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dangermousieTime to continue with the "All the Korean dramas Dangermousie has seen and feels competent to rank" the next part.
See how Kim Rae Won is weeping for joy!
Now we are entering into true love territory.One note - I've seen more dramas since I've started this project a couple of months ago, and some of them rank very high indeed so that is why the numbering discrepancy between this and previous posts (e.g. if you look at the previous post it ended with drama ranked number 30, so this one should start with 29th drama, but instead starts with the 31st -you can just adjust all the other past rankings downward appropriately - I will do it myself when I have more time). Numbering updated.
Previous entries
29 Which Star Are You from
A young director (Kim Rae Won) haunted by the death of his girlfriend comes across her doppelganger (Jung Ryu Won) in a rural village and, despite her being nothing like his dead ex in character, slowly begins to thaw and fall in love. But obstacles loom, and does he really love her or the fact that she looks like a dead woman? It's a deceptively simple romantic drama but they are really hard to do well - many try and few succeed. It's giddily romantic, a little funny, a little weepy. KRW makes me swallow my tongue and just...all around giddy and delicious. I watched this drama in the hospital the same day I delivered my baby - that is how addicted I was. :)
28 Full House
My first kdrama, FH will always have a special place in my heart. I cannot be objective about it. In FH, a fanfic author (OK, internet novelist) played by the gorgeous Song Hye Kyo, is scammed out of her house by her 'friends.' Said house is bought by a very famous, rather childish star (Rain) and due to a combination of circumstances too funny and too cute to spoil, they end up sharing the house. LOLness and OTPness ensue. This is incredibly funny, has an OTP to die for, it made me tear up and squee and yell at TV and is just...perfect. "Aza Aza Fighting" used to be my cell greeting for a really long time. This is the drama that started the kdrama madness that now rages through my blood.
27 Damo
Set in medieval Korea, this 14 episode drama follows a 'damo' (tea servant, played by Ha Ji Won) to a police commander (Lee Seo Jin), and investigations of counterfeiting, complex politics and family history, and unspoken love. It's incredibly hard to explain why Damo is so amazing (it has quite a cult status in Korea). It has to be seen to be believed. Not only is it filmed like a movie, it manages the feat of having a complex plot that does not revolve around romance, and yet being one of the most passionate love stories I've seen, at the same time. The heroine, Chae-Ok, is probably the strongest kdrama heroine I've seen, emotionally and fight-wise. No damsels in distress here. And Commander Hwangbo Yoon, the police Lord she 'serves' is one of my all-time fictional crushes. Their story kills me about eighteen million ways. Oh, and how could I forget the charismatic, mysterious rebel leader, Sang-Baek (Kim Min Joon). It's only not higher because a few secondary characters weren't as interesting as they should have been, and because...well...that would be spoilery.
(Potentially spoilery MV)
26 City Hall
Starring Kim Sunah and Cha Seung-won, CH starts out a bit slow but then really catches on fire. It is a story of a small-town low-ranking civil servant who eventually becomes a Mayor - she is strong, idealistic, unusual. And by her side is her new political advisor, a rising young politician with a clouded past, cynical, clever, and very lost. He may teach her the nitty-gritty of politics but she will teach him how to live. It's a modern Frank Capra tale - of politics and idealism and finding your ability and your soul. The romance is grown-up and sizzling hot and funny and fresh and so deeply swoony.
25 Que Sera Sera
The plot involves the entanglement of four rather messed-up characters: Kang Tae Joo (Eric) is someone who has always been able to pick up women because of his killer looks. Not that he gets emotionally invested: hard-headed and cynical, his women have to be well-off and generous as, while he is not a gigolo, a gift or three will never go amiss. Han Eun Soo (Jung Yoo Mi) is none of the things Tae Joo prefers in his women: she is not elegant, rich, or poised. And yet their paths cross and they end up falling in love. Could he give up what he normally wants for her though, especially, considering he is also contract-dating Cha Hye Lin a rich, brittle hottie. And then there is Shin Joon Hyuk who ends up involved with all other three and might just end up being Eun Soo's rebound choice.
This drama has gorgeous filters, complicated people (not always nice but always interesting), more dysfunctional (and really ridiculously hot) passion than you can ever want. So good. Plus, the scene where Eric is methodically banging his head on the bar is one of the best angsty scenes out there.
24 One Fine Day
Haneul (Sung Yuri) is a child of an unwed mother, who married the father of Seo Gun (Gong Yoo). Thus, they are stepsiblings, but only for a brief period of time, as when they are still children, all parental figures keel over and they are separated. Haneul is adopted by a wealthy family in the midst of which she still feels alienated. Gun ends up as a 'son' of a small-time, broke family which desperately needs money. When they are adults their paths cross when Gun has to extort money from Haneul. But of course, they begin to fall in love...
Beautifully filmed and rather nuanced, I admit I am in this for the OTP. Gun and Ha Neul are one of the most inevitable OTPs ever, two halves of the same soul, really, and you believe they cannot live without each other. Gong Yoo and Sung Yuri's chemistry only makes it all the more inevitable.
Forget a MV, have a kissing scene:
23 Time between Dog and Wolf
Lee Jun-Ki plays a special ops agent, one who is beyond messed-up because of severe and horrifying childhood trauma. When he is asked to go undercover, to infiltrate the gang which killed his policewoman mom, things don't get any better. And then there is his one breath of sanity, his OTP, an art curator and childhood love (Nam Sang Mi). Neither of them know (but we do) that her father is the one responsible for his parents' death. Sharply-paced and twisty, this is a rare drama that I love which is not primarily a romance (though the romance is awesome). D/W is bound to satisfy anybody's h/c kink (and LJK is incredibly hot) and I love the main character, some sort of a drama Lymond: clever and high-strung, and so incredibly messed-up.
22 Brilliant Legacy
BL is a Cinderella story with a twist. It is also one of the freshest, best-written and character-developed dramas out there. Our heroine Eun Sung, played by Han Hyo Joo, is a capable, optimistic young woman. Unfortunately, as the story starts, her father goes bankrupt (and is believed dead), and her stepmother basically throws her and her younger autistic brother on the streets with not much means of earning a living. Not only that, but Eun Sung's brother wanders off and is lost and now she is scouring the city looking for him. This is where her paths cross with Grandma - the old lady is the owner of a thriving fast food empire (though Eun Sung mistakes her for a poor woman) whose old age is made bleak by her ungrateful family. Her widowed daughter-in-law, her granddaughter, and her grandson are all ungrateful, spoiled, and useless leeches. Grandma is in a special despair over her grandson Hwan (Lee Seung Gi), who does not want to work, throws his money like an insult, and plans to sell off the hard-earned company as soon as Grandma dies. Finally fed up, Grandma makes an ultimatum - there will be no inheritance for her horrific family - she is leaving it all to Eun Sung. Who will now live with them. This drama is a delight from start to finish and is impossible to put down (at one point, I think I marathonned 10 eps at a stretch). I like the characters, the lessons, the colors. But above all, what I love is character development. What BL does with Hwan is one of the best character arcs I have ever seen - you start the drama loathing the arrogant, useless little twerp and you spend the drama watching him transform slowly, painfully, with occasional backsliding, into a truly admirable young man. One of the things I loved most is that Hwan does not reform because he falls in love with Eun Sung (though the eventual slow development of the OTP is delicious), no - he reforms due to a steady succession of circumstances and painful believable lessons. And it's being a better person which enables him to be someone capable of falling in love.
21 Something Happened in Bali
The heroine (played by Ha Ji Won), poor and with not much family to call her own, gets entangled with two very different men: an ambitious working-class 'icy' type, played by So Ji Sub, and the dysfunctional, temperamental rich one, played by Jo In Sung. Nothing good to anybody comes of it. How could I have a list without one of those 'traditional' kdramas, a kdrama everybody thinks of, when they think kdrama: love triangles, sad endings, rich guy/poor girl, etc. What really makes it work for me, as opposed to a lot of other 'traditional' kdramas I've watched, is two things: (a) the grinding innobility of poverty, as shown here and (b) Jo In Sung's character, a dysfunctional, abused rich boy, who makes me think of a darker VM's Logan and turns the whole story into a much darker version of Hana Yori Dango. It's a story about broken, desperate people who try to push away love and yet end up looking on it as their only salvation - I love it so much.
