Fashion Face-off Friday: Trendy Tracksuits

In our last Fashion Face-off, Kim Tan and his Cookie Monster turtleneck were able to hold off some stiff competition from the Yzma lookalike on Miss Korea.

This time around, we're going to look at Kdrama tracksuits, which I secretly love. I mean, it's like wearing pajamas, but outside of the house. What's not to like? My only complaint is that Kdramas rarely allow women to take off their absurdly high heels and lounge around in comfy sportswear. I call sexism! Kdrama women, unite and demand your right to wear zip-up polyester from head to toe!

There are a few standouts in the arena of Kdrama tracksuits, so let's look at the challengers, shall we?

Contender 1: Kim Joo Won, Secret Garden

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Obviously. I mean, by the end of the show, I felt like his custom-made jogging suits were a character all on their own. They certainly did catch the eye, but on the downside, I can't imagine wearing those things to do any actual exercise. I have a strict no-running-in-sequins policy.

Contender 2: The Joseon Entourage, Rooftop Prince

It's like a couple's outfit, but for best friends! Suddenly, Lee Gak's entourage was transformed into the Joseon Power Rangers with the use of matching suits.

Contender 3: Kim Kwang Soo, Emergency Couple

This tracksuit inspired this post. Look at that camouflage magnificence! This guy knows what he likes, and he wears it like a boss.

Contender 4: Jo Gook, City Hall

I guess we can toss in a serious tracksuit for good measure. Don't be fooled by the fact that he actually plays sports in this thing--it's all a political statement in the end. But a handsome political statement, I must admit.

In the realm of Kdrama tracksuits, there can only be one champion. Vote below!

Best Kdrama Tracksuit
	Joo Won, Secret Garden
	Joseon entourage, Rooftop Prince
	Kim Kwan Soo, Emergency Couple
	Jo Gook, City Hall
pollcode.com free polls

New Dramas: Bride of the Century and Sly and Single Again

Until last year, we swore we would never watch currently airing dramas, but now that we've started, it's kind of addicting. While you don't get the benefits being able to marathon the whole thing or knowing if a drama is going to fall apart halfway through before you begin (*cough*Prime Minister*cough*), there is a fun sense of community you get from chatting about current shows as they air, even if they're terrible.

So that brings us to the latest batch. We've been sampling bits and pieces of a few of them, but to be honest, none of them are looking like they're going to break into our favorites any time in the near future. Here are some quick thoughts so far:

Bride of the Century

What it's about: Lee Hong Ki (aka Jeremy from You're Beautiful) plays--what else? A grumpy chaebol heir with a sad past. Newcomer Yang Jin Sung plays--of course--a poor, hardworking girl who happens to look exactly like the heir's fiancee. When the fiancee disappears, this girl agrees to temporarily step into her place. Oh, and there's a ghost who kills the first wife of anyone marrying into the family.

Vivi's take: Everything about this drama--the sets, the styling, the characterizations, the soapy acting, etc--feels very reminiscent of early- to mid-2000s dramas like Full House or Boys over Flowers. Whether or not that's a good thing entirely depends on how you feel about that generation of dramas. For me, I enjoy them as classics, but I can't say that I've ever actually uttered the words, "Man, you know what would be awesome? A Boys over Flowers knockoff! But with a ghost added in!" If that's your jam, though, this is the drama for you!

If it's possible, I think she just out-Jan Di'd Jan Di herself.

While I'm okay riding the old school vibe for what it is, I have a much bigger bone to pick with the first four episodes of this drama. Given the rich chaebol jerk lead, it's not surprising that there are wrist grabs and some forced kisses. I hate it, but it's pretty typical fare for this brand of show. Bride of the Century, however, takes sexual intimidation to a whole new level:

In almost every episode, Kang Joo backs Doo Rim up against a wall or pins her on a bed against her will, and instead of doing it because he wants to be near her, he does it to intimidate and to punish her. Even though she fights back, five minutes later, she's falling in love with him. I just can't root for that.

Then again, the second lead is falling in love with someone who looks just like his sister--wait, sorry, half sister. Gross.

Two saving graces so far: 1. I'm cheering for the sassy ghost to win. I love her. 2. Lee Hong Ki makes some excellent facial contortions.

Sly and Single Again/Cunning Single Lady

What it's about: A man (Joo Sang Wook) and a woman (Lee Min Jung) divorce after years of financial hardship. Years later, he has become a successful businessman, and she wants to win back back and exact her revenge.

Vivi's take: Man, I must have taken grumpy pills before I started watching or something because I'm not really feeling this one, either. Episode 4 started to move into some character development, but mostly, almost allof the characters seem petty, bitter, and mean spirited so far. I wish that the secretary and Seung Hyun would run off and form a spinoff buddy comedy instead. 

You're welcome, MBC. I've just made you a surefire hit!

