Source: Bangkok Post: The world's window to Thailand/ leisure
Published: 4/03/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Outlook
Before the 1990s, most of the dramas featured on local Korean television were male-oriented programmes that never talked about love or romance.
"We were shocked when hearing the female protagonist say 'I love you' in Winter Sonata," says Eun-shil. Before the 1990s, love was never really mentioned on screen.
The trendy drama is a result of female writers who attended university in the 1980s and moved on from advocating democratisation to feminism. It was a period when individualism rose while politics declined. People yearned for personal freedom and rights, and began to think "personal is political".
Korea had always been a patriachal society but the automatic authority of the father has come into question during the past few decades. As Korea was trying to keep pace with the capitalist world, people were defined by profession and financial status. While those men who had been politically active in the '70s and '80s had never prepared for capitalism, they became the fathers of children who were born into global capitalism and have become divided by the different perspective towards life and society.
Gyeoul Yeonga, or Winter Sonata (better known in Thailand as Winter Love Song), was one of the very first series exported from Korea and received tremendous welcome, creating a huge fan base for male lead Bae Yong-jun all over East Asia, especially in Japan.
While Koreans found the series a romantic story, many Japanese who were forced to migrate from Korea during World War Two found the story healing and brought back their lost memories of their home towns.
Eun-shil arrived in Japan in 2004 for research and was shocked by the craze among female Japanese over the trendy Korean drama.
Due to its high standards, Japan is selective about its imports, from products to culture, but Winter Sonata was broadcast twice on the NHK channel in 2003.
Thanks to the success of the series and the actor, Bae Yong-jun was recently appointed new promotional ambassador of Korea Tourism to promote its 2010 to 2012 "Year of Korea Tourism".
Coins featuring Bae Yong-jun and a scene from Winter Sonata on each side have recently been released in Japan. The 807 coins, seven of which were gold and cost 1 million yen were sold out in no time.
Take note: Last month in JOB, they released a notice ----- to clarify the media reports about the high priced snowdrop coins from WLS anime official site sold out.
Happiebb explained the notice in Bb's blog 2/21/2009 12:45 Am:
the notice said BOF has not been able to reach a mutual agreement with the WLS anime official site about co-producing and selling those high-priced commemorative coins. but the site went ahead and released those coins (1,000,000 yen!!), and in fact, they started taking reservations!!
upon hearing about this, BOF immediately requested that they stop the sales. they came to the agreement to say the items were 'sold out' in order to resolve this matter.
my thanks to HappieBB ^.^
Photo from:cafe.daum.net/byj ---- Thanks
No comments:
Post a Comment