#8 anonymous Thanks for mentioning your edit to your post, which of course made my comment on your (pre-edited) #3 look a little puzzling. For a moment there, I thought we had both been caught by the nastly little bug in this live editing thing which I've remarked on before. I started to add my #4 during your "edit time window" for no#3 -- and found myself being invited by the server to edit your posting in your name instead of my own. So I backed off until your 15 mins were up. But when I saw, after submitting my #4, that your #3 had changed, I thought I must have somehow pressed delete when your posting was unexpectedly made editable in my browser. Anyway, all is clear now, except that I hope you don't really think I was "correcting" you. Just supplementing your perceptions with mine. That's what it's all about.

I resisted, in that Coffee Prince Summer when we all had such fun here, being typecast as token male comment spokesperson on this blog, and I don't now want to typecast myself as token oldie. But I think most people have observed that KDrama is, pretty successfully, pushing beyond its earlier appeal to those who were teens at heart if not in biological age.

More and more of the thirty-somethings in recent Kdramas have been recognisable as such by Western psychology and categories, rather than as inner adolescents who happen to have landed jobs as lawyers or advertising executives and hence are supposedly now adults. And one of the things I see being touched on, and maybe later even explored, in Insoon (the drama) is a further pushing back of the range of life-phases that are regarded as worth the attention of the writers and the audience, extending into the forty- and fifty- somethings.

It looks to me as though this domain is going to be explored not just in subplots, across which those of more youthful years and interests can safely fast-forward, but in ways that are bound in to the drama of the foreground characters. In particular, Insoon's Mom and Sang Woo's parents, his Dad especially (there's an strange moment a bit later on where Insoon is given a --pretty important -- voiceover on a scene that at first sight has nothing to do with her and where she hasn't appeared), but also his Mom, treated so badly by both her husband (for reasons that will soon start to emerge) and her allegedly grown-up son who treats their home like a hotel with substandard service, reacts to her innocently mumsy questions like a petulant fourteen-year-old and dispatches her as if she were a nosey domestic servant.

I don't want to get into spoiler territory (though warning: in what follows there will be some spoilers -- but only concerning episodes that javabeans has already summarized, viz 1 and 2) but let me point up a few of the things that held my interest from ep 1 and into and across ep 2 with none of the bouts of indifference that javabeans and thunderbolt have reported.

It's becoming plain that Insoon is and always has been extremely gutsy. [Which is presumably why she had no need for a macho childhood sweetheart and could hang out with a ghastly whining wimp like the young Sang Woo instead. I suppose she liked going to the movies with him, confident that she wouldn't have to thump him for letting a hand stray her way: the poor guy needs both hands to shield his delicate eyes from the horrors of an early-model computer-generated T. Rex on the screen, while Insoon is devouring those same horrors with enthusiastic wide-open delight.] But, in some way we will eventually find out about, that gutsiness backfired, leading to her conviction and the psychological and social burdens laid on her.

Now then: who else is gutsy? Don't laugh: her Mother. Forget for now the posery, the snobbery, the patchy taste in interior decor (don't you just love that 20km-screen TV on the nobbly-legged "antique" table? She for one clearly does...), the harsh control-freakish stance toward her younger daughter, and a lot more unpleasant behaviour in eps 3 and 4, with more no doubt to come. Look instead at that scene outside the hospital at the end of ep2 when, regardless of the way it must make her look, she runs out of the hospital to find and face Insoon. And then the way, straying now across the cliffhanger into the first moments of ep 3, she steadies herself and bravely grasps an enormous nettle that comes into view only moments after that.

