1. I have seen three more serials with Song Hye-kyo. And I saw them in Netflix because I wanted to make certain of her acting and that her performances in Descendants of the Sun and Encounter were not flashes in the pan.
Full House is an early comedy (2004) of 16 episodes. I don’t know if Korean viewers and other Asians laughed, but I certainly did not laugh anywhere, finding no humour at all but only silliness. It is also described as a romance but, again, I saw no romance, only highly contrived silliness. How such a silly serial helped raise the Hallyu wave is for me, a non-Asian, a profound mystery.
The only saving grace is Song Hye-kyo who plays a young aspiring writer who has a large house left by her father. And here starts the highly improbable story – which Korean script-writers love. Her two best friends convince her that she has won a free vacation and while she is away, they sell the house! (I saw some glowing accolades but obviously the writers have not seen a comedy series like the American Friends.)
On the plane she sits first class next to a pop actor, Lee Young-jae (an incompetent Rain), who is not interested in her and they engage in some bizarre, ridiculous happenings (supposedly funny). When she returns, she learns that the actor has bought her house. More bizarre situations follow and eventually they fall in love with each other but neither has the courage (for utterly incomprehensible reasons) to say “I love you” for a long time. Eventually they do and get married.
Even Song Hye-kyo’s youth and loveliness does not make the series attractive. But both protagonists won the “Excellence” award and the “Most Popular” and “Best Couple”. I suspect the only criterion was its popularity and cash.
2. The next is That winter the wind blows. The plot unfolds in winter and winds blow and there is snow but as with Descendants of the sun it is not possible to see the relevance of the title to the story.
A largely but not incurably blind young woman, Oh Young (Song Hye-kyo), who has been brought up by the former secretary and mistress of her father, inherits a very large fortune. Her finances and general progress in life is watched over by a rather weak lawyer who does care for her and is secretly in love with Wang Hye-ji, the girl’s caretaker. She is also betrothed to Lee Myung-ho who is the CEO in the large frim she now owns. She has a brother, Oh Soo, who was estranged and involved with con-men, and she tried to find him but failed and he got killed in a car accident – all unbeknown to her.
Another Oh Soo, (yes, with same name, played by Zo In-sung) a con-man, is a friend of Young’s brother and with his younger friend Park Jin-sung, conspires to impersonate Young’s brother and obtain as much as he can of her fortune. Another improbable situation. For Young’s entourage could ask for a DNA test there and then, but for various pretexts, which only Korean films understand, this is not done immediately and so ensues a bizarre condition whereby the imposter manages to live in Young’s house as her brother. (Despite his early background as gambler and a bit of a crook, owing money to a gangster, he is not very convincing.)
He too is an orphan and there are plenty of flashbacks in the boy’s life and in Young’s childhood as each get separated from mother and love: of course, we have plenty of tears flowing and swells of sentiment.
However, in the strict predictable development, he begins to fall in love with the girl and she feels he is a “man”, not her brother. The fiancée proves a complete nincompoop delaying to obtain the DNA test.
One interesting point is that at some stage in some middle episode, 8th or 9th (I don’t remember), Mrs. Wang, who also had a son and gave him to an orphanage, begins to investigate Oh Soo’s past and furtively examines him to see if he has some birthmark. It may have been the scriptwriter’s and director’s intention to make Oh Soo her lost son, but the idea was abandoned.
There are several sub-developments and more flashbacks but you realize they occur only to fill the intermediate episodes and generate suspense and sentiment. Eventually all conspiracies dissolve, the gangster who stalks Oh Soo with almost unbelievable hatred gets killed, the truth comes to the surface, Young gives Oh Soo much money, has an operation and regains her sight and forgives Oh Soo and Mrs. Wang, who deliberately kept her from having an operation earlier(!), and they all live happily ever after…
Song Hye-kyo’s performance was very good and she did deserve the Great Prize Daesang which she gained in 2013. But the series has all the various faults (the complexity, prolixity, sentimentality, inconsistencies etc.) that mar all Korean serials.
3. The third serial is The Glory (2022) – another title that bears little relation to the plot which is a complicated process of revenge.
Moon Dong-eun (Song Hey-kyo) is a young woman who, step by slow step over several impediments, organizes her revenge on TV weather presenter Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon) who is very successful and married to wealthy business man Ha Do-yeong.
The two girls were school-mates, Yeon-jin was the leader of a gang of bullies and, we learn later, she had murdered another school-girl. Their new victim in the high school was Dong-eun who had been abandoned by her drunken mother, was beaten and had her arm burned. Only a nurse in the school supported her. She complained to the police but Yeon-jin’s mother bribed handsomely the police officer in charge and he covered up the case. The class teacher beat ferociously Dong-eun in front of others, who did nothing.
Leaving high school without finishing it, the girl begins to work in a laundry and gradually manages (not very realistically) to go to university and obtain a degree. Then, by blackmailing the headmaster (again, not very realistically), she manages to be appointed as teacher to the class in which is Yeon-jin’s daughter Ha Ye-sol. Yeon-jin learns this and naturally gets worried.
Meanwhile Dong-eun has enlisted the help of a housekeeper, Kang Hyeon-nam, and promises to relieve her of her abusive husband. She also meets a medical intern Joo Yeo-jeong who falls in love with her. But she also having learned the game GO arranges to get acquainted with Do-yeong, Yeo-jin’s husband in a GO club and eventually reveals to him his wife’s mischiefs.
With the assistance of her two helpers, the housekeeper and Yeo-jeong who opens his own clinic, Dong-eun begins to take her revenge on the three women and two men who had tortured her at school. She also finds the evidence for Yeo-jin’s earlier murder of the schoolgirl Yeon So-pee.
Eventually Moon Dong-eun punishes all the culprits. Yeon-jin ends up in confinement demented.
Some important points to note, positive and negative.
Dark scenes reflect Moon Dong-eun’s inner state, first engulfed by suffering and injustice then being intent on revenge. It is also the corruption of Korean society where, but with few exceptions, everybody gives in to bribery (or blackmails). Song herself performs beautifully with a face ravaged and darkened most of the time – but when she smiles the screen lights up. (I wonder why Song consents to play with such inferior male actors as protagonists!)
Very good is Lim Ji-yeon too as Park Yeon-jiu and she well deserved her award for “Best Actress”.
(The awards for Best director, Screenplay and “Best Picture” and “Best Drama” do not mean much.)
There are, as is usual in almost all Korean soap-operas, too many inconsistencies, complications and superfluities. The camera often lingers too long on a scene (e.g. 3rd episode, the clapping at the prize giving ceremony).
There are harsh scenes of violence, totally unnecessary; for the cruelty can be suggested without showing the actual beating of Yong-eun, or the vicious beating of the housekeeper by her husband.
At the end of the 16th episode Dong-eun returns the feelings of love to patient Yeo-jeong but we do not see (the director and scriptwriter do not show us) how this has developed. The change is all too sudden.
The sex-scenes between Yeon-jin and her husband in the early episodes neither illuminate the characters nor advance the plot in any way.
Of the five Song Hye-kyo’s serials that I have seen and examined in these articles, Descendants of the Sun, despite some shortcomings, seems to be the best one.
