Boys Over Flowers - Don't Think Twice - Peter, Paul and Mary

"Boys Over Flowers" is a wonderful Korean drama about the effects on the lives of four rich heirs when a poor girl gets a scholarship to their high school. This shows the conflict between the first and second male leads over the girl. One of my VERY favorite Peter, Paul and Mary songs.

I took Korean for 3 years, although I’ve forgotten most of it. Korean is a really difficult language to understand and speak, even though its writing system (hangul) is a phonetic alphabet which you can learn quickly. And technically pretty much everything is pronounced like it’s written, although Korean has sounds English does not have. But it’s one of the most traditional Asian languages and retains all the different nuances about levels of politeness and formality, which is primarily reflected in the verbs (and some of the nouns as well). Someone told me that every Korean verb has 63 possible different forms depending on who you are talking to or about (whether higher, equal or lower than you in status). There are something like 4 or 5 different levels of speech (although foreigners basically only need to learn 2), and I’ve been told there is even a different type of speech that is used by the military to speak to each other.

Mandarin Chinese is much easier to speak and understand, it’s very straightforward, although you have to get used to those tones. But of course there you get killed by the Chinese characters you have to know. Now it’s even worse because Mainland China uses “simplified characters” which really aren’t that simplified, and other places still use “traditional characters” (Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and that is what is also used in Japan) so you actually have to learn 2 sets of characters.

K-Dramas crack me up. I love watching them.

First everyone knows the Frozen Kiss. When they finally kiss which is often after quite a bit of time, they can only touch lips and stand there (other stuff is subject to censorship although I have seen some that push the envelope). I always whisper to my wife, “ooh, now they HAVE to get married, they’ve done the Frozen Kiss.” I actually like that a lot of K-Dramas are very G-rated.

Then I like how you can always tell the Bad Guy. If you’re a real criminal you have to wear all black and wear a certain kind of black Korean baseball cap and dark sunglasses. You’re wearing black because you are trying to be inconspicuous, but of course in a K-Drama you stand out like a sore thumb.

Other strange rules. You can show guns, but you can’t show knives (those always get blurred out). And then you have the obligatory one of throwing water at someone or pouring it over their head (saw that one only a couple of nights ago). And they may be using all sorts of obscenities against each other, but it always gets translated as “you witch,” or “you little brat.”

And then they’re always getting some strange disease, often genetic, that nobody has ever heard of and end up in the hospital all the time. But nobody can actually say what the disease is to another. So it’s always, “oh, I just have a little cold,” or “I drank too much soju last night.” And half the time the doctors won’t tell the patients what is actually wrong with them, it’s just “oh you’ll probably feel better in a couple of days.”

And then there are the “you know a disaster is about to happen” scenes. Like when they give a little girl a ball and tell her to go out and play by the busy street. And cars and trucks never slow down or stop when they are about to run someone over. Instead, they just lean on the horn and accelerate.

And boy do they love to drink. Beer isn’t even really like real alcohol, it’s more like water, it has to be shots of soju or whiskey to even be considered alcohol. And I’m always amazed at the surgeons and operating teams that are always doing the most sensitive and demanding brain or heart surgery the morning after they have all been getting blind drunk and passing out.

Chinese dramas are even more entertaining by the way. One is they are even more blatant in product promotion. They are always trying to sell something or convince you to buy and eat some sort of food. Sometimes they will even stop the dialogue and then have the actors do an actual commercial right in the middle of filming. It’s part of the fun in watching the drama.

This is not to say K-Dramas and C-Dramas are not well made. A lot of them are just fantastic. Very enjoyable and then you get hooked.

Have you noticed that no matter what the head injury is, no one’s hair ever gets shaved around the wound? They just wind a white cloth around the head which disappears soon after they leave the hospital. And that a cut on the arm, leg or finger can be an inch or more long but they all use the same small size bandaid to fix it?

You mentioned the food; you can tell how the national psyche is still affected by all the famines China, Korea and Japan have had. Food (and alcohol) is a major component of nearly every drama I’ve seen so far. I now know why chopsticks aren’t a problem, they just shovel the food in by holding the bowl up to their mouths. That makes a lot more sense than trying to maneuver a few grains of rice from the table on up.

Found Sleuth of Ming Dynasty trailer on YT. Thank you for mentioning it; the humor in the trailer reminds me of Qin Qin Zi Jin which finished airing on YT several weeks ago.

You’re a better man than I am, Charlie Brown. In college, one of my fellow students was taking Mandarin and I was deeply impressed but never had the guts to try. I took Russian when I was a physics student. Switched majors in the middle of my senior year to Ancient Art history and they forced me into French. You cannot imagine the look on the language instructors’ faces when I had to recite. Luckily, U of Chicago was a research school, so I was only expected to read.

