You’re the Best, Lee Soon Shin or You Are the Best! or Choegoda Yi Sun-sin or 최고다 이순신 (2013)

Kim Jung-ae and Lee Chang-hoon have Three daughters:
Mild natured Lee Hye-shin is the eldest one.
She moves back home with her daughter, Han Woo-joo, after spending Seven years in Hong Kong with her immature husband, who cheated on her.
Now that they are divorced, she’s afraid to tell her family about it.

Lee Yoo-shin is the second daughter, she’s smart and beautiful and has a good job, she’s also tends to be very selfish and even cruel to her little sister.
Despite casually dating, she’s into being a career woman and not into getting married.

Lee Soon-shin, the youngest is not considered to be beautiful like her older sisters, despite trying her best, she can’t get a proper job and instead finds a temp job as a waitress.
Soon-shin has a crush on Park Chan-woo, her neighbor and best friend’s brother, who’s also a dermatologist, but Chan-woo is interested in Yoo-shin, who’s makes fun of his feelings.

Jang Gil-ja and Park Bok-man are Chan-woo’s parents and good friends with the Lee family.
Gil-ja is a strong, opinionated woman, who didn’t have an easy life.
She started a chicken restaurant to support her family, that was poor for years because Bok-man was unlucky and lazy when it came to jobs.
Shin Joon-ho used to be a singer and musician and now he has his own own company, Gabi Entertainment.
At a grand comeback event for Song Mi-ryung a veteran actress and his company’s first client, Joon-ho tries to impress an old love of his, Choi Yeon-ah, an ex figure skater, who turned actress, but ends up embarrassing himself when poor Soon-shin runs into him with a tray full of food.
When her manager demands that she apologize, Joon-ho demands that she’ll be fired.
After a frustrating lunch with Park Chan-mi, her best friend and Chan-woo’s sister, Soon-shin gets an offer to become an actress from a swindler who presents himself as Joon-ho and gives her his card.
Shin Dong-hyuk, Joon-ho’s father owns a hospital and is not pleased with his son’s profession.
He’s afraid that his son will marry an actress so he arranges blind dates for him but Joon-ho is not interested in any of the women that he goes out with.
Soon-shin comes home and tells her family about the offer that she got from Gabi’s CEO but she is met with Yoo-shin’s mockery and her father’s refusal.
Hye-shin supports her and Jung-ae decides to help her and sets a meeting with the man they both think is Joon-ho.
While they are at the restaurant with the swindler, Soon-shin bumps into the real Joon-ho who has a meeting with Yeon-ah.
Yeon-ah asks Joon-ho to let her manage Mi-ryung in the new agency that she plans on opening but is met with a refusal.
Soon-shin finds out to her horror that Kim Kwang-kyu, the swindler, has taken a huge loan on her name and now she has to pay it back but luckily, she is offered a waitress job at Black Smith restaurant that’s situated on the ground floor of ‘Gabi’ and is owned by Joon-ho’s best friend, Kim Young-hoon.
She starts working there in hope that the swindler will return to the scene of the crime and gets bullied by Go Jae-bum, a waiter who thinks that all the girls are in love with him.
When the swindler finally re-appears, Soon-shin chases him and almost gets ran over by no other than Joon-ho who is on his way to yet another meeting with Yeon-ah.
Since she lost sight of swindler man, she bursts into tears and blames Joon-ho for her misfortune.
In a meeting with Yeon-ah, Joon-ho tells her that she shouldn’t open her own agency but join his and offers her a contract.
Yeon-ah claims that she doesn’t trust him but is willing to sign the contract if he manages to make Soon-shin into a superstar.
After Mi-ryung gets rid of Hwang Il-do, her corrupt manager, he gets drunk and tells a reporter a secret from her youth, when he sobers up he regrets everything that he said but it’s already too late and the rumor spreads.
Mi-ryung thinks that Chang Hoon might have spread the rumor, being one of the only Two people who knew about it.
A meeting on the street between Mi-ryung and Chang Hoon, ends in a tragic accident.
Shin Yi-jung is Joon-ho’s spoiled younger sister, she decides to leave school and come back home in hope of becoming an actress (with the kind help of her brother).
Dong-hyuk, her father doesn’t like the idea, he talks with Mi-ryung (his wife’s friend) and asks her to discourage his daughter from pursuing an acting career.
When Soon-shin signs a contract with ‘Gabi’, Joon-ho sends her to get acting lessons with Mi-ryung and Mi-ryung’s plan to discourage Yi-jung from becoming an actress, by constantly complimenting Soon-shin, changes when she sees a real acting potential there.
meanwhile, Joon-ho gets attached to his new actress and tries to convince Jung-ae to allow here to take acting lessons but Jung-ae, who has just discovered a devastating discovery, refuses and kicks Soon-shin out.
Seo Jin-wook manages and is a baker of a nearby bakery, he has a crush on Hye-shin but Woo-joo gives him a hard time.
After the Lee’s renovate their storage room, he rents it and moves in.

