Boys Over Flowers

꽃보다 남자 (Boys Over Flowers or Boys Before Flowers) is the Korean remake of the Japanese dram Hana yori dango (花より男子) that aired originally in 2005 and 2007 in Japan. The Korean remake first aired from  January 5th to March 31st 2009 on KBS.
As far as I remember it's one of the most famous Korean dramas internationally and I think I haven't met anyone who didn't watch it.


Story: Oh, if you hear about the story now - believe me, it'll seem quite familiar to you. Why? Uhm, well, that's simple. In short a poor girl, Geum Jan-di, is delivering dry cleaning for her parents shop. One day she saves a student of the prestigious Shin Hwa High and gets a scholarship because of being good at swimming. Being the poor girl surrounded by rich students she has to deal with some issues. Soon she gets terrorized by the leader of the F4, Gu Jun-pyo. He and his friends are the most popular and richest boys in school. While bullying her Jun-pyo begins to realize he's attracted to Jan-di, but Jan-di has a crush on his best friend, Yoon Ji-hoo. And so the drama starts.
If you're looking for THE typical K-Drama - well, congrats, you've found it, though it's actually based on a manga and the Japanese series. Don't believe me? Well, look at this:

Please pay attention to.. well, almost all of those points explained on there. You'll understand when you've finished this drama.
Don't get me wrong, talking about Boys Over Flowers as THE typical K-Drama makes it sound worse I think. Because actually I really adored this one. I remember I had trouble with the first episode and had to wait a few.. well, weeks, until I started the second. But after watching the second episode I've finished the drama in around three days (which is a lot considering I've watched 23 episodes in three days, makes about 8 episodes per day.. now you can guess what else I did during that time except for sleeping and eating and watching this drama).
I admit there are a lot and I mean a whole freaking lot of misunderstandings and after some time you might feel like it's just a strategy so they can produce more episodes and therefore make more money - which might be true up to some point - but everything actually makes sense.

Cast: When I started watching this I didn't really care about actors at all. Sure I knew that Kim Hyun-joong as Yoon Ji-hoo was in it but that was basically everything. Oh, and I've heard about Lee Min-ho who took the role of the male lead Gu Jun-pyo here before but couldn't really connect him to any popular drama. However, this drama was the first one I've watched with Kim Bum who's my absolute favorite actor. As So Yi-jung his smile made my heart melt like.. icecream. This sounds weird but it IS actually really weird (and I'm embarrassed to admit that I was really squealing like a 12-year-old back then). Anyways, the last member of the F4 missing on here is Song Woo-bin played by Kim Joon. Sadly I couldn't find that much info on Kim Joon, the last thing I've heard was that he went to the army after his group T-MAX disbanded (they were good, I remember I've downloaded some songs).
Well, after mentioning all of the F4 now we can't leave out our Geum Jan-di played by Koo Hye-sun. I admit I've also become a fan of hers, I like those princesses who can protect themselves. Don't get what I mean? Watch the first few episodes of this drama and you'll understand that.
The last one I'll name on here would be Kim So-eun who took the role of Jan-di's best friend Chu Ga-eul.

Soundtrack: Well, the soundtrack.. While I sincerely loves some songs like Lee Jung-sik's Saxophone instrumental "I Know" and Kim Bum's "지금 만나러 갑니다 (I'm Going To Meet You Now)" there were some songs that seriously pissed me off after hearing them about 15 times per day just like T-Max's "Paradise" which is the title song. Listening to it now it's actually a good and cheerful song but used way too often. And that's weird because the actual soundtrack consists of two CDs with a total of 26 songs PLUS there's an F4 Special Edition which includes 10 tracks as well. Why did they have to overuse one song that much? I really don't know and I'm not sure if I'll ever find out.


So in total I gave 9/10. Like, come on, I've already told you how fast I've finished that. If that doesn't qualify as being addicted to a drama then.. I don't even know.