I love the sound of Korean. There’s a clarity to the sounds that reminds me a bit of Russian. Chinese has so many slur sounds that I get distracted while reading subtitles. But I absolutely need to hear the sounds, not just for the additional information of the background sounds, but for the emotions in the voices.

I started making up charts to send friends with phonetic spelling of common Chinese words we were hearing, but no one else got excited so I gave up. I did hear the Guardian actors arguing during an interview about the pronunciation of some dialect terms and was suitably overwhelmed by the distinctions that needed to be heard.

There is a movie, similar to the King’s Speech, that describes the creation of the written alphabet.

Kisses. One person is allowed to have their arms around the other. The other is required to keep both arms straight by their sides. Either of them is allowed to be the person who keeps their eyes open, but the other must then close theirs. Kisses aren’t centered. I thought at first that they kept missing, but they seem to be carefully aiming at either the top or bottom lip. Tongues don’t seem to be involved. All looks very clean and sanitary and not drooly and they must not need their brightly colored hankies much. RARELY, is there a sexy kiss.

Yes, the black outfit is useful for all bad guys, but is also useful for disguised idols.

Fashion! I HAVE to make a video showing off the incredible Chinese fashion sense. It’s Paris meets Beijing. Korean not so much. The balloon-like historical costumes end up affecting the modern fashions, but not in a good way. Men’s fashions range from incredibly wonderful to copies of 1890’s suits.

Didn’t notice the knife issue. I’ll look for it. There were quite a few knife scenes in Glamor and in Descendants of the Sun. Very business-like military dramas and the universal military college training and 2 year enlistment is fascinating.

They do say brat and jerk a lot. I don’t swear, so it never occurred to me that they might be translated more gently.

Diseases are fascinating. I called my girlfriend with HD to tell her about the drama that had all the symptoms wrong. And I can’t recognize faces either, so I was thrilled with the drama that was built around that one. (We will not discuss the year and a half I couldn’t tell the difference between my 2 year fiancee and some strange man. I only told when I would start shaking and grab the stair railings or I would be fine and think I was finally over him. Apparently I could subconsciously tell them apart but it was years before I figured that out.) My favorite at the moment is human allergy.

I’ve never drunk alcohol, but it seems to be the national pastime. Is there an Asian movie where the heroine DOESN’T get drunk? And the practice of drinking for someone else? Absolutely fascinating. Besides drinking, the girls all cry like 5 year old children crying aloud. I’d THINK that would be a major turnoff, but it seems not to be. I LOVE that the men cry, but with more dignity than the girls.

I’ll have to look for produce placement. I started with Chinese dramas and moved into Korean. Sleuth is one of the best dramas EVER! I WILL make music videos in that one eventually.

There are huge rules about drinking in Korea, many based on status. First, the lower ranked person always pours for the higher ranked. The bottle must be held a certain way and at a certain angle when pouring to indicate respect. When toasting, the lower ranked person(s) always hold their glass at a lower height than the highest ranked person (usually the boss from work). The biggest one is that the lower-ranked person can never look directly at the higher ranked one when actually taking a drink. You will see that one person always looks to the side as they are drinking. Also, you sometimes see the lower ranked person covering their mouth with their hand when they are drinking, especially women. (You also see this in historical Chinese dramas where they cover their mouth with their hand or their sleeve when drinking, it shows they have manners).

I’ve been told that Koreans are so into drinking because it is the only way they can socialize and drop their guards down. The Korean workplace is so type-A that it is higly restricted what you can say or do, especially when your boss or a higher ranked person is around. But if you all go drinking together, there is a sort of understanding that you can say and do things you normally wouldn’t do and then blame it on the alcohol. Oh, by the way, if the boss says he’s taking everyone out for a drink, he’s the one who pays for it, so it’s not all one way in this situation. On the other hand, you have to be careful about refusing a drink because that could be taken as being rude or impolite. If you’re not going to drink you have to be firm up front and give an acceptable reason, like you say you have a medical issue where you can’t drink, or you’re taking a medication where you can’t drink alcohol, etc. That may be acceptable. If people realize you really can’t or won’t drink eventually they will accept that, although sometimes it may make your own drinking of a soft drink instead complicated since you have to get your own drink.

Another rule in polite Korean society is that men are not supposed to touch women publicly unless they are their wives or significant others. So a mark of “gentility” or “breeding” is when you see a man, particularly a K-Drama type star, who is scrupulous about not touching a woman, co-star or others. This may be even when they look like they are holding them or guiding them, you will see that their hands actually never touch the woman. This is known as “manner hands.” This is also the rule in China, when they want to compliment a male star’s behavior they will sometimes say he has good manner hands.

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