By Han Sang-hee
Staff Reporter
Experience is speaking volubly on the small screen these days, as former teen stars and now middle-aged veteran actors have made comebacks.
Local dramas have been favored ― and criticized - for pretty but inexperienced new faces depicting love triangles and romantic stories. However, many female viewers in their late 20s, 30s and 40s have noticed the charms of the realistic world of politics, both office and real life, portrayed by older actors who may not be young and fresh, but have the charisma and experience to lead.
The current most popular Monday-Tuesday period drama "
Queen Seon-deok" (MBC) stars
Ko Hyeon-jeong as the femme fatale Mi-shil of the Shilla Kingdom. The series may be the first period drama of her acting career, but the 38-year-old actor is making headlines.
"I watch the drama because of Ko. The other characters are interesting, but Ko does a great job portraying the mean, yet charismatic Mi-shil", Youn Myung-sook, 51, told The Korea Times.
SBS show
"Style" fea...
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Actress Hwang Sin-hye has been at the press meeting for her new upcoming drama, "The Queen Returns".
The drama is about a princess' fight to gain her happiness. The first episode will be released on the 14th!
Hwang will be costarring with Oh Yeon-soo, Tak Jae-hoon, and Lee Jae-hwang.
This will be a comic genre revealing Korean representative housewife, luxury gold miss, and a young gentleman loved by two older ladies!
Let's see how this story plot plays out!...More
Actress Park Tam-hee will be the bright and charming gold miss!
The new KBS drama "The Queen Returns" will be about the gold miss Choi Joo-hee acted by Park!
The drama is also about a housewife who wished to be a ballerina and a ballerina who dreamed to be a housewife. The ballerina will be acted by Hwang Sin-hye and the housewife will be acted by Oh Yeon-soo.
Park Tam-hee here, will be the dance university underclassman and a stage director for the ballet group in college, and once a fan of the ballerina, Do-kyeong but became anti-fan when ...More
The full force of the Korean Wave hit Japan in 2004. Four years later, the phenomenon known here as "hallyu" has succeeded in creating a comfortable niche for itself in the Japanese TV and music world.
In November, 2004, the initial frenzy clogged Narita Airport, as thousands of
Bae Yong-joon fans flocked to welcome him to Japan, ten people were injured as the crowd outside his Tokyo hotel scrambled to get a peek at him. Today, the hallyu boom has evolved into a calmer, sustained and widespread interest in Korean pop culture that has increased the Japanese public's desire to better understand the customs, lifestyle and cuisine of their closest neighbor.
Of course, not everyone has rushed to ride the Korean Wave, but it has succeeded in widening the perceptions and perspectives of many. Here on the northern island of Hokkaido, where Korean TV dramas are especially popular, signs of the hallyu presence are everywhere. Ladies gently jostle each other out of the way to get at the wide array of hallyu magazines at the local bookstore, and TV commercials remind us that the new "
Winter Sonata II" and "
Spring Waltz" pachinko (pinball) machines will be out soon. At the local music store, a large box containing a 30-centimeter
kwon Sang-woo doll decked out in the priestly robes he wore in the movie "
Love So Divine" is propped up against shelves full of Korean drama theme music collectors` boxes and DVDs from John-Hoon and
Rain.
In Hokkaido, five to six Korean TV series are shown each week on terrestrial TV, mostly on weekday mornings and mostly without Japanese dubbing. Not only have many Japanese TV viewers discovered they love Korean dramas, but they have found that they are just as happy watching them in the vernacular with subtitles. That would have been utterly unimaginable even a few years ago - an indication of the amazing effect the hallyu boom has had. Add in the plethora of dramas offered on Japan's dozens of satellite TV channels, and those of us who have never been to Korea could easily spend everyday there vicariously, if we like.
Nor is the exchange all one way. While Japanese TV tourists flock to Seoul, several Korean dramas have featured Hokkaido locales. This February and March, director
Kim Jin-min-I has been in the port town of Otaru filming a new TV drama starring
Lee Dong-wook and
Oh Yeon-soo that will air on MBC in May. Otaru is hoping it will be good for local tourism, too.
The big question, of course, is just why has the hallyu boom been so successful? Mutual profit, timing and quality seem to be the answers. The entertainment industries in both countries quickly recognized the lucrative potential of the pop culture exchanges, and have actively promoted them. It would be difficult to even try to estimate the reverberating economic impact of all the hallyu spin-off industries, from publications and tourism to language study and licensing.
The cross-cultural entertainment world influences are now so great, it's hard to imagine that this all took off just four years ago with one memorable TV drama - "
Winter Sonata", starring
Bae Yong-joon and
Choi Ji-woo. NHK, the national public broadcaster, decided to try it Saturdays at 11:10 p.m. in a time slot usually...
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