Eighteen

회오리 바람 (Eighteen) is a South Korean movie directed by Jang Kun-Jae and released in February 2010. The movie has a duration of 95 minutes.

Story: Tae-hoon and Mi-jeong travel to the East Coast during their winter break to celebrate their 100th day anniversary. After coming back to Seoul problems begin to arise as Tae-hoon gets scolded for travelling and Mi-jeong's parents call Tae-hoon's parents. While Mi-jeong's parents don't want the two to meet anymore and Tae-hoon is ready to fight for his relationship, Mi-jeong simply gives in and listens to her parents.
This movie pretty much includes forbidden love, highschool times and teenagers, and of course the first love.

Cast: Seo Jun-young was in this movie the male protagonist Tae-hoon. He is stubborn and willing to fight and do all he can but it makes things even more complicated. As for the acting, it definitely wasn't his strongest role but it could've been a lot worse in my opinion. It is just that there was some exciting element missing when it came to his character and his acting. I can say pretty much the same about Lee Min-ji as Mi-jeong. I don't know much about her but I think she was a little bit boring in this situation. And so was her character who just gave in to her parents wishes and doesn't even try to stand up for herself and her wishes.
As for the other actors not many of them are known internationally. Choi Hyo-sang played Mi-jeong's aggressive and over-protective father. Which he wasn't doing too bad so I wanted to give him some credit. While the aggression the character showed towards his daughter is never what a parent should be like that I do know that some parents especially in Korea are like that.
Kwon Hyuk-Poong as Tae-hoon's father seemed more calm and understanding at least and the acting was also very much descent so he is another actor from this movie I know about.


After all I would love to tell you that this movie was good but it was more average to me. I read a review on MyDramaList and expected it to be way worse than it actually was. I feel like they put in some stuff just to make the movie longer like some accident that occurred - that didn't have any connection to the rest of the plot. The story in general could've been much shorter since they added scenes that weren't needed. But in the end I felt like I missed out on something.
In total I would say if you like stories about first love and the tragic Romeo and Juliett part, than a 6.5/10 is okay for this movie. After all it does have a story and the way it is filmed seemed very independent but gave beautiful impressions and pictures of South Korea's East Coast.

Unemployed Romance

실업급여 로맨스 (Unemployed Romance) is a South Korean drama series that was aired from October 5th to December 07th 2013 on E Channel every Saturday. The drama therefore consists of 10 episodes.

Story: Im Seung-hee dreamed of becoming a famous writer but due to an injury she couldn't paricipate in a contest and is working for a small company. The company's owner ran away with her car without paying her and her colleagues. Now that the company is bankrupt, she has to go to a government office responsible for giving out unemployment checks. Her first love, Kim Jong-dae, is currently working there and a lot of memories come back.

Cast: So the female lead character Im Seung-hee is played by Lee Young-ah and this honestly wasn't her best roll. Seung-hee is, at least in the very beginning, such a naive and annoying person that I actually thought she needs some guidance. About the acting itself, the scenes of Seung-hee crying were just way too much, it was so obvious that it was fake so that definitely wasn't her strongest job but then again.. I've seen actors and actresses do worse. As the male lead, we have Nam Goong-min as Kim Jong-dae in this drama and his acting was alright but nothing more or less either. Again, in some scenes I couldn't even pity his character because it was just too weird - because people know how to think. Well, most of them.
Actually both of the lead characters are far from being successful and I really felt like they were giving up on some point which annoyed me.
In the rows of the second leads we have a heavy second male lead syndrome (yay, tropes!) named Song Wan-ha or Seo Jun-young, an actor whom I really learned to like. He's not that bad but it's sad that it's obvious even in the very beginning that he's going to be the poor guy. His acting was quite good I'd say while his character was probably a little naive as well. He's not really a victim though so actually he's a likeable character as well as a good actor. After all my favorite in this series.
Now I would say we have two female-second-leads. Bae Seul-gi as Moon Seon-joo is the typical second female lead. Yes, one can understand her up to some point since she felt betrayed in the past but then again it doesn't make up for what she did wrong. As for the acting, it was sometimes a little too much again, especially her break down in one of the latter episodes. Sometimes it seemed to me her character was already cold enough in the beginning to make a guess what went wrong but maybe that was just my feeling, I don't really know about that. The other one is Jung Seung-ah as Oh Yeon-woo, a naive but cheerful girl, her father has money and influence and tries to make Jong-dae stay with her for exactly that reason. Her character is simply immature, and that's what the acting delivers. It's not really bad but nothing surprising.
Lastly there are Park Woo-chun as Park Gwang-pal and Kim Kang-hyun as Uhm Hyo-sang. The first is a typical player and because his mommy has money he's just playing around. While it was kind of funny, it's actually really sad because people like him exist. The acting therefore was kind of on spot but the expressions again were a little too much only to turn his character into a funny one. As for Uhm Hyo-sang, all I can say is that he's kinda pathetic in the end. He wants a girlfriend but never had one as far as we know and which is also connected to his friend Gwang-pal.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack in fact isn't bad but please - I didn't even notice other songs except for T.O's "거짓말 (Lies)". Yes, M.Pire actually make a guest appearance in the beginning in this series but this song keeps playing all the time so I didn't really notice anything else. Why did they release other songs in the first place if that's the most memorable song included in the whole series? I don't know. However, there was nothing annoying about the music itself so I'm just glad they played such a nice song all the time.



