HanCinema's Korean Blog - Korea's Diary, Pictures, Reviews

One of the many Korean drama Netflix exclusives, "Love Alarm", has been chugging along in production, and we have confirmations for the heroine, and all the men after her heart. Kim So-hyun will be taking the lead, joined by Song Kang, Jung Ga-ram, and Shin Seung-ho...More

Award shows are plentiful as we inch closer to the new year, but the Dramaland news machine always finds a way to chug along. This week I have a surprisingly diverse group of goodies for "The Crowned Clown", along with exciting stuff coming in 2019, and beyond...More

At the Geoje Prison Camp during the Korean War Gi-soo (played by Do Kyung-soo) is a North Korean Communist who actively resists against the American invaders of his country. "Swing Kids" never actually explains that this is why Gi-soo is such a hardcore partisan, instead going into how he is moved by the inherently inspiring nature of swing dancing. If you think that's bad wait until you get to Pan-rae (played by Park Hye-soo), whose material concerns of providing food for her orphaned siblings are also sidelined by the inherently inspiring nature of swing dancing...More

Archival footage explains how the Japanese discovered meth, and decided to use it during World War II to make their soldiers sharp for the war effort. This predictably resulted in a lot of veterans becoming drug addicts in the decades after the war, and facing local crackdowns, Japanese crime lords turned to suppliers in South Korea to pick up the slack. So it is that in the seventies bumbling fishmonger dad Doo-sam (played by Song Kang-ho) tries to get in on the action...More

Bae Chang-ho's debut feature was not an easy one to make. Although the source material, Lee Dong-chul's semi-autobiographical novel, was a best seller, Bae had to face government censors, which, at a time when Chun Doo Hwan's regime was at a fool bloom after a violent suppression of civil unrest, were at the pick of their power and of their strictness. Even before the start of production, the script was rejected five times and the censors listed 60 elements that they wanted changed. The requested changes included the film's title, the attitude of policemen towards the slum residents, and a husband pulling on his wife's hair during a fight...More

When one hears about a film that is the official one of the Winter Olympics (in this case of Pyeongchang Winter Olympics,) and that the director is appointed to shoot it, one is, inevitably, led to think that the effort would be one of glorification, almost completely stripped of objectivity, a promotional work, in essence. And although these elements are still present, Yi Seung-Jun has managed to shoot a documentary that is much more than a promotional piece, by focusing on stories of actual people, not all of which are characterized by athletic triumphs...More

JTBC is going after those US remakes hard, and its continued love for women-centric stories makes yours truly a happy puppy. Next up on the remake slate is TV Land series "Younger", the story of a divorced woman in her 40s trying to re-enter the job market by pretending to be in her 20...More