Who will end up winning the bet, Joon-ho or Yeon-ah? Will Soon-shin turn into an actress and will Chan-woo manage to win Yoo-shin’s heart?
Will Hye-shin ever tell her parents that she’s divorced and when will she start controlling her annoying and spoiled kid?

Why did I like it: IU is adorable and Shin Joon-ho is great, they have a good chemistry and are very entertaining.
Despite a few glitches, Kim Jung-ae has an amazing relationship with Soon-shin.
It’s actually the first series that I’ve watched where the elderly mother takes such a big part in the plot.
Usually, the mothers are somewhere in the background, either rich and cruel, controlling and sabotaging the love story or poor and weak, being helped by their daughters or sons or, of course, dead in a tragic accident, before or during the series but here, we have an interesting, strong woman and we get to see how she handles raising her daughters and dealing with the dramas and crises along the way.
Why didn’t I like it:
It was waaaay too long and many things were repeated again and again, like the grandmother’s complaints, Gil-ja’s irrational behavior or Hye-shin being amazingly weak against her rude ex-husband’s behavior, I also didn’t like at all the way Soon-shin just gave in to Mi-ryung controlling ways and why did Mi-ryung have to be so cruel to the Lees? It’s not like they did anything wrong.

Favorite moment 1 – Joon-ho asks Soon-shin to call him up because he wants to get rid of his blind date.
Favorite moment 2 – Go Jae-bum thinks that Soon-shin is in love with him.
Favorite moment 3 – Soon-shin discovers who the real Joon-ho is. It’s a really touching moment.
Favorite moment 4 – Jin-wook helps Hye-shin to deal with her anger and frustration by kneading dough
Favorite moment 5 – Joon-ho takes Soon-shin’s hand after the truth about her mother is discovered. It’s short but it’s one of the most genuine moments that I’ve seen in a drama.
Favorite moment 6 – Joon-ho and Soon-shin make a pinky promise

Drinking solo or Honsulnamnyeo or 혼술남녀 (2016)

Noryangjin Academy is a private institution for students who want to enter civil service.
Jin Jung-suk is a star lecturer with many students who flock to hear him.
He doesn’t like to mingle with his co-workers and at the end of a teaching day, he likes to drink alone whole eat expensive food and listening to high quality music.
Since Korean work places put an emphasis on being part of a group, which includes social activities after work hours, Jung-suk’s behavior is perceived as weird but each and every person on this series, drinks alone every now and then.

Kim Won-hae is the academy’s director, he’s under his wives family pressure and needs to please them by making the academy a success.
He doesn’t like Jung-suk’s anti-social behavior but succumbs to it because he’s afraid to lose him to another academy.

Park Ha-na graduated from a small university, she is a rookie lecturer of Korean with very few students, due to her mild nature.
She’s a kind woman and always finds herself helping others because she has a hard time saying No.
Hwang Jin-Yi is an English lecturer, she’s pretty desperate to get married to her boyfriend and using her sexiness to gain more students.
Despite being a bit vain and spoiled, she is a good friend to Jin-yi.
Each lecturer has his own tricks to get the students interested and Min Jin-Woong imitates famous characters from drama series.
Despite his silly ways at work, he’s a dedicated lecturer and a good guy.
When Jung-suk refuses to teach a joint class with the three rookie lecturers and ridicules them, they decide to take revenge.
While surfing the net, Ha-na reads a rumor about Jung-suk.
The rumors claim that since there’s no information to be found about him at the prestigious university he claimed he graduated from, he never studied there.
The three lecturers decide to tells the academy director about this rumor but Ha-na ends up getting angry at Jung-suk’s vanity and disregard for her and tells the school director about the rumor all by herself.
Then Jung-suk is forced to reveals that his name can’t be found as a graduate from that prestigious university, simply because he changed it.
He then agrees to give the joint class along with Jin-woong and Jin-yi, excluding and disregarding Ha-na’s apologies.

Other than lecturers, the academy also has its “star” students:
Kim Ki-bum has rich parents and he’s not in any hurry to graduate, he gives himself a Five year ultimatum to finish his studies and meanwhile, he spends his time drinking, eating and playing wit his Two best friends.
Kim Dong-young borrows money from his parents and sister, to pay for his tuition but somehow, he can’t focus on his studies.
He wants to study but always get distracted by Ki-bum and Jin Gong-myung who always convince him to come party with them.
He wants to study for his girlfriend but she breaks up with him after her mother tells her to do so.
Gong-myung is Jung-suk’s younger brother who is forced to come and live with him until graduation because their mother insists on it.
After bumping into Ha-na before school and helping her a few time, Gong-myung falls in love with her and is more than ready to make her his girlfriend.
Jung Chae-yeon is a star student and the most beautiful girl on campus but she has an iron will and cuts all of her friends and rejects every suitor, until graduation.
While Ki-bum is in love with her, despite being cruelly rejected by her on his first year, Chae-yeon ends up falling for Gong-myung, who is only interested in her as a friend and a study instructor.

