1.
Crash Landing On You ‘Crash Landing On You’ may sound too surreal
to be based on the truth, as our female lead was wind-blown all the way towards the border
of North Korea.
However, according to screenwriter Park Ji Eun, a similar event happened in 2008.
In particular, news stations at the time had reported that while rowing with her friends,
actress Jung Yang encountered a strong wind due to bad weather, and was swept towards
the shores of North Korea, then chased by the North Korean coast guard.
This rare incident gave Park Ji Eun the first idea for her drama.
She said: “It was a major incident that was all over the news.
That’s when I first realized, ‘Is North Korea that close?
Is it so close that you can get there after letting your mind slip for a second?
It's a place that’s close yet forbidden.”
Two countries of the same race, speaking the same language, sharing the same history, and
yet divided - it was this notion that inspired ‘Crash Landing on You’.
And as a result, we have the heiress Yoon Seri who crash-landed into the heart of handsome
military officer Ri Jeong Hyeok, and a drama so good that it’s hard to take our eyes
off the screen.
To make the series as realistic as possible, the production crew even interviewed people
who once resided in North Korea.
It was no wonder that ‘Crash Landing on You’ had become the most popular tvN drama
up to date.
2.
Youth of May Following the story of two young people who
fell in love during the Gwangju Uprising, ‘Youth of May’ is the perfect example
of a tear-jerker.
The male lead Hwang Tae Hee was the son of a tycoon, but his mother was unfortunately
a prostitute.
Meanwhile, the female lead was born in a poor family and suffered a lot of injustice in
work and life due to her low social status.
Even the supporting character Soo Chan was all fleshed out as an international student
with modern Western ideas, stuck in the poor and old-fashioned GwangJu.
They were all weighed down by society, and yet stayed strong and tried to choose their
own fates.
The drama was colored in specks of gold and clothing reminiscent of an olden time, and
the romance between the main characters was soft and heart-wrenching.
There were so many moments where we could not help but smile, and Lee Do Hyun and Go
Min Si’s eyes spoke ample of love.
But things turned tragic when they were later caught up in the GwangJu uprising, one of
the most painful chapters in South Korean history.
To lay the foundation for democratic politics and make Korea the great power it is today,
over 100 young Korean were killed, but it was suspected that the real death count could
reach thousands.
Truthful to its painful context, the drama did not have a happy end, and their tragic
fates were a direct reflection of past corruption.
While ‘Youth of May’ was a beautiful art inflicted with pain, it was also immensely
hopeful, and good enough to spend days over.
3.
Hymn of Death With only 3 episodes, this Netflix original
series still manages to punch the viewers in the gut with its tear-jerking storyline
and the convincing acting of Lee Jong Suk and Shin Hye Sun.
The story began when Yun Sim-Deok, a soprano singer, met and fell in love with playwright
Kim Woo Jin while she was in university.
However, Woo Jin already had a wife, and their responsibilities did not allow the two to
be together.
Fed up with all these obligations and the old mindset of the period, they decided to
leave the world together, hand in hand.
Tragic as it is, this plot actually follows the diary of Yun Sim Deok, Korea’s first
female soprano singer.
As a woman in the 1890s, Sim Deok was able to enroll in Kyongsong Women’s Teaching
College, an unusual thing at the time.
She was eager to further her studies and became the first Korean to study at the Tokyo Music
School in Japan.
But her life took a drastic turn when she met Kim Woo Jin at this very university.
Woo Jin was a man of art, always craving for freedom and self-expression through his works.
And yet, his whole life was predetermined: from his study, his job, to his own marriage.
That’s why when he met Sim Deok, the pair fell in love passionately yet purely.
But as with all the romance of the past, the story ends on a tragic note, and the drama
follows it faithfully.
Still, for a short watch with beautiful music, setting, and a meaningful plot, ‘Hymn of
Death’ was remarkable in its all means.
4.
Fight For My Way As K-drama geeks, we have all heard of this
classic drama, which was no less than an anthem of youth and an explosion of chemistry between
Park Seo Joon and Kim Ji Won.