She has a lot on her plate already. Despite her brave front on the talk-shows, there are an awful lot of empty seats in that theater, she no longer gets fan-mobbed, and she not only quite frequently dries up on stage, but seems also to have lost the professional knack of covering up such mishaps so the audience don't notice (and from the murmurings of onlookers, they seem to predate the disturbung news about her daughter she's just heard) . A lot of the smugness she seems to show when giving viewers the guided tour of her home in ep 1 has to do with signalling to her ex-hubby that she's doing very well nicely on her own thanks, but she's trying too hard (and little does she know that whether or not ex-hubby is watching, somebody else is, on a much inferior TV set, and the consequences of attracting that hard-up viewer's attention will change her life). She's worried sick about Jungah, partly because she sees the effect of the divorce on her, but also because Jungah seems so resistant to the notion that to succeed nowadays even as a classical musician, a bit (or a lot) of pushing the glamour/personality angles helps, and a Mum who knows the ropes and has the contacts is a real asset.

Maybe that doesn't come across to people who haven't themselves had talented teenage kids who seemed intent on chucking away their life chances (those who still have such kids on their hands are probably too frazzled to have the time or mental energy to watch KDramas anyway, and besides there's no bandwith left on the household ISP connection for parental downloads). But it's very much part of those older generation dynamics that are being built up in these early episodes.

But, even sticking more with the central character, there are a few things that caught my attention and drew me in and onwards that don't quite come out in the summaries. For example: not far into ep 2, when Insoon, wretchedly downing the soju in a tent bar, gets a call from her aunt to check up on whether she met her mother yet, she responds that she doesn't see why she should go looking for a mother who abandoned her (her mother's failure outside the dressing room to pick up on the "autograph hunter's" name still clearly hurts badly, and the strung-out wordiness of the relative clause unavoidable in English -- "a mother who abandoned me" -- can't capture the bitterly monolithic, almost spat-out label of "버린 엄말" in the Korean), the aunt comes straight back with something even more loadedly resistant to translation "버리긴 누가 버렸다 그래?". "Who said anything about abandoning [you]"? The way Korean repeats components verbatim where English would substitute placeholders means that the word the aunt is challenging, "버리다" --"abandon, desert, throw away, dump", comes up twice in that same brief sentence. But Insoon is too upset, and probably also already too drunk, to hear, let alone get the point and ask for clarification.

This is the second hint the Aunt has dropped about Insoon's mother being somehow forced to part with her. A pattern is being built up that suggests, to me at any rate, that Mom "abandoned" Insoon in some sense akin to the way Insoon "killed" someone, and that when the details eventually emerge, the question of responsibility (and the scope for justified self-blame) in both events will turn out to be more complex than it first seems.

There are a lot more moments like this in ep2 that kept me eager to see where these hints are leading. Above all the suggestion that there are deep situational as well as temperamental affinities between Insoon and her mother, but of a kind that in this context are more likely to lead to hurt and conflict than easy acceptance.

hi javabeans! i think i might be needing your help.:> are you familiar with pastelmusic records? the one behind korean indie bands such as the melody, adult child, tearliner, donawhale, misty blue etc. which were included in the coffee prince ost. if im not mistaken, pastel music has released an album entitled Cracker: a bittersweet lovestory- it features the bands i just mentioned. i checked the record's site but its in korean, and i'm not :>. i also searched for it at yesasia, could'nt find it. if its no trouble, is it ok if you feature the album or the bands and their songs here in your site?
i really enjoy reading your entries and listening to the songs u uploaded. keep it up!
thanks a lot!!!

I'd like to say that their album is strongly recommended for those who r interested in krock.. currently its on my continuously playing list ^^ plus the vocals is just awesome!

I usually confine by "chick" books to home, to tell you the truth...But that's because I read most serious classics or historical fiction or fantasy. So a lot of people gets surprised when I tell them I like those cute books. It's like a guilty pleasure of mine. But I mean, I'm not HIDING it or anything. it's just those books are so short and really not that grasping so I finish it at home or don't bother to bring it to school. It's not like some amazing books that I JUST CAN'T PUT DOWN, you know what I mean? Those popcorn book never ever makes my fave list of books.

