Marathon

말아톤 (Marathon) is a South Korean movie directed by Jeong Yoon-chul and was released in January 2005. The movie is based on the real story of Bae Hyeong-jin and was the 4th most attended movie in South Korea in 2005.

Story: Yoon Cho-won is a young man with autism who's living with his mother and his younger brother Jung-won. His brother is sometimes jealous because of the attention Cho-won gets from their mother even though he learned to live with his disability in a society that doesn't deal with disabilities openly. The only way for Cho-won to find real joy and release is running. After placing third in a race his mother decides to hire a coach to train him for a marathon - and Cho-won's dream is to break the record.

Cast: Yoon Cho-won was played by Cho Seung-woo in this movie. His portrayal of an autistic character was realistic and therefore excellent. Also, Kim Mi-sook as Kyung-sook, Cho-won's mother, delivered an excellent performance. It seems these actors really did some serious research on the issues a family with an autistic child experiences.
Lee Ki-young as Coach Son Jung-wook represented a part of society in fact. As a character he didn't know how to deal with autism at first and he slowly learned about the disability and how to handle an autistic athlete. Though he was a minor character, his growth was impressive.
And Baek Sung-hyun is in this movie as Yoon Jung-won. While he didn't have that much screentime, his acting was stable - a jealous but also caring brother. Of course this might not have been his best role but it was good after all.


In the end my rating for this movie is 6/10 not because of the acting but it's simply a movie showing the life of a family. It's rather slow-paced, the story in itself is interesting but it was too long in some parts so it turned out to be a little boring with the duration of roughly two hours.

Holy Land

홀리랜드 (Holy Land) is a Korean mini drama series that aired from April 28th to May 19th 2012 on Super Action (and no, I've never heard about that channel either). It consists of 4 episodes with a duration of around 60 minutes per episode.
It's the remake of the Japanese series ホーリーランド (Holyland) that was originally aired in 2005.

Story: Kang Yoo doesn't fit in at school or anywhere else, he's just different. The ordinary teenager starts learning the basics of boxing from a book. When he goes out one day and gets attacked by a group of thugs he defends himself with his self-taught skills. In the aftermath he becomes known as the 'Hunter of Thugs'. When he meets Sang-ho by chance, he suddenly finds a mentor and starts to push himself to the limit to find out who he really is. During that time, he meets a lot of people, one of them being Tae-sik. Starting off as enemies the two become friends in the end.

Cast: Shin Dong-ho of U-KISS took the role of Kang Yoo. I'm still impressed with his acting, he would make a good actor. It's still sad he left the group and the whole industry but I wish him all the best and at least there are ways to see him. I wish he'd return as an actor some day though but this is not the right place to talk about this. But Yeo Hoon-min also from U-KISS joined him in this drama as Tae-sik. Those two were almost flawless actors. Sure, their characters had some issues but that's what made them appear human and one shouldn't confuse the actor and the character.
Actor Seong Woong was Kang Yoo's menthor, Sang-ho.

I really enjoyed watching this one, the characters seemed pretty well-developed, and the story is really good - unless you've watched the Japanese dorama before, I think those who know the Japanese version might be a little bored from time to time. But the fighting scences are worth watching and I think I've learned more about boxing than during my sports classes.

My rating is 8/10, it could've been longer with more details given on why exactly Kang Yu wants to learn boxing (or I just don't remember the exact reason) but then again I think there would've been more about a love story if there are more episodes. So in the end I'm not like "Woah, best thing ever!" but it's still pretty good and worth watching.

Running Gu

런닝, 구 (Running Gu), also known as Running or Racing Heart is a Korean drama special consisting of 4 episodes that aired from June 10th to June 17th 2010 on MBC.

Story: This special tells the story of Goo Dae-gu, a young man, who gave up running because of traumatic events in the past. Because of his old friend Heo Ji-man he discovers his passion for running, friendship and love.

Cast: For such a short drama many people are included in the cast. Baek Sung-hyun acts the male lead role as Goo Dae-gu. Yoo Yun-suk accepted the role as Heo Ji-man, and Park Min-young starred as the female lead Moon Haeng-joo. The main cast consists of those three and like you might be able to guess - it's good material for a triangle, right?
Others in this drama are for example Jung Kyu-soo, Go Yoon-hoo, Shin Hyun-tak and Jun In-taek.
About the acting of the cast I have to say that I really got into the story because of everyone doing a great job though I think it's hard to say how people would behave in such a situation. It seemed real.

Soundtrack: This might be only because I don't pay attention to the music that much when watching short dramas. Maybe it's because I've watched this about one and a half years ago but I don't remember anything. Like, there's really nothing about the soundtrack I can tell you. In general I think it was good but not really memorable. Which doesn't mean it was terrible or incredibly good.

As for a rating.. Well, I gave a 6/10 but to be honest I don't remember why exactly. Maybe because of  many repetitions, maybe because a little too much drama for me. But let's say that's just me and doesn't need to be like that for everyone. If you like one of the actors - watch this, it's good and even if you don't like it that much it's only like 4 hours so you wouldn't waste a lot of time.

Dream

드림 (Dream) is another drama that aired in the awesome year 2009, from July 27th to September 29th. It also has a length of roughly 20 hours.

Story: Nam Jae-il is a sports agent who once was really successful but when one of his clients gets involved in a drug scandal he gets fired by the company he's working for. When he lost everything he meets Lee Jang-seok who is a huge trouble maker. Because of his good fighting skills he wants to become a K1-fighter. With the help of Park So-yeon Jae-il tries to make that happen and also earn money and get back to the top once again.

Cast: Since I'm a huge fan of Kim Bum who's character Lee Jang-seok is one of the main characters in here I decided that it's a must-watch. I knew Son Dam-bi as a singer before but never were a huge fan of hers. However, she's doing a good job as Park So-yeon and was also one of my favorite characters. Joo Jin-mo as Nam Jae-il became almost a father to Lee Jang-seok. The deep friendship those three show in the series is actually awesome. Park Sang-won as Kang Kyeong-tak is the bad guy who's close to loosing everything because of Nam Jae-il and he's desperately trying to keep his empire.

Soundtrack: Let me just mention that SHINee sang a song called "Countdown" for the soundtrack. I liked that song a lot because it fits the drama after all. And Bobby Kim sang "죽기 아니면 살기 (Die or Live)". I admit that I don't remember a lot about the soundtrack so the lack of memorability is definitely a minus but at the same time I've never hated any of the songs so after all it's really good.

After all I enjoyed this one a lot though it was different from what I've expected at first. It's still nice. But took me ages to finish this, I don't understand why.
Rating? 8/10 please, just because some things aren't perfect but in the end it's still nice.

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.