Even after watching this drama with low expectations, I decided to give it a 5/10 only because there's hardly any change in the characters. And the only special thing was the ending when I wasn't even sure whether everything before was just written by Seung-hee or happened a long time before and she just used her real story. Nevertheless, it is in fact kind of confusing. Some things are supposed to be funny but were nothing more but the basics we've seen dozens of times before.
While I did like the flashbacks used in this I also thought that two episodes only consisting of the past story weren't really my style since it wasn't that funny either.

If you like something cute and slightly funny just taking a little more than 8 hours you should give this one a try but if you're looking for something special, something different from the ordinary rom-com stuff, this might not be your style either.

Sirius

시리우스 (Sirius) is a Korean drama special that aired on KBS2 from January 6th to January 27th 2013. It consists of 4 episodes in total.

Before starting the review I have to mention this
(←) awesome picture they used. I really think the whole card design looks awesome and I could talk about my interpretation for hours - maybe I'll do that in the last part of my review - because it leaves a lot of impressions.

Story: The story evolves around the identical twin brothers Do Eun-chang and Do Shin-woo. Thought they are twins, their characters were always different. Shin-woo got into trouble a lot, while Eun-chang was a good and bright person and a good student in his teens but went to jail for his brother. So Eun-chang's life changed a lot.
On the other side Shin-woo always felt inferior to his brother but his feelings changed after Eun-chang went to jail. Now a chief detective of an investigation team, Shin-woo works mainly with drug investigations. Eun-chang, after being released from prison, works as an errand man. But due to a plot planned by Ko Seok-min the two brothers change their positions. While Eun-chang accepts the current state, Shin-woo tries to get his position back.

Cast: Both twins are played by Seo Jun-young who manages to play both different characters quite well. Especially since they aren't close at all I think it requires a lot of skills to do this job well. ZE:A's Park Hyung-sik accepted the challenge as well taking over the teen roles of the twins.
The main gangster Ko Seok-min is played by Ryu Seung-soo. Two female characters appear as well and so we see Uhm Hyun-kyung as Kim An-na and Jo Woo-ri as So-ri.

After all it's a 6/10, though I think it's still a rather good 6~ basically I think it's too short, I would've wished for more contexts and by far more story. Because actually this drama special has so much potential! Regarding the dark angel Shin-woo and the white-winged angel Eun-chang more information would've been a good thing but obviously the producers only wanted a short drama special so - they should've either turned this into a mind-blowing movie or just use the story for a full drama, at least 8 episodes would've been possible to answer some question and to give the viewer some more insight-

To The Beautiful You

아름다운 그대에게 (To The Beautiful You) was the first Korean drama I've watched and basically the only drama I've watched online while it was aired. 
Why did I watch that? Oh, well, that's a good question. I've been into K-Pop before, SHINee were the first K-Pop group I've known and after I started studying Korean I thought it might be helpful to hear the language more regularly through - right, dramas. Also, one of my friends loved Hanazakari no kimitachi he (花ざかりの君たちへ), the Japanese version of this drama, a lot.
I've finished this drama in October 2012 after it aired from August 15th to October 4th 2012.

Story: The story is about a girl dressing up as a boy to be close to her 'idol', who, in this case, is a competitor in a high jump competition. While she's living in an all-boy-school and dormitory a lot of trouble is caused because she's hiding her real gender.
Those gender bend stories are old? Yes, absolutely. I don't even know how many dramas exist with girls acting as boys and falling for the male lead. But to be honest this one is not as boring as one might expect but this might be just me because I didn't watch any dramas before and because I didn't watch the Japanese version either.

Cast: The cast is quite awesome for K-Pop fans. Choi Min-ho as Kang Taejoon was the reason why I wanted to watch this drama and I think he did a quite good job. Sulli of f(x) took the role of the female lead Goo Jae-hee/Jay Dawson and I also liked her quite a lot. Lee Hyun-woo was really adorable as Cha Eun-gyeol, the second male lead, and I enjoyed his acting. The cast also includes:
Seo Jun-young as Ha Seung-ri 
Hwang Kwang-hee (ZE:A) as Song Jong-nim
Kang Ha-neul as Min Hyeon-jae
Yoo Min-kyu as Jo Young-man
Kim I-an as Na Cheol-soo
Ki Tae-young as Jang Min-woo
Kang Kyung-joon as Byeon Gwang-min
Kim Ji-won as Seol Han-na
And let me take a minute to mention the dog called Sangchu. It's a fluffy white dog, I love it. >3<

Soundtrack: The soundtrack is filled with songs by SM Entertainment artists. Though I'm not a huge fan of SM Entertainment I admit that their artists are good at singing. I enjoyed the soundtrack as a whole. J-Min's song "일어나 (Stand Up)", the title track was my personal favorite.


After all this drama was alright. My rating would be 6/10, it's not that high, I know, but maybe because I've watched a lot of dramas later I've corrected the rating a few times.