Meanwhile, poor Ha-na has to help support her mother financially, so she really needs more students and joining Jung-suk’s joint class is a good way to be seen and heard but Jung-suk refuses to forgive her.
When the stubborn professor finds out that he blamed adorable Ha-na for things that weren’t her fault, he agrees to add her to the joint class.
While Gong-myung tries to take care of Ha-na and manages to get her recorded promise to date him if he graduates, the strict and snobbish Jung-suk, finds himself amused by her clumsiness and adorableness and starts falling for her.

Why did I like it: It’s amusing, touching and well acted.

Why didn’t I like it: Until you get into it, it looks a bit repetitive but stick with it because it’s a really cute series.

Favorite moment 1 – Ki-bum,Dong-young and Gong-myung are fighting in the street
Favorite moment 2 – Dong-young during the car ride with Ki-bum and Gong-myung
favorite moment 3 – Dong-young almost drowning 😀
Favorite moment 4 – Ki-bum goes to his grandmother’s birthday
Favorite moment 5 – Ki-bum making his friend realize that he should pursue a career of a cop, by chasing him down the street
Favorite moment 6 – “If you can see this, it means I’m dozing off. Wake me up.”

Love for a thousand more or Cheonnyeonjjae yeon-aejung or 천년째 연애중 (2016)

Pyeon Mi-jo is a thousand year old woman who works as a love counselor, despite having lost all trust in men and love after dating for so many years.
Each week, Mi-jo attends a Mythomania group therapy session (Mythomania is an abnormal or pathological tendency to exaggerate or tell lies) and that’s where we first see her, telling her real life story to a group and a therapist, who are all naturally sure that she’s not telling the truth.
That’s why she joined the group, it’s the only place where she can tell the truth and not looked at as a monster.
Mi-jo declares that she will never fall in love again and asks the group members to make the same wise decision.
Having met so many men, Mi-jo can advise her clients easily, by using examples from her own past, when she was dating all kinds of important historical figures like famous inventors and scholars.
One day, while peacefully eating, she hears a horrible noise coming from upstairs.
She goes up to tell her noisy neighbors off and discovers to her dismay that it’s not just some random noise but a group practice is going on.
While Mi-jo is busy getting angry over the noise, she gets an unexpected, warm hug from one of the group members, who then pushes her away.
Yoo Jun-woo, the hugger, is the leader of the group, he is 24 years old and has a tragic past.
Both his parents were killed in a car accident when he was a kid and ever since then, he’s not easily moved.
Jun-woo’s group is in trouble because their main rapper, Yong-gyu ran off with the recording studio’s deposit money, Three months before the concert and now the group is left with no rapper, no money and with a performance schedule that they can’t avoid and so they start practicing in Jun-woo’s new apartment.
Mi-jo’s request for quiet is denied by Jun-woo who also finds an unconvincing excuse for his hug and says that he thought that she was someone else.
Now, Sadly Mi-jo has to deal with the horrible noise that comes from upstairs but it looks like there might be a solution to her problem when on the very next day, the group’s main vocal, Yeon-ji, comes to seek some love advice.
Mi-jo offers an exchange deal – She will give Yeon-ji her advice but the group will have to practice elsewhere.
Yeon-ji is in love with Jun-woo but he’s not into relationships, not with her and not with Hyung-sik, the third member of the group, who has an annoying habit of reciting old sayings at every situation and occasion.
Nicknamed ‘Stone statue’, Jun-woo is not just another typical guy that Mi-joo’s love tricks can work on.
Meanwhile, Mi-jo is being courted by her Tai Chi instructor, Jason.
Jason has known Mi-jo for the past 10 years, he’s tall, handsome and cute but she’s not into him at all.
After an evening encounter, when Jun-woo helps Mi-jo change a light-bulb on the stairs to her appartement, she decides to follow him, supposedly so that she can learn more about his habits and personality and figure out how to help Yeon-ji to get closer to him so that she move the group out of the building.
Mi-jo sees Jun-woo doing a few good deeds and wonders if she was wrong to assume that he wasn’t a good guy and then discovers that he has a part-time job, promoting a store while dancing in front of it, dressed in a bear’s costume.
While eavesdropping in on a conversation between Jun-woo and the store owner, Mi-jo finds out that Jun-woo works in order to get enough money to rent a studio, so that the group can rehears without disturbing her.
After she finds that out, Mi-jo starts hanging out with Jun-woo and learns more about his past and his life.
As they slowly get closer, Jun-woo is reminded more and more of someone who helped him to get through the most difficult period in his life, after his parents were killed and he wonders about the strange resemblance between Mi-jo and that person.
Meanwhile, Mijo discovers that Jason is just like her, unable to die or get old and she is comforted by the thought that she is no longer lonely in her never ending journey in and out of mortals lives.
Neither Jason nor Mijo remember how they became immortal.
Jun-woo and Mijo get closer and their emotion towards each other get stronger. Mijo starts thinking about what might happen if she shared her condition with Jun-woo.
Will he think that she’s a monster and leave her? What’s the use of loving someone who will eventually get old and die, when you are doomed to stay young forever?

Why did I like it?
The episodes are really short, about 19 minutes each so if you want a quick dose of K-drama, it’s a nice one to watch.
The actors are very cute and watching Seungyoon and Jinwoo act is fun.

