I started to watch a new Korean drama and even though I like the lead actor A LOT - Lee Tae Gon, I am hesitant about starting to watch it. From a preview of the first episode, it seems like it's going to be boring. I really don't like these love triangle stories that involve forbidden love between step sister, adopted sister and so on and brother. The theme makes me sick. How can you fall in love with someone that you grew up with as a child? That's so demented. As a parent, I would not approve, just as I wouldn't approve of siblings falling in love and marrying. They may not be genetically siblings but EMOTIONALLY, SOCIALLY and FUNCTIONALLY they are siblings ...
Lee Tae Gon seems to be in dramas with this plot a lot: Dear Heaven, Winter Bird, Golden Fish .. three!
I think this drama (Winter Bird) is going to be boring. Like Love in Heaven (Dear Heaven), the female lead is going to act sulky and unhappy and robotic. She is going to be dutiful and enter a marriage with someone she doesn't love. LTG is going to look wistfully at her and the two will make the lives of those people around them, especially their partners, miserable. Eventually, they get together and there is either a happy ending or a bittersweet one (the writers can't bring themselves to give them just pure unalloyed happiness, they have to introduce some sadness to their love in the end).
Gawd, having to wade through 50 episodes of this just to pick up some Korean ... and these are the dramas I can stand (just barely) to watch!
If I feel like this about these dramas that are on top of my list, imagine the other dramas that aren't ......
I did enjoy Dear Heaven a little but would have enjoyed it a lot more if they had cut it down by half. Did they have to show EVERY meeting between the two lovers? Did they have to show what they did on their honeymoon? Honestly, the drama DID exactly that. A family drama, not a porn movie, by the way. It had LTG almost naked doing a sexy strip dance for his bride on his honeymoon night. LOL. It showed everything practically except those two having sex. It even showed what they did the next morning afterwards while they laid in bed. It's kind of voyeuristic. Soft porn. What were the writer and director thinking?
I don't know if I want to start on Winter Bird. It seems another version of Love in Heaven.
I also saw Autumn Sonata (?name) with Song Seung Hyun, Won Bin and Song Hye Go and the theme was love between adopted sister and brother.
That dragged on too.
The actresses who are the protagonists all act like zombies in these dramas.
I don't think I can stand it. I think I will skip and fast forward through all the slow bits, but then that ruins the purpose of watching these dramas for learning Korean.
I don't know what to do. I want to watch dramas to learn English but there are many obstacles. Either the dramas are too long and boring or the subtitles aren't very helpful. I have noticed that the subtitles are distracting me from listening to the Korean.
But I can't watch these dramas WITHOUT reading the English subtitles so "ottohke?"
And they speak so fast too. I just can't face another long drama. How do Koreans stand it? How can they hold out for a week to watch the next episode or the next few episodes (for the ones that have several episodes per week)? Don't they start to lose interest? Especially as all the dramas have the same plot? They are so predictable. I am really sick of this brother-sister thing. I would be outraged if I knew that someone was marrying his sister (even if they weren't related by blood). Well, not outraged as it wouldn't be my business ... but sickened by it. I wouldn't think much of those people; they would be creeps in my eyes.
Imagine their feelings towards each other as they grew up in the same household ... ugh!!!
It's not natural.
It's really hard to find input that is comprehensible and enjoyable. I don't like talking to Koreans very much because they are very boring people.
The celebrities are interesting but they aren't ordinary people.
I am getting sick of Korean TV now. I used to be into it starting a few months ago but am losing interest. I still haven't watched the contemporary drama I bought from Yongsan. I was disappointed by Chuno and the main actress in that is also in the contemporary drama. Why is she a lead actress? She is so unattractive. She looks plain, like a horse. I can't imagine the guy in Chuno trying to find her for ten years. She isn't someone likely to inspire that kind of devotion. I don't find Jang Hyuk all that attractive either. I don't like his personality. I didn't like ANYONE in that series except for the bad guy, the son-in-law of the powerful person who tries to hunt down Oh Ji Ho. He's kind of good looking. I wonder why he doesn't get the main acting roles. He seems to always get supporting roles.
