Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
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.
“XO, Kitty” tackles adoption, diaspora and maintaining Korean ties. But is it any good? Not really.
“Unlocked” came out a few months after the Korean series “Somebody.” Both revolve around cunning, good-looking serial killers who utilize technology to hack their way into their victims’ lives. In this 2022 film, the cell phone is the device of choice.
The concept? A group of telegenic Korean celebrities run a snack bar in Bacalar, Mexico, for one week (haha!). In its own way, it had all the elements of a fun K-drama minus any love triangles. Was there a 2nd male lead? Of course! As well as a 3rd and a 4th and so on. It shifted every few minutes, depending on who’s on screen — Park Seo-joon of “Itaewon Class,” “Parasite” actor Choi Woo-shik, BTS vocalist V, and the dimpled head of Jinny’s Kitchen, Lee Seo-jin (“Behind Every Star”).
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.”
“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.