Why didn’t I like it?
Since the episodes are so short, the characters are tragically underdevelopped and thus, I really didn’t get attached to any of them.
I don’t know what was the use in the discovery made about Jason at the end of the series, it’s didn’t contribute anything to the plot.
Although the dramatic scenes between Mijo and Jason were very nice, the supposedly comic scenes, made Jason look like an idiot.
If Mijo has to choose between Jason and Jun-woo, at least make it a bit harder on her.
Favorite moment 1 – Mi-jo has a hard time eating with all the foreign invasions.
Favorite moment 2 – Jason is being rejected. Why is this man so childish? 😀
Favorite moment 3 – Mi-jo calls on the wrong ex’s flashback.

My ID is Gangnam beauty or ID: Gangnam beauty or Nae Aidineun Gangnammiin (2018)

Kang Mi-rae was a fat and ugly girl who was bullied by kids and nicknamed “The Hulk”.
Even losing weight doesn’t help her to change her social status.
Confessing her love to a boy, proves to be the wrong move as he rejects her love and makes fun of her along with his friends. This is the breaking point for Mi-rae.
Before she starts college, she decides to have plastic surgery to changer her facial features, and turns into a beauty.
While her mother supports her, her father, Kang Tae-sik who’s against plastic surgery and thinks that his daughter is pretty, doesn’t know about it.
Naturally, when he finds out about, after not being able to recognize his own daughter, he gets really angry and feels betrayed.
The main problem though is that the kids ridicule, traumatized Mi-rae who despite the operation, still has a really low self-esteem and doesn’t see herself as a beautiful girl.
She constantly rates the faces of the people she sees, grading them by how beautiful they are.
At her college orientation week, she bumps into Do Kyung-seok, that she knows from school and he’s reminded of a girl that he studied with in middle school, while watching her dance.
I found it a bit silly that Kyung-seok could recognize Mi-rae because of the way she dances.
I mean, this is one weird way to recognize someone but oh well, he had to feel something for her in order to help her.
Kyung-seok is very handsome but also very cold to people, as a result of his parents troubled marriage that ended when his mother left his father for a younger man and vanished from her children’s lives.
Despite his good looks and being considered cool, he was a loner in middle school, just like Mi-rae.
Kim Chan-woo who’s Mi-rae’s senior in the chemistry department behaves very rudely towards her, making her uncomfortable by hitting on her in public and forcing her to drink at the orientation party.
Since Mi-rae is not used to drinking, she feels sick and steps outside.
Chan-woo who follows her out, suggests rest in a secluded room and plans to force himself on her but Kyung-seok spoils his plans and bursts into the room, after he saw Mi-rae and Woo-young entering it.
Even after this incident, Chan-woo keeps on making Mi-rae uncomfortable with his advances and Kyung-seok keeps protecting her.
Oh Hyun-jung is Mi-rae’s best friend and roomate, she’s in the psychology department but aspires to be a hip-hop star.
She develops a crush on Woo-young but accepts the fact that he likes Mi-rae better.
When Kyung-seok asks Mi-rae if she’s the girl that he remembers from middle-school, Mi-rae asks him not to tell anyone about that.
Hyun Soo-ah is what Mi-rae calls a natural beauty, a beautiful and friendly girl that all the boys are interested in.
Soo-ah plays the innocent girl but her intentions are not pure and she aims to hurt Mi-rae.
She’s hitting on Kyung-seok who doesn’t like her but also flirts with other guys in her department, one of them being Chan-woo.
At the semester beginning party, she not very innocently makes people realize that Mi-rae had plastic surgery and makes Kyung-seok angry with her because of it, she then rejects Chan-woo and makes him think that it was because Mi-rae is in love with him.
Chan-woo who is angry at Kyung-seok for being unkind to Soo-ah and at Mi-rae for spoiling his chances with Soo-ah, confronts her and calls her a Ganganam plastic surgery monster. Mi-rae then hits him.
Shocked from the insult and the encounter, Mi-rae bumps into Woo-young.
Yeon Woo-young is a college senior and Mi-rae’s TA at the Chemistry department.
As he tries to help Mi-rae and understand what’s wrong, Kyung-seok pops up again and tries to take over the situation.
Mi-rae who’s distressed by Chan-woo’s insult, rejects the help that she’s offered by both guys and escapes the scene.
Later on, Kyung-seok asks Mi-rae why she had plastic surgery and she gets angry at him when he discovers that she tends to rate people and evaluate them according to their faces, and criticize her for it.
Chan-woo is eager to take revenge on both Mi-rae and Kyung-seok but after bullying Mi-rae in the toilets, he finds himself on the ground again, with a mop on his head, when Kyung-seok comes to Mi-rae’s aid.
As the story spreads around the college, Chan-woo becomes the laughing-stock of the department.
Do Sang-won is Kyung-seok’s father, he’s a congressman and is in the race to become the mayor so being proper and doing all the right things is pretty important to him as he’s trying to promote his image as the person of the people.
He’s also raising Kyung-seol and Kyung-hee as a single father, ever since his wife left him.
Despite doing what he thinks is best, he doesn’t know how to be a supportive and loving father and focuses more on advancing his career.
Kyung-seok’s mother, Na Hye-sung comes back to his life when she becomes the CEO of Kellun, a big perfume company.
She ends up having a beer with Mi-rae, who won a ticket to the launching of a new Kellun perfume.
Hye-sung doesn’t know that she has met Mi-rae once before and was the reason why she has chosen to study chemistry.
While they are having a drink at Berlin bar, owned by Woo-Jin, Kyung-seok’s friend, Kyung-seok, who came to help his friend, walks by and sees them.
This meeting starts the process of Hye-sung’s return to Kyung-seok’s and his sister Do Kyung-hee‘s lives.
Kyung-seok is always there to protect and support Mi-rae and she in turn, makes him feel less lonely and secluded.
Their friendship becomes stronger but despite falling for him, Mi-rae is sure that a handsome guy like Kyung-seok can never be interested in a girl like her.