That drama is very low quality. It's pathetic how it tried to modernize the sageuk format. It didn't fit and cheapened it. And I hated the troupe girl who was in it. She seemed like a lot of the whiny superficial bitchy Seoulite girls I have come across. She seemed too modern for a sageuk.
No, there was nothing redeeming in this story. I didn't like any of the characters in it except for one, as I have said.
I wish I had never watched it, let alone spent so much money buying it.
I am glad I didn't buy all those dramas that the people recommended at the Sinyongsan place. It would have been a waste of money. They would just be sitting there on my bookshelf. I would skim through the first episode and then think, "Forget about it".
I think I am most interested in translating Saint Marie though the work is hard and the writing is confusing -- much ban mal.
I just want to find the ending - episode 7 - so I will translate that and the second chapter which I have started on.
But I am having trouble finding episode 7. I might have to go to Kyobo and order it or get a friend to buy it off the internet.
I found episodes 1-6 at a dvd/manwha store but no episode 7! Why do they do stuff like that?
I went to Bandi and Lunis in Sillim but they didn't have episode 7 either. That book store chain is hopeless -- they don't have anything!
That reminds me, I have to return the manwha series to the dvd store.
I really like that manwha series though I usually don't like paranormal stuff.
I wonder what happens in the end -- who triumphs? Black king or white king? Who does Da-in go off with?
I am just bored by Korea. People are really brutal here. It's dog eat dog. And they have a very funny English education system.
I don't know if I have a future in Korea. I'm feeling kind of down these days. I was optimistic about living in Korea recently, but just some factors like the difficulty in learning Korean because of the lack of immersion opportunities, the terrible housing -- dirty, old, unsanitary, small, windowless, boxlike - are getting me down. I don't like Nowon-gu and I want to get out of here but I don't know where to go. I want to live in an apartment but I can't afford it in most areas. And I can't get people to speak to me in Korean except taxi drivers. (Just the ten minutes with the taxi driver in Beomgye and I picked up several new words without trying.) I think I will have to put out an ad for language exchange partners or find a site on the web for that. I think the latter is the most viable option for me. Meeting people in person doesn't seem to work out. Scratch that -- I have made a good friend by doing that but am not using the friendship for language practice. He's quite unusual for a Korean. Most Koreans are materialistic and shallow. He's quite interested in Korean history and politics -- subjects that interest me, and he's knowledgeable about international affairs.
So I need to find more people like that. People I enjoy talking to. I don't want to make friends of people just because we are in the same workplace. That's a mistake. If I do not like these people and have nothing in common I shouldn't socialize with them.
I want to meet my cousin who is a communist as he seems to be very interesting. He wrote a book on Mao that nobody has bought and read. But it seems like it's some kind of epic book with years of research put into it. But Koreans aren't interested in Mao. However, my cousin won't give me the contact information of his younger brother (the communist). This seems rather churlish as I requested the person's number from him quite pointedly. I asked him many times. It's kind of wrong to have your personal feelings get involved in a situation like this. He's not the family gatekeeper and shouldn't act like one. This cousin is quite good at English I think as he was almost ready to take on a job working for the US Post Office a few years back. The communist cousin in the end turned his back on that because he didn't like America and didn't want to work there. This is understandable and I admire someone sticking up for his/her principles in that way. There are many people in Korea who would have loved to have had that job offered them and the chance to have a new life in the US (with a good safe job like that lined up). His siblings (my other cousins) in the US were really disappointed as they organized this job for him and thought it was a good opportunity for him. I think this cousin is depressed as it's hard to find a job in his situation and generally. I think he's living off his wife's earnings while he writes books that nobody reads. They have one son. His wife is a Chinese language teacher. She is of Korean ethnicity and she emigrated to Korea from China. I suppose he could get a job as a taxi driver but then he wouldn't have time to do his research and writing. I think this cousin is very bright -- he's an intellectual is the impression I get. Intellectuals like these are lazy about their careers. They just want to think, read and write. They need time to do that. It's kind of hard working 12 hours a day at another job and then doing this kind of thing. It's lonely work actually too. It's not as great as people think it would be. I did do that kind of thing for a while. I didn't want to socialize. I got too caught up in my research and didn't want my concentration broken.
