Beanie level: Entertainer-in-training

1: Turns out this kdrama is 4x more kdrama than other kdramas.

2: And just a few seconds later we see the perfect response 🙂

(A Virtuous Business, day 12)
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1 & 2: How to tell Korea was Korea even then.

3 & 4: So, loan sharks minnows? Where are these places in every other kdrama ever?

5: Yes. She’s Korean.

(Jeong-Nyeon: The Star is Born, ep 12)
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Cho reminds me a bit of North Korea’s big new announcer, Ri Chun-hee. Wikipedia says Ri studied at Pyongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts, so maybe that’s where she picked up her dramatic style (??)

(Jeong-Nyeon: The Star is Born, ep 12)
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Viewers when the writer gets a bit too “inventive”?
or
Other countries viewing the results of a certain election?

(Fiery Priest, ep 3 & 4)
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No! There’s already too much amnesia in kdramaland without you calling for more.

(Face Me, ep 4)
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A question that often needs to be asked, considering all the amnesia floating around in Kdramaland.

(A Virtuous Business, day 9)
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Now that the shock has worn off a little bit
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The Wikipedia article on Face Me has some issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_Me

\”No. of episodes 1\”

It also says the Han Ji-hyun was confirmed in Feb 2023 and the other major cast were reported to have \”teamed up\” in Sept 2024, but \”Principal photography begin in March 2023\”. Filming before you have most of the cast is a bloody good trick.

I like the revised romanization of the title though, \”Peiseu mi\”.

Yes, my years teaching English in Taiwan back in the 70s taught me to proofread things a bit, except of course for my own Dramabeans posts, where I add some \”typos\” just to prove I\’m human and not an AI. That\’s my story and I\’m sticking to it 🙂

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    The number part actually gets updated as the episodes release. For instance, the number of episodes for Family by Choice shows as 10 as of today.

    As for the casting, they definitely have written it badly. But the article cited for Principal Photography actually mentions both leads being confirmed and the article is from Feb 2023 so it’s possible they did shoot somethingin March 🤔.

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    Taiwan in the 70s must have been interesting. Feel free to tell me a bit about it.

    2
    1

      I have really fond memories of the place. The people were super nice.

      Nowdays you may hear that period called the “White Terror”, and while things were pretty bad for a while around 1949-ish (I’m a bit shaky on the details) by the time I was there I it didn’t seem any more “Terror” than driving around in some parts of the US if you are the wrong kind of minority and the local police have the wrong philosophy.

      As a teacher the big difference was that students had more hours or class and less homework. Then there were the night school students in a 5-year BA program that would involve about 15 or 16 hours of class. Most of them had jobs with a 44-hour work week (4 hours on Saturday) then a bus ride, quick dinner, 4 hours of class and another bus ride home. You have to really, really, REALLY respect the work ethic, but good luck trying to get them to do the amount of homework that I did in my own college days. With colleges full of students like that, Taiwan’s economic growth since then doesn’t surprise me.

      The legal system was worth a mention. They had their share of “ordinary” crimes like burglary, and for many crimes the punishments didn’t seem too outrageous, but for other crimes… Armed robbery by a group was automatic death penalty for the entire group and I had the impression that you could be dead within a few weeks of when you were caught, but I can’t point to any examples because there were pretty much zero armed robberies. So if anyone tells you that strict punishments don’t deter crime, laugh at them and say that American-style punishments don’t deter much but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. (Some crimes seem harder to deter than others. There were the occasional executions for drug dealing and that one case of rape-murder by a group. After that one the news quoted the late suspects as saying they wished they had known the penalty. I wouldn’t be surprised if that quote was fabricated, but the government made sure people knew the penalties after that because they ran TV ads with just text and voiceover listing the penalties for various crimes).

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        Wow, thanks! I visited Taiwan for about 10 days in the early 2000’s, and I agree, even in that short time I have some great memories.
        It was noticeable to me that the flats were much more fortified than where I live. I notice that on K-dramas and C-dramas as well. Everyone has walls and gates around their houses, and security bars on lower floor windows. That made me think that burglaries would be a lot more common, except everyone has decided that prevention is better than cure.
        Working that hard, and then study on top- that sounds exhausting. I’m not surprised though. I have a friend who is married to a Taiwanese woman (which is why I got to visit and stay with them) and the pressure for him to have a degree was so high that they just decided to lie to her parents. I think they only told her parents he did not have one after he was most of the way thru his degree (as a mature age student)

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As the election approaches 😱😱😬😬 …
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5

Probably also shouldn’t be fazed.

(Jeong-Nyeon: The Star is Born)
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Beanie watching their show go off the rails?
or
Sane person (well, formerly sane) on election night?

(A Virtuous Business, day 8)
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2: Yes, I think she’s had a lot of fun playing a Judge.

3: So if we pray really hard to the right God (or Demon, or investors) we might get a 2nd season? For once, I wouldn’t complain.

(Judge From Hell, ep 12)
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1

2: Because it’s not episode 17 15 yet.

3: Yes, she’s fine.

(Judge From Hell, ep 12)
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1: Something you often hear in kdramas.

2: Something you don’t.

(Dog Knows Everything, day 12)
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Det Joong-ryuk’s Cells 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

(Seoul Busters, ep 20)
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1

How to tell it’s not an American show.

(Seoul Busters, ep 18)
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    This is a great example of a million other things that can be completely misunderstood by non-Koreans or western audience. At least this one can be put into straightforward words. So many other ones can’t.

    1
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Now do an internet search for “robot dog with gun”. I dare you.

(Seoul Busters, ep 17)
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1 / 3: How not to hit on a homicide detective.

2: No, this is a joke.

4 & 5: Because it’s always safe to trust anyone who assures you they aren’t dangerous.

(Seoul Busters, ep 17)
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1: Just the thing for the modern food industry. And embalmers.

2: No special reason.

3: Demon math. Imaginary numbers?

(Judge From Hell, ep 11)
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1: Wanna bet?

2: Good luck with that. Can’t have people listening from around the corner or picking up and reading papers someone has dropped, can we?

3: If you’ve been doing the math, you know that the FL’s mother’s singing career must have been during the Japanese occupation, but in case you haven’t, here’s her album with a bit of Japanese phonetic alphabet (hiragana) tossed in to prove it isn’t Chinese or Korean.

(Jeong-Nyeon: The Star is Born, ep 5)

Sigh. My Chinese and Japanese are really rusty, but I can still recognize a few things. All those years of study weren’t completely wasted.

And I wonder if Mom’s trauma (?) and withdrawal have anything to do with Japanese nastiness?
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    The history of comfort women wrecks me every time I read or hear about it. Why can’t they call them victims and survivors instead? Some hid their experience to protect their loved ones from being shamed. Korea and its shitty Confucian mindset still treat them like outcasts.

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