Why did I like it:
To start things off, it’s just a very good story and it’s well written.
Despite having only 16 episodes, most of the characters are well developed or at least convincing and you can really like them, despite not knowing a lot about them.
The series deals with the way Korean society treats girls and women who do not fit society’s beauty standard and so we have Mi-rae who was supposedly ugly and fat, Kim Tae-hee, who’s being teased because of her weight, Kwon Yoon-Byul the tomboy who’s being constantly teased because she refuses to put on a dress and grow her hair long and Choi Jung-Boon who can’t get work at the coffee place because she’s too plain looking.
Other than that, there’s Kyung-seok and his very strong character.
He was saying what he thinks and wasn’t taking shit from anyone.
He wasn’t standing aside when the person he likes suffers and he had no problem telling the people he dislikes that he dislikes them and to kick some ass.
Admirable not just because of his looks, girls and boys.
when looking at Na Hye-sung, you can easily see where her son got his spunk and honesty.
She’s a good example of a strong, successful woman and she didn’t let the abuse that she suffered make her give up her career and dreams, she didn’t let her personal tragedy weaken her and she ended up getting what she wanted.
The last scene with Do Sang-won is truly epic.
The subject of sexual harassment and male domination is also discussed with Chan-Woo’s problematic behavior towards women, the way the guys decide to dress the girls who serve the drinks at the party and the fact that only girls are supposed to serve drinks, the way Sang-Won assumes that Hye-Sung will leave her job and become a housewife and mother instead of developing her career and Soo-ah’s candid photos that are being posted online.
As a whole, I really liked this series because it deals with the interesting issue of plastic surgery, which is very common in South-Korea, as seen from the Korean point of view.
I was pretty surprised to discover that the women who get plastic surgery have to worry not only about the operation being successful but also about not looking too beautiful and perfect so the operation will not look too obvious.
Soo-ah is a “natural beauty” but there are quite a few celebs that I’ve seen, who claimed to be natural beauty when it was obvious that they had some (or a whole lot of) work done of their faces.
I remember watching a variety show where an idol claimed to be a natural beauty and then after being questioned, it was revealed that she had work done on her eyes, nose, lips and face and the other guests wondered if she knew what the words “natural beauty” actually meant.
The fact that poor Mi-rae moved from being “Kang Hulk” to being “Gangnam beauty” reveals the impossible beauty standards that women have to live up to. Be beautiful but not too beautiful.
The series also deals with the fact that being beautiful doesn’t necessarily means being happy.

Why I didn’t like it:
There were two attempts to make the audience like two baddies, two of them failed for me.
Revealing Soo-ah’s past problems came too late and felt forced and she bounced back to her own bitchy self at the end so what was the use of trying to make us feel sorry for her?
As for Kyung-seok’s father, there is no excuse for the way he behaved to his wife so I didn’t feel bad when he ended up with nothing bot professionally and personally.

Favorite moment 1 – Mi-rae dancing to Psy’s New Face
Favorite moment 2 – Kang Tae-sik remembers how he took Mi-rae’s photo, that he hanged in his taxi.
Favorite moment 3 – Kyung-seok Gets jealous and invites himself to Woo-young new apartment, along with Mi-rae and Hyun-jung
Favorite moment 4 – Eating popcorn with straws 😀
Favorite moment 5 – It’s actually a few moments and not just one but Kyung-seok’s lack of money, especially when he tries to take the bus or goes to buy food, really made me feel sad.
Favorite moment 6 – Kyung-seok and Woo-young are having a discussion over washing the blankets 😀
Favorite moment 7 – “What’s a guy like me and what’s a girl like you?”
Favorite moment 8 – A little dental hygiene scene with Kyung-seok and Woo-young.

Little Forest or Liteul Poleseuteu(2018)

One day Hye-won returns home from High-school to find that the house is empty and her mother is gone, all that’s left is a letter than Hye-won doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand but from that day on, Hye-won lives her life on her own, with the support of her aunt.
She leaves to study teaching in Seoul but she leaves her job as a cashier at a grocery store and her boyfriend and returns home to her small village, to find her roots and be close to the earth and to the food that she knew as a kid.
Hye-won is connected to her mother through her cooking.
She loves to cook just like her mother and her memories from her mother are focused on her cooking and her stories about the food she makes.
While Hye-won settles back into her old home,she meets her Two school friends:
Jae-ha, who left a good job and his girlfriend in Seoul and came back to the village, to work the land as an orchard owner and Eun-sook, who works at the bank and is always complaining about her boss.
At first, Hye-won thinks that she will return to Seoul soon but as time goes by, she finds the hard work and life in nature to her liking.
Will she ever return to Seoul and will her mother ever come back?
A nice plot, no big dramas, good actors (Ryu Jun-yeol is just adorable), beautiful nature shots and yummy food.