If Sly and Single spends some time making the characters more likable (and maybe kills off all of Na Ae Ra's family), it could have potential.

P.S. For those of you watching Emergency Couple, I was gradually weaning myself off of my love for Jin Hee/Chief Gook, but after episode 13, you will have to pry this relationship out of my cold, dead fingers before I will let it go.

Coco's take: While I love Emergency Couple now, I wasn't the biggest fan at first because I was expecting it to be more playful and over-the-top based on its behind the scenes and advertisements. I feel like Sly and Single Again is exactly what I initially wanted Emergency Couple to be. It's definitely more in the romantic comedy genre than Emergency Couple, which seems to be more in the romantic drama category. This means that if you are in the mood for something light and ridiculous then Sly and Single Again may be the new series for you. Yes, the main characters aren't that likable yet, but isn't that the point? I'm expecting some major character growth from them, and I think they'll get there with plenty of hijinks along the way. Plus, Joo Sang Wook has me on the hook! (see what I did there?)

Which new dramas are you guys watching? Are you loving something that we haven't started yet? Convince us to watch with you!

Happy Birthday, Vivi!

Today is Vivi's birthday, and it's also just past Kdrama Fighting's one year anniversary! In order to honor our beautiful ten year best friendship and our one year best blogging friendship, I would like to present 10 Reasons why if I could choose any Kdrama character to be best friends with, I would still choose Vivi:

Vivi <3 KSH

1. Unlike so many Kdrama friends, Vivi never tried to steal my first love. Even though we were friends for 5 years before she got married, we never once fought over a boy. And she even steers clear of my Kdrama biases. Unnis before Oppas, that's what we always say.

2. Vivi has better fashion sense than 99% of Kdrama female characters, so I would much rather turn to her for fashion advice. She even sews her own clothes, and I'm talking dresses, shirts, and intricate costumes.

3. Vivi makes a perfect best friend because she often contributes a voice of reason, but then also gives in to my elaborate plots to get her to abandon it (For example, I begged her to travel 12 hours to come to KCON with me in LA and she said it wasn't practical. And then she called me and said, "Guess what! I'm halfway to LA!")

One of my funnest memories with Vivi at KCON 2013

4. Vivi is one of the most intelligent people I know, and she is for sure smarter than any Kdrama female character ever. In college she studied English, but that wasn't enough for her so she also studied physics, graduating with honors, and then going on to get her master's degree. She could be anything in the world, but she chooses to give up some of her time to blog about silly Kdramas with me!

5. Sometimes a blond girl just needs another blond girl to be really blond with. I can't think of any Kdrama characters who are blond.

6. Vivi is a great baker and makes the most delicious beautiful cakes and Finnish delicacies. I know there are Kdrama characters who bake, but I've never tried their cooking so why would I risk it?

7. Vivi loves cats just as much as me. I've never seen any Kdrama characters who love cats as much as us. As proof of how much we love cats and Kdramas, and how much these two things are meant to go together, I present to you the 49 Days kitty parody I made out of photos of Vivi's three cats:

8. Vivi is always a good listener. Let's face it, most female Kdrama characters are too absorbed in their own absurd lives to care about my absurd life. When's the last time a Kdrama character paused and asked what was new in her sidekick's life? Never, because she was too busy dodging the advances of a spoiled chaebol or running away from an evil mother in law. Although Vivi always has her own issues, she is patient in listening to mine.

9. No Kdrama female character could match Vivi in cleverness and wit. Every time I read something she writes, I literally LOL, and I don't throw that term around. She is full of interesting notions and a never ending supply of meme-worthy ideas. I can never write a full article or make a full set of memes without asking Vivi to brainstorm with me. It's a miracle this post will be a surprise.

10. The great thing about Vivi is that she lasts much longer than 16-20 episodes, and she doesn't lag in the middle. When we once made a list of all the Kdramas we've watch, it turned out that I pretty much watch 5 dramas for every 1 that I actually finish. I have a short attention span, unless something is super fascinating to me, and I never get bored of being best friends with Vivi!

And now for Happy Birthday sung by cute Korean children:


Happy birthday, Vivi! To another year of being Kdrama blogging best friends!

Who's That Actor? The "Other" Lee Min Ho

For our second round of "Who's That Actor?" I'm going to take a reader recommendation and highlight Lee Min Ho.

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Wait, nope, sorry--wrong Lee Min Ho there. Here's the one we're going to talk about today:

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That's right. There is more than one Lee Min Ho. *head explodes*


Because I feel bad that he's consistently known as "the other Lee Min Ho" or "Lee Min Ho born in 1993," I figured this guy deserved a moment on his own in the spotlight. I mean, in spite of being younger, this guy made his acting debut a full eight years before the other other Lee Min Ho (The more famous Lee Min Ho? This is getting complicated.), so you can imagine how he must have banged his head against a wall when Boys over Flowers and City Hunter happened and suddenly he was getting hate mail over his own freaking name. You've got to give the guy some credit for not caving and picking a stage name. Anti-fans are scary, scary people.

