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

Park Shin-hye's Instagram and Choi Tae-joon's Instagram

Park Shin-hye has been in a relationship with Choi Tae-joon since 2018. In spite of this, the actress is not generally well-understood to currently have a boyfriend. So it was with some surprise that a journalist in a recent interview asked Park Shin-hye a question on the topic. Park Shin-hye's response was brief, but firm in confirming the continued existence of the relationship...More

As is the case with many dramas, "It's Okay to Not Be Okay" opened up its first week with much exposition as to character backstory when they were younger...More

Kim Soo-hyun had a successful first outing with his new drama "It's Okay to Not Be Okay", his first project in five years. The drama earned average ratings of 6.1% with a high of 7% on Saturday night, earning accolades from viewers for its unusual approach. The drama began with an animated prologue and moved on to incorporate a similarly unique fairytale style once the story moved to live action sections...More

Lee Yoo-bi and Lee Jun-young had noteworthy turns as guest stars in the second episode of "Backstreet Rookie", briefly appearing as guests in the convenience store where the drama takes place. This is the first appearance of Lee Yoo-bi in a drama since "A Poem a Day" in 2018, and the first for Lee Jun-young after "Good Casting", which finished airing earlier in the week...More

Soo-in (played by Lee Joo-young) is a high school baseball player who wants to go professional. But where as a middle school student Soo-in was hailed as a genius pitcher, in high school age she has fallen behind her male peers. Yet nothing about Soo-in is portrayed all that romantically. Soo-in is first and foremost a sullen teenage girl who's used to feeling beaten down and not getting much support...More

The opening narrative crawl of "The President's Last Bang" stoically informs us about how President Park Chung-hee (played by Song Jae-ho) brutally rolled back pro-democracy demonstration movements throughout his reign in the sixties and seventies. Then, as we get to the scripted part of the story, we learn that Park Chung-hee seems less like a tyrannical dictator and more like an eccentric rock star, complete wiith groupies and torture dungeons. Also he has a serious Japan fetish...More

As the fifties were coming to an end, the anti-Rhee establishment/pro-South Korea sentiments were becoming stronger and stronger, something that eventually  led to the "April 19 Revolution", a student movement that eventually led to the resigning of President Syngman Rhee. The sentiment of the era was also mirrored in cinema, and Yu Gwan-sun, a student that repeatedly demonstrated against the Japanese rule until her death in the hands of the authorities in 1919, and a symbol of freedom and resistance against Japanese imperialism for Korean people, offered the perfect base...More