Be with You or Because I love you or Jigeum Mannareo Gamnida (2018)

Ji-ho‘s mother drew a story book for him.
The story is a sad one, about a mother penguin and her son.
The mother penguin dies but looks from the sky and keeps guard of her son, until one day, during the rainy season, she comes back to him but then has to come back to the clouds.
After Soo-ah, Ji-ho’s mother dies, he keeps on reading the book she made for him, believing that she will come back to him, during the rainy season.
Ji-ho’s dad, is Woo-jin, a shy janitor in a high-school who had to give up his future career as an Olympic swimmer because of heart problems.
It’s one year after Soo-ah’s passing away, when the rainy season comes and a miracle happens as Soo-ah returns.
Sadly though, Soo-ah doesn’t remember her past life as a mother and a wife but as time goes by, she gets attached both to her husband and her son.
As the little family gets reunited and has to live together again, we also get to watch flashbacks, as Woo-jin tells her wife about how they’ve met and fell in love.
Will she have to return to the sky at the end of the rain season, just like the mother penguin in the story book does?
It’s a very touching and sweet movie, a nice watch on a rainy day.

The Great Seungri – Seungri

Seungri deserves a whole page dedicated to him alone so I’ll just say that I’ve approached this album cautiously at first.
As Taeyang once stated, Seungri loves trance, as a DJ he’s been into EDM and his singing parts in BIGBANG’s songs are mainly soft and romantic but when he’s on stage, he’s very energetic and cool and I’ve heard him using a whole different singing voice so I didn’t know what to expect.
What can I say? It’s a great album. Most of it was written and composed by Seungri and at last, I hear a different Seungri (not that the old one wasn’t good).

Over the last Five years of making this album, his voice has matured beautifully and has a little rough edge to it that I really like.
I don’t know what the audience will think about it, I know that charting high is important and haters are lurking around but for me, what’s most important is that the music is good and that Seungri didn’t take the sure, old road of sounding like an extension of his mother group and he’s doing his own thing.
If I have to choose my favorite tracks, it would be ‘1, 2, 3’, ‘Alone’, ‘Love is you’, ‘Mollado’ and… I can name the rest of the tracks one by one as well because they are all good 😀

‘Mollado’ has a trending Twitter tag, go and check it out, there is some hilarious stuff there: Molladochallenge

The main part of ‘1, 2, 3’s MV was shot in one take, which is not easy, considering the fact that it wasn’t just Seungri but a whole crew of dancers and effects. One mistake and you have to dance everything all over again.
The song has a strong 1950s vibe and the MV concept is the same so Seungri is a cute mix between Elvis, Fonzie and Danny Zuko, dancing, singing, gliding and being his own fabu and funny self.
Watch the wonderful MV and judge for yourself:

At the end of the MV, like in some movies, you can see a tiny bit of the rehearsals and bloopers and also the roll of all the many people who participated in the making of the MV.
Acknowledging the staff’s and crew’s hard work and crediting it, is something that Seungri does on a regular basis.

Here’s the BTS video of the MV making process:

The sub-title MV from the album is called ‘Where R U from’ and is’s featuring WINNER’s talented Song Mino.
Here is the great Seungri, making peace between world leaders by using his music, dance skills and undeniable panda charms ❤ :

Here’s the BTS video of the MV process:

Where R U from featuring in world news because of its political content:

CNN

AMP news

As a special bonus, here’s a multilingual version to 1, 2, 3! that will make you fall off your chair and laugh until your cry 😀

Kim Jong-hyun or Jonghyun (SHINee)

This is one of these days that I want to wake up from and discover that I was just having a very bad dream.
I’ve been waiting to write this post for a very long time, as you can see by the photo.
Why didn’t I write it? I don’t know.
I was waiting until I got to know him better, as I was listening to his music with and without SHINee, watching a few interviews and reading a few articles.
I did like him from the first moment that I saw him because he was funny and weird and I like that, he also loved dogs and I like that and he had a beautiful voice and a beautiful face. Kind of wild with his hair and his nose.
He always reminded me of a wolf but he was so gentle.
My friend introduced me to SHINee, she’s been a Shawol for Five years and was cunningly trying to make me listen to them.
“Did you hear Onew yet, did you listen to Jonghyun?”
The first thing that I listened to was “Breathe”, I listened to it because of Lee Hi.
My friend then told me how Jonghyun wrote this song.
As I started listening to other songs, I bumped into his version of Alejandro Sanz’s ‘Y, ¿Si Fuera Ella?’.
Wow, how did he know that song? Did he like Alejandro Sanz, I like him too.
And so I started my journey into Jonghyun’s music.
Meanwhile, my friend was educating me with videos and information and part of this information was “Jonghyun cries a lot.”
“Why does he cry?”
“I don’t know, I guess that the music makes him emotional.”
I always thought it was strange, that he cried so much.
When Onew couldn’t perform with SHINee lately, my friend was wondering who was going to comfort Jonghyun when he cries, that was Onew’s part.
In fact, I saw a few tweets about it and I wondered again, as I saw Onew, hugging crying Jonghyun, is this what excitement looks like? It looks like his heart is breaking.
Yesterday, after an argument over depression with someone who was having fun with my distress and anger, I’ve decided to go back to a draft about depression that I also wanted to write for a while now and as I was checking the tabs on my browser, I came across an article about Jonghyun that I kept open for a very long time.

