K-drama review: Because This is My First Life

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Because This is My First Life still
Lee Min-ki and Jung So-min co-star.

Finally, the first K-drama in a while that I have thoroughly enjoyed without any caveats. Because This is My First Life (TvN, 2017) is unashamedly romantic but also modern and, dare I say it, feminist?

Nam Se-hee (Lee Min-ki) is an app designer who is struggling to pay the mortgage on his home. Yoon Ji-ho (Jung So-min) is an assistant TV writer who can’t afford to rent a place on her own in Seoul (she had been sharing with her brother but when he gets married their parents decide Ji-ho must move out). So it’s initially an ideal situation for Ji-ho to rent Se-hee’s spare room. They’re both in their 30s, reserved, love football and like to keep a clean home.

It becomes apparent that other people are uncomfortable with the idea of an unmarried man and woman living together. So they do what seems logical: they get married, promising to each other that it is purely a financial arrangement. But of course, not only does the rest of the world have ideas about what marriage is, they also find themselves questioning what it means for their relationship to be quite so transactional.

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February 2020 reading round-up

Frame Perspective

February dragged on forever and then was suddenly over. We’ve had endless rain and wind, but the month ended on a high note for me. On Friday, Greta Thunberg came to Bristol to lead the Youth Strike 4 Climate. I went along to hear the speeches and join the first part of the march and it was amazing.

This weekend is also Bristol Light Festival, with a series of light-based sculptures around the city. It’s currently quite small, but I’m hoping it’s proved enough of a success to become an annual event, like the one in Amsterdam.

This month we went to see Parasite, which we not only loved but are continuing to analyse every detail of two weeks later. It is such a good film. And I went to see a screening of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with live improvised musical accompaniment. Those 1920 film sets are gorgeous!

On the reading front, I seem to have continued my slowed-down pace of one book per week. I know for most people that would be plenty, but for me it seems very little. Thankfully, the books I did read this month were all great.

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Greta Thunberg comes to Bristol

Today, Greta Thunberg came to Bristol to lead the Youth Strike 4 Climate (which has been held monthly for almost a year in Bristol now). I went along to College Green to hear the speeches and join the first part of the march and it was amazing. So inspirational and hopeful.

In the non-stop rain, I did my best to take some photos and scribble down some quotes, though I realised later I had a better time during the bits where I just stood back as part of the crowd (estimated at 30,000 people). It was all very friendly and supportive (unless you got too close to the national press jostling for the best photo of Thunberg).

Bristol-based climate activist Mya Rose-Craig spoke passionately about how the approach to the climate crisis must be global, and in particular must not make life better for the West at the cost of less advantaged parts of the world. As she says, “The solution to climate change cannot rely on the exploitation of human beings.”

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K-drama reviews in brief

Reply 1994
In Reply 1994, Sung Na-jung (centre) winds up marrying one of the five men in her life – but which one?

I have been trying to learn a little Korean on Duolingo. I enjoy learning new languages and I figured this was one I might actually make use of semi-regularly – to understand more of the K-dramas I watch. Not that I expect to be able to do away with using the subtitles, but I had already learned enough to notice some differences between original and translation. (That isn’t necessarily a failure of the translation – a literal translation is often not the best solution.)

Which is to say, no I have not stopped watched K-dramas, I just haven’t been reviewing all of them because I have less to say about some than others. I’m not going to stop reviewing them altogether, but I thought this might be a good time to reflect on some more briefly.

Toward the end of last year I watched Reply 1994 (tvN 2013),which is the second of three series with the same basic set-up. In modern-day Seoul, a group of friends are gathered together and reminiscing about the year when they all met: 1994. The action switches between 1994 and 2013 and the concept is that the female lead Sung Na-jung (Go Ara) has ended up marrying one of the five men who co-star – but which one? They all shared the same house during university and have stayed in touch, but the husband is not revealed until the final episode.

It’s a really cheesy concept and I found the contrivance immensely annoying, but other than that this was an enjoyable show. Most of the annoying K-drama tropes were mercifully absent, the relationships felt more realistic than many I’ve seen, and there were details of the recent-historical setting that added interest for me. The other two Reply series are also on Netflix so I might check them out.

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Someday, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time

Kitchen book coverKitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
translated from Japanese by Megan Backus

This novella and short story about grief are an excellent demonstration that you can depict dark, devastating emotion without being hyperbolic or overwrought.

“Kitchen part 1”, “Kitchen part 2” and “Moonlight shadow” each follows a young person (college age ish) who has lost a significant person from their lives. The relationship to the deceased is different and on the surface the reactions are different, but at heart the grief is similar.

One of the keys that Yoshimoto taps into is the comfort of specific places, for example a kitchen or a bridge in a park, in helping the process of grief. In “Kitchen”, Mikage doesn’t even need a specific kitchen to help her feel better – any kitchen will do, though she is particularly enamoured by the kitchen of her friend Yuichi, a young man she barely knew before her recent bereavement.

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A fellow can’t live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness

The heart is a lonely hunterThe Heart is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers

This is a beautiful, devastating novel that explores loneliness and poverty. It starts quietly and builds to an angry climax. I can’t quite fully believe that Carson McCullers was only 23 when she wrote this.

