I began watching a new Korean TV series.
I never got more than few episodes into the last one I tried, which was called 밤이면 밤마다 (which is translated, I think inaccurately, as “When it’s at night”). I couldn’t get into the rather rah-rah-yay-Korean-history premise, of these people working for the “cultural properties division” of some government agency, mostly bashing Japanese thefts of Korean national properties. It’s not that I don’t believe such things are happening, or at the least, have happened in the past. It’s just that, when couched in tones of unreflective nationalism it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
This drama was all the rage over the winter, here. It’s a Korean remake of a Japanese remake of an originally Japanese manga series: 꽃보다男子 (“Boys over flowers”). The premise is OK, I guess, and I’m trying my best to watch it partly because with a bunch of 10-13 year old students who are obsessed with it (especially the girls), I felt like I should try to know what it was about. Maybe over time, it will grow on me. So far, it seems the acting is of lower quality than some other series I’ve seen — partly, the problem is having a bunch of 20-somethings playing supposed high school students. I heard that the Taiwanese remake of the show reset it to college, and that might have been a better strategy here, too. I find the main actress’s efforts to be a wide-eyed innocent high school junior implausible when not downright annoying. And the “bad-boy” gang-of-four heroes are more of the entitled, tantrums-will-always-get-you-what-you-want young men that seem all the rage in Korean romantic comedy these days as lead characters. I’ll try to remember to report back, I guess.