SHINee’s jonghyun cries openly about how fans others perceive him

A beautiful, smart, talented, lonely man who thought that people didn’t want to know the real him.
“As tears fell, Jonghyun continued, “Before, I would want to show the real side of me because of the unfair things that people said about me, but I realized that it was impossible and tried to think why people thought of me in that manner.”
“I thought that people didn’t want to know the real me. There aren’t that many people who would want to know the real me. Of course, not much has changed since then, but if I were to express myself first, then wouldn’t they think differently?”

Today, as I was looking for my old draft about Jonghyun, I saw that his and the draft about depression came one after the other. Only Four days separates the both of them.

Depression is an illness, like any other but it’s harder to treat because it’s mental and not physical.
Depression can strike anyone, you family members, your teachers, your friends, your idols.
We are all just people.
Don’t judge, support.

This is a link that was part of the original draft that I was going to write back then.
I wanted to show how kind he was, how open minded, how willing he was to stand up for the things that he believes in.

SHINee’s Jonghyun under attack for his support of the sexual minority

I guess that this is a confused post because I’m confused, and very sad so you’ll have to forgive me as a member of the “Surviving with depression” club who lost today a very precious member.

I can’t listen to his songs for now so I won’t post anything, perhaps later on when things sink in.

Rest in peace, good soul. I hope that the pain is over now.

On the way to the airport or Road to the Airport or Gonghang-ganeun Gil (2017)