So props to you, Lee Min Ho!

Where you might have seen him:
His biggest role as a "child" actor was in The Moon the Embraces the Sun as the younger version of Jung Il Woo's character. He was also part of the Joseon entourage in Rooftop Prince, the helpful reporter buddy in The Prime Minister and I, and, although it rarely shows up on his credits, he was also the schoolyard thief kid in Sungkyunkwan Scandal.

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My favorite role: I'm an unashamed sucker for buddy comedies, so it would have to be the genius scholar Song Man Bo in Rooftop Prince for me. Nerdery always wins brownie points over here!

Fun facts: After his child actor years (where, coincidentally, he worked alongside Yoo Seung Ho), he decided that he didn't want his parents to force him into acting anymore, and he focused on soccer instead. Apparently, he was a prodigy soccer player headed for the pros before he rediscovered acting in high school and decided he liked it for himself. That story makes me like him even more, and I kind of wish he would challenge the older Lee Min Ho to a celebrity soccer match to the death. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! (Kind of like Highlander--minus the head chopping parts.)

So the next time you're scrolling through a cast list and think, "I didn't know Lee Min Ho was in that," you don't have to be confused! Just remember our dear friend, the other Lee Min Ho.

Miss Korea Korean Drama Review (Final)

I already did a halftime review of Miss Korea, and pretty much everything I said there still holds now that I've seen the rest of the series. I'll just add a few more thoughts now that the series is done.
As I said before, Miss Korea threw me for a loop at first. I didn't really know how to categorize it in my mind, and I eventually realized that it had a documentary-like feel to it. That feeling held out until the end of the series. I never felt like it was moralizing or forcing us to interpret characters in a specific way. Aside from a couple of side villains (the Ba Da Cosmetics guy, the elevator girl supervisor, and the gangster overlord), the characters all felt fleshed out and real. This is a slice-of-life drama if there ever was one, and once I settled in for the ride, I quite enjoyed how thoughtful and quiet it was.

What surprised me most about Miss Korea was its strong feminist undercurrent. For every drama watcher who cringes at wrist grabs and shouts at the screen at wilting female leads, this is the drama for you. At its core, this show is about a woman who has lived her entire life surrounded by men telling her what she should and shouldn't do with her life and her body. From her well-meaning male family members to her boyfriend to her boss at the mall, her life is dominated by male figures pulling her in different directions.

None of your business if she farted or not!

While the Miss Korea pageant--filled with absurd standards of beauty and femininity--might be an odd place for Ji Young to take her stand, it actually works because it's the opposite of what everyone expects from her. Her family members drool over the pageant, and yet they insist that it would be improper for her to enter the pageant. Her elevator boss doesn't believe that she deserves to be Miss Korea. It's Ji Young's chance to choose what she wants to do for herself, and if that means becoming Miss Korea, it's her choice.

That's not to say that the male characters become sad doormats, either. I found the Ji Young-Hyung Joon relationship refreshingly balanced for a Kdrama. If you watch it, you'll notice the number of times Hyung Joon asks Ji Young, "Is this what you want?" After he starts to move away from his initial jerk phase, he starts to focus his actions around supporting her in her quest for independence. Similarly, she supports him in his hardships, even when he tries to refuse her help. 

Possibly my favorite moment of the whole thing was her response to his noble idiocy. He tried to leave her for her own good, and she was just like, "Okay, sure. Try to leave me, but I'm not breaking up with you, so too bad." I might have done a little fist pump of victory in that moment.

FINALLYYYYYYYYYYY!

I could go on and on and on about all of the minor characters in this show. I really liked all of them, from the fashion directors to the contestants to the Vivi team. I eventually warmed up to the Hwa Jung/Teacher Jung relationship, but Teacher Jung always made me feel just a little uncomfortable the whole time.

Does this mean that Miss Korea was a flawless specimen of Kdramas? Not at all. It was a quiet drama, but sometimes "quiet" can be code for "boring." Sure, it was refreshing to have a drama filled with real things that could happen to real people instead of ending every episode with an absurd cliffhanger, but after watching both Miss Korea and Pasta, I think these writers need to understand their limitations a little bit better. If you're going to write slice-of-life dramas, do it in a more concise manner! Frankly, I had a little bit of a crisis around episode 15 when I realized I still had five more hours to watch. Sixteen episodes would have allowed them to pick up the pace at the beginning and the end of the series without sacrificing much. 

That being said, I found the last episode quite satisfying. The final scene was the perfect way to wrap up what easily became my favorite series of the last drama round, in spite of a rocky and confusing start.

Miss Korea definitely won't be the right drama for everyone, but if you're looking for something sincere, realistic, and full of heart, look no further.

Where to watch Miss Korea

DramaFever

Viki

Other opinions on Miss Korea:

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