It's interesting to find out that many geniuses end up in ordinary jobs. (Not that I am a genius by any stretch -- LOL. My cousin says our paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother were geniuses but I think I will take that with a grain of salt and put it down to exaggeration and wishful thinking.) Like Kin Ung Yong and Chris Langdon. I can understand why. They want to live as ordinary people, they got to earn their bread, they want a job that doesn't take up too much of their time and effort so that they can concentrate on their real interests. They don't want to be treated like freaks. There are too many expectations placed on them and they don't like the restrictions. They want to live life on their own terms. Why should they care what other people think? If they don't want to be a cancer researcher or NASA scientist why should they be just because the dumb public expects it of them? They are not understood by many people and because of this there is a large potential for conflict -- being in an easy stress-free job means there is less room for interpersonal conflict and stress that arises from it.
It must be very lonely being a genius. You must feel alienated from people. Most people seem trivial and boring. You have to fake an interest in them just to get along and not seem standoffish. You really do not understand other people. They seem childlike and simple and it's frustrating for you because you have to always adjust your level down in order to communicate and interact with them. And if you are not accepted then you are lonely and have no one to have real interesting conversations with or to confide in or be intimate with. The thing is that geniuses on the whole are the least arrogant people around. They are already quite alienated so they don't want to alienate themselves from others even more by being arrogant, boastful and show-offish. And it's not nice to feel lonely. So they try and fit in which means having to downplay the differences they have such as intelligence level.
In many ways I think geniuses get on better with people who are "hoi polloi". Intellectuals and brainy people (but not geniuses) and mediocre people who think they are smart become jealous of these geniuses and always try and pull them down and show that these geniuses are not that great after all. And they can do this in subtle ways. If a person who is just a blue collar worker finds out that there is a genius in his midst and feels jealous he would show his resentment; a fight would break out and everything would be resolved quickly once he releases those emotions. But a person who considers himself/herself as clever but is not in the same echelon as geniuses are when it comes to intellectual ability can be troublesome in a more insidious way. Their resentment is more of a seething one. They cannot accept the genius for what he/she is because they seem to think that this person's genius detracts from their own persona. It makes them feel inferior -- lacking somehow. And they can secretly work to do much damage to the genius. Usually the incidents are not open-handed but the opposite -- very underhanded. The jealous person really can't help themselves. It's just something that they can't control -- the perception that their ego is somehow hurt by the presence of the genius person.
Often it's mediocre people who aspire to intellectual greatness but can't quite make it who are like this. They are very ambitious and have pretensions that they can be intellectuals, academics or just think they are smarter than they actually are. Some of them try and earn advanced degrees mostly for the "boasting" factor. If they have this degree they can boast to others that this degree "proves" they possess more intelligent than the average Joe or Jane. However, the truth is that these people have very ordinary intelligence. There are many people like this in Korea. I have seen their PhD papers and realize they are writing rubbish and that they are not really highly intelligent -- just average. But they can't accept that fact and continue to delude themselves. Unlike real intellectuals and geniuses these people aren't even interested in the topic that they study their PhD in. They just chose the major because it was easy to get in to.
There are many WOMEN who are like this in Korea. They have delusions of grandeur and are not really suited for the academic/intellectual life. They resent really smart people like geniuses because these geniuses show these people up for what they really are.
I think this person (my communist cousin) would be interesting to talk to. I resent my cousin from preventing contact with him from taking place. He won't give me his brother's phone number. This cousin that I have been in contact with seems like an a****** the more I meet him. He's very controlling. I don't like this kind of personality in a male. It is what turned me off from Korean men for a long time.