Choi Soo-ah is a flight attendant and her husband, Park Jin-seok is a captain. The both work for the same airline
These two are very busy, so busy that they can’t possibly take care of their only daughter.
On her way home from a flight, Soo-ah is informed by Jin-seok, that he is sending their daughter, Park Hyo-eun, to study in an international school in Malaysia.
For some reason, Jin-seok wants to send his child away and is very disappointed that the plan to have her living and studying in New-Zealand, with his sister, has failed when she got hurt.
Song Mi-jin, Soo-ah’s friend and co worker, helped with picking Hyo-eun new school and living arrangement by consulting with someone that she knows.
That someone is her friend’s friend, Seo Do-Woo, a part time architecture teacher who’s daughter, Annie Seo studies in Malaysia.
Soo-ah shows no resistance whatsoever to her husbands heartless plan and despite Hyo-eun’s plies, accompanies her to her new life and school, abroad.
Annie Seo is in no hurry to get back to Korea, she doesn’t even want to come for visits. Her excuse is that missing Korea and not visiting, makes her stronger.
However, it looks like this strange excuse is exactly that.
Annie plans on coming back to Korea to visit her grandmother on her birthday but her mother stops her with a phone call, when she is at the airport.
As Annie runs out of the terminal while crying, disaster strikes as she gets hit by a car.
Annie wasn’t Do-woo’s biological daughter, he just married her mother but it’s obvious that her mother didn’t care about her too much.
Kim Hye-won, had Annie when she was very young.  By what she told Do-woo, Annie’s father neglected her and the baby but that’s no reason to treat your own daughter like trash.
She met Do-woon after she was accepted as an intern at his mother’s Korean knot center.
Do-woo came to visit Annie in Malaysia, he wanted her to come and visit Korea, he was on a plane to Malaysia when he heard of the accident and while Hye-won didn’t even bother to come, he was devastated when she died.
Hye-won didn’t attend Annie’s cremation and asked Do-woo not to bring her ashes back to Korea and to get rid of her things.
Yes, she did cry a bit but was more concerned with the thought that Annie might have hated her and perhaps has written something about it in her diary, than with the fact that Annie is gone.
In the span of twelve hours, Soo-ah, comes to fetch Hyo-eun from Malaysia, picks up Annie’s things on her way, talks with Do-woo in order to return Annie’s things to him and spends the night, sitting and speaking with him while waiting for her suitcase to arrive.
They become attached as Do-woo watched Soo-ah taking good care of Annie’s ashes and as Soo-ah watches Do-woo spreading some of Annie’s ashes in the Han river.
Jang Hyun-woo is Do-woo’s best friend and the owner of the bar just below the office where Do-woo works.
Hyun-woo is a witness to the beginning of Soo-ah’s and Do-woo’s relationship and he doesn’t like it too much.
The Parks and Hey-won do not seem to know what to do with their kids, it’s such a shame for the poor girls.
Captain Park thinks that being controlling and cruel is the right way, he treats his wife and daughter with contempt and for some reason, he plays a cruel “If you stop my goals, you can stay in Korea” football game with his daughter who loses and tells him how cruel and childish he is for taking pleasure in winning.
He sends Soo-ah and Hyo-eun away to live with his mother, as if they have no say in this.
Soo-ah is letting her husband take control over her life, she is not fighting him and even moving in with his mother.
Hyo-eun has a hard life being the daughter of a man who smiles at her only when there are strangers around, because he doesn’t want people to catch him being nasty to his own kid.
Although her mother tells her that her opinions will always be her priority, they want her to to live with her father’s sister in New-Zealand, when this plan doesn’t go through, she has to come back to school, to her mocking friends (after she said goodbye to them), then her father ships her off to Malaysia and then she is back at her old school again but living at her grandmother’s place.
How can this be healthy for this kid? Living with two parents who obviously don’t have the time, energy and skills to take good care of her?
Why is there a need to make Do-woo and Soo-ah partners look so bad? A selfish woman who wants any trace of her dead daughter to disappear and a selfish man who is keen on living a single man’s life despite the fact that he has a wife and daughter.
After Annie’s death, Do-woo goes to visit the place where he used to leave her a few times, so that she can meet her father but the man working there told him, that Annie didn’t have a father and she didn’t wait for anyone.
When Do-woo asks Hye-won, she tells him that Annie’s father was dead and she didn’t tell her.
Now Do-woo starts suspecting that something is wrong.
All of a sudden, this turns from a strange love story between two people who are not sure what’s going on, to a mystery?
Who is Annie’s father, why didn’t Hye-won want Annie to come back to Korea? Why did she want to get rid of all her things after here death, what was she really afraid of? When will Soo-ah grow a pair, leave her husband and live happily ever after with Do-woo? Why am I watching this series?
The writing is so bad that they need to ship both girls overseas for their parents to meet, when Soo-a gives Hye-won her glass of beer at the bar but instead of pouring into a plastic takeaway cup, Hye-won walks out with the beer glass in her hand… she still has it in her hand when she is in the car, on her way home.
Soo-ah just happens to find a brochure for the knot school and when she appears there and gets all stressed out when she meets Do-woo and someone calls his name, the two just join hands and run away.
Do-woo knows that his wife is inside and yet, he grabs Soo-ah’s hand, this really makes perfect sense only if he doesn’t care at all about Soo-ah’s good reputation and if he really, really wants to upset his bitchy wife.
This is the kind of writing where the writers force the characters into situations instead of thinking of natural and logical ways to achieve that situation, they invent stuff that doesn’t feel real or convincing.
Why does Jin-seok insist on sending Hyo-eun to study abroad no matter what? Just because he wants her to study English? Nope, it’s simply because Annie and Hyo-eun must study together so that Soo-ah and Do-woo can meet.
Can’t they study together in Korea? Yes, of course they can. Then why Malaysia? Because then, Soo-ah and Do-woo will have to spend the night together, in the airport while waiting for the suitcase with Annie’s stuff to arrive.
Jin-seok claustrophobia? What was that all about? Why is it important to the plot?
I think that at the last minute, the writers realized that no one cares about the bad husband and wife and tried to make them a bit more human, so Jin-seok crumbles at the thought of a separation and Hye-won starts working with kids?
It doesn’t make any sense.
Do-woo starts as a lovely guy with an unstable and selfish wife who hates her own daughter and wants to erase all traces of her once she is dead and all of a sudden, he turns into this creepy guy who chases after a married woman, follows her to her working places, bothers her on the plane…
Mi-jin is the friend from hell, I didn’t even manage to understand why she is such a total bitch to her best friend.
Why I didn’t like this drama:
The forced and often illogical plot line.
The actors are good but the characters are written in such a way that didn’t allow me to get attached to any of them. Perhaps the writers wanted to make a realistic drama but ended up creating something that it both amazingly cheesy and detached from any real feeling and cold.
Everything happens so slowly, the characters can just stand there, looking at each other without saying a word.
This trick can work when it’s a movie but not when it’s a drama with 16 episodes, I mean how many times can you repeat such a trick before it gets old and boring.
I will not even discuss the last few minutes of the drama when you hope for something and end with no real closure.
Why did I like this drama:
The main character’s dimple… I know that it’s not a good enough reason but I’m clutching at straws, since I really didn’t like this drama.
Favorite moment 1 – Do-woo reaches up for his photo on the ceiling of Annie’s bedroom.
Favorite moment 2 – Do-woo, Soo-ah and the wine glass

Bobby (iKON)

On the 14th of September, Bobby released his first solo album after a few years of anticipation.
What can I say? I already knew that Bobby is a very good rapper and a good singer but he also wrote and composed this whole album, which isn’t as easy as some people might think it is.
I love the MVs, I love the songs, I love his voice and his style (I also adore his collaboration with Mino. Am eagerly the return of the legendary MOBB).
In short, this album makes me happy.

Here are the Two MVs for your viewing pleasure:

I must admit that although I love this whole album, this is my favorite song for now: