Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Back in my era, the teachers encouraged immigrants to only speak English at home so that we wouldn’t fall behind. But what they didn’t know at the time — or perhaps they didn’t really care about — was that in the rush to make us understand English, many of us lost our ability to converse in our birth language.
One of the best K-dramas of the year, “Queenmaker” is the latest female-centric series led by women in their 40s (and older) that in nail-bitingly good. A political thriller with twists and turns, two foes unite to take down a corrupt chaebol family that will stop at nothing to protect their financial and familial interests.
This second season of the revenge series “Taxi Driver” is adept at tackling inspired-by-real-life cases, like the Burning Sun scandal, where privileged male clubgoers were given access to drug and assault women.
At the center of this series is a trio of middle-aged male friends. Sung-han (Cho Seung-woo) is a classical pianist turned divorce attorney. Kim Sung-kyun plays his best friend Hyung-geun, who is reticent to give his wife — who is already pregnant with her new partner’s baby — a divorce. And Jeong-sik (Jung Moon-sung) runs a real estate business in a building owned by Sung-han.
“It’s my dream to travel around the world and play with local musicians playing their traditional instruments,” Suga says in his documentary Suga: Road to D-Day. “It’s my dream to record them and make music based on that.” But he has trepidation, too. “I worry that I won’t have anything to talk about,” Suga says. “I have fears that I have no more dreams to follow.”
To many misguided editors, one Asian is enough. Two Asians is overkill. Three Asians will get you called in to the office to be reprimanded. And also… Epik High is not a boy band. But they wouldn’t know that, would they?
Do Koreans swear? You betcha! You’ve probably heard them plenty of times in your favorite K-dramas, but they weren’t subtitled as such.
“Crash Course in Romance” is about an elite hagwon math tutor who is so popular that mothers line up at all hours to get their children seats at his lectures. By chance, he encounters a former national handball player who gave up her dreams of competing on an international level to care for her niece, who was abandoned by her mother.
The early episodes of “Payback” held promise for a truly compelling thriller with the always great Lee Sun-kyung in the lead role. Lee plays Eung Yong, an ambitious man with a photographic memory when it comes to numbers. But the storylines get progressively more convoluted as the show progresses.
“j-hope IN THE BOX” is told in a non linear way, starting in Seoul 52 days before j-hope’s performance at Lollapalooza, where he made history as the festival’s first Korean headliner — a feat that even he found surprising. The lead up to the concert — which fans dubbed Hobipalooza — depicts the pain the rapper took to ensure that his debut as BTS’ first solo artist would be nothing short of perfection.
In Korean folk-lore, 구미호 — which literally translates into nine-tailed foxes — are cunning creatures who live to be about 100. As they age, they grow an extra tail. 구미호 are usually young women who seduce men to eat their livers or hearts. But in the K-drama “Tale of the Nine Tailed,” the alpha fox is Lee Yeon. Once the mountain God of Baekdudaegan, he was kicked out for a variety of reasons that revolved around his love for a human woman named Ah-eum.
답답해. That’s the first feeling that comes to mind when I think of the K-drama “The Interest of Love.” The entire series is about a group of broken people who can’t articulate how they feel and are in a constant state of unhappiness because of this.
The conceit of “May I Help You?” revolves around a young woman who is working as a funeral director. Dong-ju is smart with a sunny disposition, but no one believes that handling dead people is a suitable career for her. But she has been gifted with a special power to talk to the deceased and grant them their final wish.
“If everyone decides to corroborate a lie, then it becomes the truth.” One of the characters in the K-drama “Revenge of Others” says this near the end of the series. And in many ways, it sums up the thesis of this high school revenge series, which is a murder mystery with twists and turns. And though I guessed early on who the murderer was, I didn’t anticipate the why.
“The Glory” had so much promise — a strong leading lady (Song Hye-kyo), a skilled screenwriter (Kim Eun-sook), the backing of Netflix’s money, and the promise of a scintillating revenge thriller. And yet at the end of the eight-episode first season — stop doing this, Netflix! — I found myself underwhelmed.
Describing “Reborn Rich” is tricky without giving away the ending. Is this K-drama a time-traveling thriller? Or a revenge series with the poor battling the obscenely wealthy? Maybe it’s a tale of repentance? It’s all that and more. Smart and calculated without resorting to tired tropes, “Reborn Rich” offers powerhouse performances by Song Joong-ki (in two roles) and master actor Lee Sung-min (“Misaeng”), who at just 54, convincingly portrays the former’s grandfather.
“Business Proposal” relies on the love contract trope, where a man hires a woman to be his pretend girlfriend. Almost all of the men are drop-dead gorgeous and would have no problem finding a real-life partner. But real relationships also come with real problems that these men don’t want to deal with.
There are parts of “Doctor Lawyer” that are well done. The plot is intriguing. And this K-drama stars So Ji-sub (one of my faves). So why did I stop watching? The answer is in my quasi review. Let me know if you agree or not!
Park Ji-hoon is almost unrecognizable from his Wanna One days. Leading this cast, which also includes Choi Hyun-wook (Twenty Five Twenty One) and Hong Kyung (D.P.), Park is so intensely good as a bullied boy who uses classical conditioning (Pavlov’s Dog) and Newton’s Laws of Motions to fight back against his tormentors.
“Under the Queen’s Umbrella” is my top pick of 2022. If you’re looking for a fantastic series to watch, this sageuk/사극 (or historical drama) is difficult to beat. Kim Hye-soo is magnificent as a queen whose sons’ lives (and her own) are in danger if the Crown Prince dies. She is whip smart and almost always one step ahead of her enemies, who want to destroy her family to elevate their own.