(This MV is spoilery)
20 Hello My Teacher
Formerly a huge trouble-maker and gang leader, 25-year-old Na Bori (Gong Hyo Jin) has been expelled from school but has since put her life on track, graduated from school and university, and is now determined to teach at the same high school which kicked her out. In part, to prove she 'made good,' but in larger part because she used to have a crush on her art teacher Ji Hyun-Woo and hey, work and crush? Perfect combination. But the price? Tutoring Tae-In (Gong Yoo), the troubled, delinquent 19-year old stepson of the Principal, for whom this is a last chance to avoid the loony bin (his family is awful, indeed). Neither Bori nor Tae-In are keen on the idea (their first meeting was only eclipsed by their second, in terms of mutual dislike) but hey, they are both stuck. Things go from there. Does Bori get the attention of her long ago crush? Does she become an untraditional teacher with great fighting skills and problem solving abilities? Does the delinquent leader with family issues fall for her? Oh, so much love. It is hilarious and yet touching, fast-paced, with tons of secondary characters I love, a great great heroine, a hero that is so my type (troubled violent funny guy with messed-up family), is teacher/student and is just...guuuuh-worthy. Plus, Gong Yoo!
Unconvinced yet? OK, let me sum this up in a sentence - HMT is Gokusen if Yankumi/Shin were canon. Indeed.
19 Coffee Prince
Yoon Eun Hye is a very tomboyish girl who gets mistaken (understandably) for a boy by a coffee shop owner (Gong Yoo), who at first hires her to pretend to be his gay boyfriend (so the family would stop match-making him) and then hires her to work in his store. But soon, the manager discovers he is beginning to have feelings for the boy. OMG! What to do! Why, revel in het slash, of course. You know, if it ended shortly after ep 13-14 or so, it probably would have been my number 1 drama. But they really continued it for too long. Now, I loved all of the 17 episodes, but it did get a bit draggy at the end, ergo its present ranking spot. Still, it's gut-bustingly hilarious, rather subversive, quite original, with an OTP that makes me weak at the knees, secondary characters every single one of which I love, and best of all, Gong Yoo, making me swoon. Oh, and such awesome kissing scenes!
To be continued with my Top 20...
See how Kim Rae Won is weeping for joy!
Now we are entering into true love territory.
Previous entries
29 Which Star Are You from
A young director (Kim Rae Won) haunted by the death of his girlfriend comes across her doppelganger (Jung Ryu Won) in a rural village and, despite her being nothing like his dead ex in character, slowly begins to thaw and fall in love. But obstacles loom, and does he really love her or the fact that she looks like a dead woman? It's a deceptively simple romantic drama but they are really hard to do well - many try and few succeed. It's giddily romantic, a little funny, a little weepy. KRW makes me swallow my tongue and just...all around giddy and delicious. I watched this drama in the hospital the same day I delivered my baby - that is how addicted I was. :)
28 Full House
My first kdrama, FH will always have a special place in my heart. I cannot be objective about it. In FH, a fanfic author (OK, internet novelist) played by the gorgeous Song Hye Kyo, is scammed out of her house by her 'friends.' Said house is bought by a very famous, rather childish star (Rain) and due to a combination of circumstances too funny and too cute to spoil, they end up sharing the house. LOLness and OTPness ensue. This is incredibly funny, has an OTP to die for, it made me tear up and squee and yell at TV and is just...perfect. "Aza Aza Fighting" used to be my cell greeting for a really long time. This is the drama that started the kdrama madness that now rages through my blood.
27 Damo
Set in medieval Korea, this 14 episode drama follows a 'damo' (tea servant, played by Ha Ji Won) to a police commander (Lee Seo Jin), and investigations of counterfeiting, complex politics and family history, and unspoken love. It's incredibly hard to explain why Damo is so amazing (it has quite a cult status in Korea). It has to be seen to be believed. Not only is it filmed like a movie, it manages the feat of having a complex plot that does not revolve around romance, and yet being one of the most passionate love stories I've seen, at the same time. The heroine, Chae-Ok, is probably the strongest kdrama heroine I've seen, emotionally and fight-wise. No damsels in distress here. And Commander Hwangbo Yoon, the police Lord she 'serves' is one of my all-time fictional crushes. Their story kills me about eighteen million ways. Oh, and how could I forget the charismatic, mysterious rebel leader, Sang-Baek (Kim Min Joon). It's only not higher because a few secondary characters weren't as interesting as they should have been, and because...well...that would be spoilery.
