Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
After learning that his long-time girlfriend is deathly allergic to dogs, Min-soo sets out on a journey to to find a new home for his beloved golden retriever. In the end, he realizes that the solution to his problem was nearby the whole time.
You’ve seen the cold male chaebol/warm, hardworking female combo before in many popular K-dramas (including “Business Proposal” and “Oh My Venus”). But Im Yoon-ah and Lee Jun-ho are so charismatic and easy to watch in “King the Land” that they add a fresh touch to an old concept.
“Rebound” is based on the true story of Busan’s Jungang High School basketball team. Long past its glory years, the team isn’t a priority for the school’s administration. They hire a young and inexperienced basketball coach, Yang-hyun (Ahn Jae-hong), who during his own Jungang school days was a champion athlete.
This second season of “The Uncanny Counter” is good enough. But it is also a reminder that K-dramas are traditionally made to finish after one season. With the influx of Western streaming sites that have figured out how lucrative Korean shows can be, there have been more shows going into their second (or even third seasons). And while I was one of the viewers who had hoped for a second season of this series, I acknowledge that it may have been best to just leave things as they were.
A thoroughly entertaining cop-buddy film, “Midnight Runners” does a great job of blending comedy with action, while delving into the world of human trafficking and organ harvesting. The film is driven by the camaraderie between musclehead Ki-joon (Park Seo-joon) and nerdy by-the-book Hee-yeol (Kan Ha-neul).
“Our goal as artists is for everyone who comes to our shows — no matter what age, what gender — to feel included,” said The Rose frontman Woosung. “That’s the energy we want at our concerts. We want it to be this happy place, a garden of roses where you’re enjoying music together with all kinds of different people and everybody feels safe.”
What both seasons of “D.P.” does so well is tell the important and uncomfortable stories that no one wants to believe are true. When soldiers are regularly humiliated, degraded and tortured, what right does anyone have to tell the victims that they must return to their abusers?
“See You in My 19th Life” delves into reincarnation. And as it does so, it drives home the point that even if you are assured of living more than one life, what’s important is that you live your best life, rather than muddling through and wasting time.
What follows is not only the story of Korean popular music, and how it birthed the K-pop business, but also how a small peninsula nation learned how to make art in the face of colonialism and political change, culled sonics from all corners of the globe, and keeps striving to find new ways of distilling the purest, most thrilling aspects of the human experience into four-minute packages of pop revelation. For Rolling Stone.
“Celebrity” tackles the ‘dark side’ of social media. When haters are anonymous, they’re emboldened to be cruel.
“Agency” tackles the old boys’ club. It also addresses the expectations placed on women at work and at home.
A look at how “Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938” reflects on colonization.
“Bloodhounds” offers sweet bromance. But this K-drama also has a brutal take on morality.
Like “Our Blues,” “My Liberation Notes” and “Reply 1988,” “The Good Bad Mother” is a slice-of-life series filled with quirky characters who are overly interested in each other’s business. They support each other, are jealous of each other’s children and talk smack about each other. But if an outsider dares to do the same, hell hath no fury like a neighbor scorned.
“Black Knight” takes place 40 years after a comet crashed into Earth, nearly destroying the entire population. The Korean series is clearly a parable for what could happen to our world if we don’t take better care of the most vulnerable among us.
There has been an uptick in engaging K-dramas where the protagonist becomes a lawyer to avenge the wrongs committed against his family. “The Good Bad Mother” and “Divorce Attorney Shin” are set in the modern day era. “Joseon Attorney: A Morality” adds a twist to this conceit by taking us way back to the Joseon era (1392 to 1897), before Korea was called Korea and there was no Seoul — the city was known as Hanyang.
A fast-moving action film, “Yaksha: Ruthless Operations” is a spy thriller full of special ops, backstabbing and political intrigue. Last year, I stopped watching about 20 minutes into the movie, because it didn’t hold my interest. But when I went back to it this year, I found it to be thoroughly entertaining. Is this a prestige film? Absolutely not. But it was a fun ride with a (straight-laced) fish-out-of-water concept.
“XO, Kitty” tackles adoption, diaspora and maintaining Korean ties. But is it any good? Not really.
A psychological thriller that sounded much better than it actually is, “Somebody” revolves a serial killer (Kim Young-kwang) who uses a dating app to find his victims — and the app developer (Kang Hae-lim) who identifies with him, even after finding out his true identity.