Set in a small mill town in 1930s Georgia, the plot revolves around John Singer, a deaf man who touches the lives of several others. He has a job at a jeweller, is educated (including knowing sign language) and serenely gets on with his life. After his deaf friend and room mate Spiros Antonapoulos is taken away to an asylum, some of the town’s more disaffected residents begin to notice Singer, turning to him as a confidante.

This group includes Mick Kelly, a tomboyish teen girl who is developing a deep love for music, though her family can’t afford for her to pursue this love beyond listening to other people’s radios. She tries to describe music to Singer in a way that is so moving that it doesn’t seem strange.

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K-drama review: Ms Panda and Mr Hedgehog

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I deliberately picked another TV show that looked light and fluffy – I mean, it’s called Ms Panda and Mr Hedgehog (2012 Channel A). This romantic drama about patissiers certainly delivered on the fluffy front, but also managed to surprise me in a few areas (while being both lame and predictable in others).

Go Seung-ji (Lee Dong-hae AKA singer-songwriter Donghae) is a skilled 26-year-old patissier working in a small neighbourhood bakery run by the sweet, elderly Park Byung-moo (Park Geun-hyung). He’s also a little rough and wild, making money on the side as a loan shark. His nickname is Dochi (“Koseumdochi” is hedgehog in Korean) because he is prickly on the outside…

Pan Da-yang (Yoon Seung-ah) is a 28-year-old former journalist desperately trying to keep the family business Cafe Panda afloat following her parents’ death. Her younger sister Da-na and her aunt Mi-ra help out, but they are all reliant on hired baker Gil Dong-goo who is terrible at his job. On the verge of having to sell her home to pay her debts, she serves Dong-goo notice and advertises for a new baker – one willing to work solely for room and board for the first few months,

It’s a tall order, but handily Dochi has just learned that he is being paid more than the old man can afford, so he fakes a desire to strike out on his own and takes the job at Cafe Panda. Sparks immediately fly between him and Da-yang, but he doesn’t like to get close to anyone.

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January 2020 reading round-up

Kinderdijk
New Year’s Day excursion to Kinderdijk.

Today is not a good day. I’d quite like to pretend Brexit isn’t happening, even though I know that the better approach is to reaffirm my love for Europe and the EU. I love the EU so much and will greatly miss being part of it.

This month started strong, with our holiday in the Netherlands, and ended terribly. Maybe February could average out a little? That would be nice. (There is a chance I am also suffering a little from late-winter blues, so as the days get longer I’ll hopefully cheer up, whatever politicians gets up to.)

As well as the Dutch loveliness, this month we also had a very nice weekend with friends in Leicestershire and we saw the excellent JoJo Rabbit at the cinema. If you’re a Taika Waititi fan (and why wouldn’t you be?) you will not be disappointed.

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That faraway summer when he discovered magic

Prince of MistThe Prince of Mist
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
translated by Lucia Graves

This was my Spain choice for my EU Reading Challenge, which I am clearly not going to finish before the UK leaves the EU, but maybe I’ll manage it before the end of the year. I guess it’s appropriate for this month that I didn’t really enjoy this book.

This is a YA mystery by the author of The Shadow of the Wind, which I loved. It’s not the first of his YA books that I’ve read, but this was definitely inferior to The Watcher in the Shadows. This may be related to the author’s note that opens the book, which says that this was Zafón’s first published novel.

It starts strong. It’s 1943 and the Carver family decide it will be safer to leave the city for a sleepy seaside town that is less likely to be bombed. The three children Alicia, Max and Irina are unimpressed by the move and hope it’s just for the summer. Their new house is described in classic Zafón style as a creepy wooden house with a sad history. Then the weird stuff starts, beginning with a stray cat.

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K-drama review: When the Camellia Blooms

When the Camellia Blooms poster

I really enjoyed this recent release, which came out in September – November 2019 (KBS/Netflix) and is already award winning. When the Camellia Blooms effectively combines a really sweet romance with a modern twist and a suspenseful crime drama.

(I say “modern twist” because it’s about an unmarried mother finding romance, which wouldn’t be particularly novel in a European or American drama, but in Korean TV these things just don’t get depicted.)

Oh Dongbaek (Gong Hyo-jin, who I know from the excellent Don’t Dare to Dream and the mediocre Pasta) moves to the small (fictional) town of Ongsan as an unmarried single mother of a toddler. She opens a bar and surprises everyone by braving the locals’ cool reception and malicious gossip to make a modest success of her life. Six years later, romance comes knocking but at the same time, Kang Jong-ryul (Kim Ji-seok), the father of her son Pil-gu, finally tracks her down. He’s been busy playing pro baseball and making a reality show about his perfect-on-the-surface marriage to model Jessica, so he has money but not a lot else going for him.

Hwang Yong-sik (Kang Ha-neul, who has the most adorable goofy smile) is a police officer who was raised in Ongsan but has been away for years. Now he’s back, causing problems for his mother, his police superiors and for local criminals. He’s passionate and tends to throw himself full-throttle into situations. He falls hard for Dongbaek when he sees her stand up for herself to a rude customer and begins to woo her. And when he realises that an old serial murderer he’s been looking into may have reason to target Dongbaek, he makes solving the case his priority (despite being a junior officer whose responsibilities lie more in the realm of petty theft and neighbour disputes).

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