(Potentially spoilery MV)
26 City Hall
Starring Kim Sunah and Cha Seung-won, CH starts out a bit slow but then really catches on fire. It is a story of a small-town low-ranking civil servant who eventually becomes a Mayor - she is strong, idealistic, unusual. And by her side is her new political advisor, a rising young politician with a clouded past, cynical, clever, and very lost. He may teach her the nitty-gritty of politics but she will teach him how to live. It's a modern Frank Capra tale - of politics and idealism and finding your ability and your soul. The romance is grown-up and sizzling hot and funny and fresh and so deeply swoony.
25 Que Sera Sera
The plot involves the entanglement of four rather messed-up characters: Kang Tae Joo (Eric) is someone who has always been able to pick up women because of his killer looks. Not that he gets emotionally invested: hard-headed and cynical, his women have to be well-off and generous as, while he is not a gigolo, a gift or three will never go amiss. Han Eun Soo (Jung Yoo Mi) is none of the things Tae Joo prefers in his women: she is not elegant, rich, or poised. And yet their paths cross and they end up falling in love. Could he give up what he normally wants for her though, especially, considering he is also contract-dating Cha Hye Lin a rich, brittle hottie. And then there is Shin Joon Hyuk who ends up involved with all other three and might just end up being Eun Soo's rebound choice.
This drama has gorgeous filters, complicated people (not always nice but always interesting), more dysfunctional (and really ridiculously hot) passion than you can ever want. So good. Plus, the scene where Eric is methodically banging his head on the bar is one of the best angsty scenes out there.
24 One Fine Day
Haneul (Sung Yuri) is a child of an unwed mother, who married the father of Seo Gun (Gong Yoo). Thus, they are stepsiblings, but only for a brief period of time, as when they are still children, all parental figures keel over and they are separated. Haneul is adopted by a wealthy family in the midst of which she still feels alienated. Gun ends up as a 'son' of a small-time, broke family which desperately needs money. When they are adults their paths cross when Gun has to extort money from Haneul. But of course, they begin to fall in love...
Beautifully filmed and rather nuanced, I admit I am in this for the OTP. Gun and Ha Neul are one of the most inevitable OTPs ever, two halves of the same soul, really, and you believe they cannot live without each other. Gong Yoo and Sung Yuri's chemistry only makes it all the more inevitable.
Forget a MV, have a kissing scene:
23 Time between Dog and Wolf
Lee Jun-Ki plays a special ops agent, one who is beyond messed-up because of severe and horrifying childhood trauma. When he is asked to go undercover, to infiltrate the gang which killed his policewoman mom, things don't get any better. And then there is his one breath of sanity, his OTP, an art curator and childhood love (Nam Sang Mi). Neither of them know (but we do) that her father is the one responsible for his parents' death. Sharply-paced and twisty, this is a rare drama that I love which is not primarily a romance (though the romance is awesome). D/W is bound to satisfy anybody's h/c kink (and LJK is incredibly hot) and I love the main character, some sort of a drama Lymond: clever and high-strung, and so incredibly messed-up.