I'm blabbing. XD To tell the truth, I've basically been reading these "popcorn" books too lately. There's nothing good anymore! I've read them all. Maybe I'll re-read Pride and Prejudice....(for some odd reason, that's one of my fave books....

o ya, i think both meteor garden and hyd r so successful b/c mainly of the story/plot. i hven't watch meteor garden yet though but i think i saw a part of it long ago.

i just spent two days watching hyd 1 and 2. no sleep for me and i hve school too. this is my first fav j-drama, i hve hyd 1 and 2 they were the only two jdramas that i actually finished. i only liked tvb and kdrama at first but now im also adding jdrama to my addiction. how do i stop? uhh it's a good addiction and a bad one too. i just finished reading all of these comments (hhaha, they're were long but interesting). i lve ur site and thanks so much for all the fans that sub for addicts like me. im gonna go to bed now. man, this is bad, watching and watching. o ya i like ur new polls! i visit ur site everyday. it's 322 am already. oops. o ya, i lve hui too and i saw him in haha kimi first (i finished that drama too). im starting to like jdramas and music!!

#18 javabeans: Sure. I wasn't imagining you'd like Ishiguro as some sort of Japanese novelist in disguise. It's not just that he writes only in English, but he has always seen himself as an English novelist (Pleeeeze not 'British', in this context: there are no "British" novelists.)

But what fascinates me about some of his novels, above all precisely those with a purely English setting and "cast" -- Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go -- is that they are persistently misread (or under-read) by Anglophone critics as being centrally, maybe even provincially, about England and things English. And the Merchant-Ivory mothball-scented costume-drama movie of Remains didn't help there at all.

But Ishiguro isn't a five-foot-six Trollope with Oriental features. As he himself has often said, what drove his imagination in Remains was not the niceties of English country house life in bygone days, nor English class-consciousness, nor even the alliance between "old" aristocracy and new Fascist barbarity in Europe. Of course, being Ishiguro, he doesn't really ever more than hint at what was in his imagination behind that beautifully executed foreground. But it's not too hard to see the same basic forces that get transmuted into the themes of so much East Asian fiction and drama, both high- and middlebrow. A traditional order under threat, not just from forces of historical change generally identified with "the West" (even in Remains, the new employer whom the butler-narrator so deeply despises despite his great kindness to him, is a "Western" intruder, a rich American who thinks he can buy into a European tradition) but, more importantly and dangerously, from its defenders, who are so unclear about just what is and isn't of worth in their old order that they in fact betray the values they believe they are defending.

And "Never Let Me Go". Although nearly all readers are captivated by its atmosphere and technical mastery, even otherwise canny critics express bewilderment at just why these young people accept their extraordinary lot with such composure, even dedication, despite being so aware of their situation and role. Or try to convince themselves that Ishiguro wants us to see those young people, and the narrator in particular, as contemptible, rather than pitiful, in their acceptance of those things. But the novel is much less puzzling, and much more resonant, when seen as reflecting a culture based on group conformity and socio-cultural consensus which is powerful because it is so deeply internalised (though only imperfectly perceived and understood) by all those who uphold it. Westerners don't inhabit such a culture. But despite the massive "Englishness" of the surface, the characters in Never Let Me Go live and breathe a culture of that kind -- for the limited and harrowing span allowed to them by their "elders".

And that, briefly (scoff not: believe me, I write a whole lot more than that when I'm not trying to be "brief" by my eccentric standards) is why I thought Ishiguro might send a spark jumping between your interests in Japanese fiction and the more "comedy of manners" side of Eng Lit.

Incidentally, since quite a few readers of this blog seem to have had the experience of being transplanted in childhood from East Asia to a Western culture which they then, more or less, made their own, a now rather old radio interview (1990 ISTR) with Ishiguro, streamed on-line at
http://media.woub.org/ramgen/wiredbooks/KazuoIshiguro.rm
might be of some interest.

Please don't be put off by the first five minutes or so, which because of the host's obvious anxiety about actually getting around to talking about Ishiguro's work, plus Ishiguro's lack of interest in self-promotion, consist of tedious chit-chat about comparative roadworks in NYC, London and Houston. The segment immediately following is fascinating stuff about a bi-cultural and (partly) bilingual childhood.

In spanish we would call his voice "baja panti" figure that one out hahaha