But did you know, ‘Fight For My Way’ actually takes inspiration from real life?
According to the screenwriter Im Sang Choon, the hit drama was based on the life of the
martial artist Choo Sung Hoon and his wife Yano Shiho.
Once, when watching a match, Yano Shino cried while watching her husband fight.
Moved by the scene, writer Sang Choon started to pay more attention to the lives of martial
artists.
He shared that he used to think martial artists just liked alcohol, women, and violence.
But after observing and studying them, he wanted to get rid of negative stereotypes
surrounding these fighters.
The screenwriter also deeply felt the sadness of people close to these martial artists,
and the fact that they could not bear to watch fighting matches - where their loved ones
are either violent or beaten bruised and blue.
It was these emotions that later led to the success of ‘Fight for My Way’ - an excellent
screenplay that portrays a realistic, heartfelt, and moving everyday life of an endearing fighter
protagonist.
5.
Taxi Driver The phrase ‘Based on a true story’ was
taken to a completely new level in ‘Taxi Driver’, where every episode was inspired
by a serious case that reflected the dark side of Korea.
Adapted from the webtoon ‘Red Cage’, ‘Taxi Driver’ introduces the Rainbow Taxi Company,
which provides revenge services for its customers - who were failed by the nation’s legal
system.
One by one, the grim nature of Korea starts to come to light.
The first episode digs up the Cho Doo Soon case, where a child rapist got to walk free
after serving for only 12 years, and even receive 1.2 million won per month from the
government.
The series also brings up the hellish ‘Purple Island’ case in 2015, where it was revealed
that people were sold to salt farms to work as slaves on an island, and were brutally
exploited and beaten.
They tried to escape and report to the law, only for the police themselves to cover it
up.
The workplace bullying scandal of WeDisk Company was also included.
In 2018, a leaked video showed Yang Jin Ho, the company president, repeatedly slapping
his staff and asking them to kneel.
He even forced employees to eat garlic and hot chili sauce and demanded company managers
to dye their hair according to his preferences.
Even worse, the leaked video was not even taken sneakily, but was filmed so that Jin
Ho can keep a “memorial” that he was above all.
Throughout its 16 episode run, Taxi Driver had managed to dig up a lot of other cases,
from the “joy killer” case in 2005, to the recent ‘Nth chatroom’ event that enraged
the entire public.
‘Taxi Driver’ tells us that Korea is no perfect land: it fails all of these victims,
yet at the same time delivers a fantasy that these criminals were eventually rightfully
punished.
With convincing acting and attractive story-telling, this is a drama that you wouldn’t want to
miss.
6.
Move to Heaven K-dramas bring to the screen many different
careers in society, but ‘Move to Heaven’ gets creative as it delivers us the life of
‘trauma cleaners’.
The series was inspired by an essay called ‘Things Left Behind’, which describes
the lonely deaths of people who live alone and hoards objects due to mental illnesses.
It reflects the increasing reality of South Korean people having to live on their own,
whether they like it or not.
These people are called the “godoksa”, and as their number grows, several questions
arrive: What will happen after they die?
Who will clean up their spaces and remember their lives?
‘Move to Heaven’ tries to answer these questions.
It introduces the 20 year-old Han Geu Roo, who has a stellar memory and intelligence,
and yet struggles to empathize with people.
This makes him the perfect ‘trauma cleaner’ - to clean up things left behind by those
deceased.
The film explored a series of Korean social issues in a deeply emotional yet not excessive
way.
It doesn't go deep into mental illness but highlights a huge range of social issues like
domestic violence, LGBTQ discrimination, and at the same time reinforces the diversity
in life and even in death.
‘Move to Heaven’ is powerful because of this diversity.
Geu Roo was unable to express sympathy for the deceased.
But instead, he gave them something much better: memory and respect.
. There’s always a feeling that we get when
seeing art based on the truth.
And this is what makes these dramas all the more impactful.
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