22 Brilliant Legacy
BL is a Cinderella story with a twist. It is also one of the freshest, best-written and character-developed dramas out there. Our heroine Eun Sung, played by Han Hyo Joo, is a capable, optimistic young woman. Unfortunately, as the story starts, her father goes bankrupt (and is believed dead), and her stepmother basically throws her and her younger autistic brother on the streets with not much means of earning a living. Not only that, but Eun Sung's brother wanders off and is lost and now she is scouring the city looking for him. This is where her paths cross with Grandma - the old lady is the owner of a thriving fast food empire (though Eun Sung mistakes her for a poor woman) whose old age is made bleak by her ungrateful family. Her widowed daughter-in-law, her granddaughter, and her grandson are all ungrateful, spoiled, and useless leeches. Grandma is in a special despair over her grandson Hwan (Lee Seung Gi), who does not want to work, throws his money like an insult, and plans to sell off the hard-earned company as soon as Grandma dies. Finally fed up, Grandma makes an ultimatum - there will be no inheritance for her horrific family - she is leaving it all to Eun Sung. Who will now live with them. This drama is a delight from start to finish and is impossible to put down (at one point, I think I marathonned 10 eps at a stretch). I like the characters, the lessons, the colors. But above all, what I love is character development. What BL does with Hwan is one of the best character arcs I have ever seen - you start the drama loathing the arrogant, useless little twerp and you spend the drama watching him transform slowly, painfully, with occasional backsliding, into a truly admirable young man. One of the things I loved most is that Hwan does not reform because he falls in love with Eun Sung (though the eventual slow development of the OTP is delicious), no - he reforms due to a steady succession of circumstances and painful believable lessons. And it's being a better person which enables him to be someone capable of falling in love.
21 Something Happened in Bali
The heroine (played by Ha Ji Won), poor and with not much family to call her own, gets entangled with two very different men: an ambitious working-class 'icy' type, played by So Ji Sub, and the dysfunctional, temperamental rich one, played by Jo In Sung. Nothing good to anybody comes of it. How could I have a list without one of those 'traditional' kdramas, a kdrama everybody thinks of, when they think kdrama: love triangles, sad endings, rich guy/poor girl, etc. What really makes it work for me, as opposed to a lot of other 'traditional' kdramas I've watched, is two things: (a) the grinding innobility of poverty, as shown here and (b) Jo In Sung's character, a dysfunctional, abused rich boy, who makes me think of a darker VM's Logan and turns the whole story into a much darker version of Hana Yori Dango. It's a story about broken, desperate people who try to push away love and yet end up looking on it as their only salvation - I love it so much.
(This MV is spoilery)
20 Hello My Teacher
Formerly a huge trouble-maker and gang leader, 25-year-old Na Bori (Gong Hyo Jin) has been expelled from school but has since put her life on track, graduated from school and university, and is now determined to teach at the same high school which kicked her out. In part, to prove she 'made good,' but in larger part because she used to have a crush on her art teacher Ji Hyun-Woo and hey, work and crush? Perfect combination. But the price? Tutoring Tae-In (Gong Yoo), the troubled, delinquent 19-year old stepson of the Principal, for whom this is a last chance to avoid the loony bin (his family is awful, indeed). Neither Bori nor Tae-In are keen on the idea (their first meeting was only eclipsed by their second, in terms of mutual dislike) but hey, they are both stuck. Things go from there. Does Bori get the attention of her long ago crush? Does she become an untraditional teacher with great fighting skills and problem solving abilities? Does the delinquent leader with family issues fall for her? Oh, so much love. It is hilarious and yet touching, fast-paced, with tons of secondary characters I love, a great great heroine, a hero that is so my type (troubled violent funny guy with messed-up family), is teacher/student and is just...guuuuh-worthy. Plus, Gong Yoo!
Unconvinced yet? OK, let me sum this up in a sentence - HMT is Gokusen if Yankumi/Shin were canon. Indeed.
19 Coffee Prince
Yoon Eun Hye is a very tomboyish girl who gets mistaken (understandably) for a boy by a coffee shop owner (Gong Yoo), who at first hires her to pretend to be his gay boyfriend (so the family would stop match-making him) and then hires her to work in his store. But soon, the manager discovers he is beginning to have feelings for the boy. OMG! What to do! Why, revel in het slash, of course. You know, if it ended shortly after ep 13-14 or so, it probably would have been my number 1 drama. But they really continued it for too long. Now, I loved all of the 17 episodes, but it did get a bit draggy at the end, ergo its present ranking spot. Still, it's gut-bustingly hilarious, rather subversive, quite original, with an OTP that makes me weak at the knees, secondary characters every single one of which I love, and best of all, Gong Yoo, making me swoon. Oh, and such awesome kissing scenes!
To be continued with my Top 20...
