got a DVD player, we finally sat down to watch “Winter Sonata”. And I must say, I was utterly disappointed.

Basically the story goes like this. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy gets hit by a car and dies. Few years later, girl is engaged to a childhood friend. But wait, her new client looks just like her first love! And he’s going out with her childhood friend who seems intent on ruining our poor heroine’s life for some odd reason. So far, that’s all I’ve watched, but I can guess the rest.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t like the show. I was starting to get mad and frustrated at the show. I could forgive the overused plot, the stereotypical characterizations and half-decent acting. What I couldn’t get over was the heroine. I know I was supposed to sympathize with her, but I was wanting to smack her. She was wimpy, passive and couldn’t stand up for herself. At least, that’s how I saw her character. The writers of the show probably wanted to portray her as a hardworking, intelligent career woman, but the number of scenes devoted to making her look capable is miniscule compared to the number of scenes that made me want to smack some sense into her. I would have been rooting for the villain had she not been so manipulating. The villain had character traits that I would have liked. Aside from her horrible hair and evil schemes, she seemed independent and actually went after the things she wanted. At any rate, to break the glass ceiling, which I would imagine is lower and thicker in Korea, people like our heroine wouldn’t stand a chance.

The show could have been so much more. The characters could have been more complex than just good and evil. The story could have moved much faster. I could probably get the gist of it from the first 2 episodes and the last 2 episodes.

Keep in mind that I’ve only watched the first 5 out of 20 episodes. My dad claimed that I “didn’t get it” because I had become too much of a banana - yellow outside, white inside. Still, I’m not sure I want to “get it” if it involves not saying what I want to say or having to swallow indignant situations. Especially if “it” involves being a silent, dainty lady who doesn’t seem to mind being stepped on.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 at 2:50 am and is tagged with winter sonata, girl fall, korean tv, korean drama, career woman, childhood friend, homesickness, odd reason, international recognition, lack of interest, miniscule, first love, heroine, sonata, videotapes, vcr, videotape, seven years, consensus, dvd player. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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