It’s been a really long while since I wrote on this blog.
Missstranger and I have been chatting about our Korean drama (kdrama) fanaticism and she recommended we revive this blog to express our love (and sometimes dismay) over our favorite Kdramas.
I have been a fan of kdramas since the early 2000s, the early hallyu wave and it was shown in major networks in the afternoon and even primetime. Since it was then only shown on television, I never got to watch a kdrama from beginning to end as I missed episodes due to work schedules. I do remember watching episodes of “Autumn in my Heart” (my first kdrama crush being Won Bin) and “Jewel in the Palace”. There were other popular ones but I only got to watch an episode or two of those like “Full House”, “Winter Sonata”, “Kim Sam Soon”, and many others.
Back then, if you want to binge watch, you had to buy a DVD and the ones sold for cheap obviously were of less quality and had really bad subtitles. The first one I completed was “Princess Hours” and had to endure some headaching translations to complete but yes, it was a really nice and kilig love story of a prince and his arranged marriage princess set in an alternate world of modern South Korea that still has a monarchy. This show is now available on the viu site.
The second one that I got to watch with just one or two episodes missed is “49 Days” where missstranger was a dubber for the TV version. It was a fantasy set in a modern world with the girl able to live in another woman’s body for 49 days. This particular kdrama and many other Korean dramas where actually remade by major networks, though I rarely watch those.
Thankfully, because of advancement in internet bandwidth and technology, Korean dramas are now available on most major streaming websites so I was able to watch more. At 12 to 20 episodes, kdramas are long enough to tell different angles of a theme or social issue but short enough to binge watch for 3 days to a week. The stories make us laugh, cry, reminisce, dream, and understand different characters who we can love, relate to, or hate. Add to that, songs that are catchy and add so much color to the story, and transport us back to our favorite scenes when we hear them.
Currently, I am watching the ongoing kdramas “Twenty Five Twenty One”, “Business Proposal”, and “Thirty Nine” on Netflix.
Missstranger and I will try to write our own mini-reviews on our favorites.
For now, we’ll get our tissues ready for the last two episodes of “Thirty Nine”.
sabaw diaries 