Thursday, June 15, 2006
9th june – Day 2
'Gyeoul Yeonga'(Winter Sonata) 'Gyeoul Yeonga' was first released in Korea in January of 2002 quickly becoming one the most popular shows on television. This hugely popular TV drama was produced by Ho Yunseok, the same man responsible for immensely popular TV drama, 'Gaeul Donghwa'(Autumn in my Heart). This director has begun a seasonal theme of TV dramas. The third in his series is 'Yeoreum Hyanggi'(The Scent of Summer), which aired in the summer of 2003 in Korea. 'Gyeoul Yeonga'was released in 2001 to the Hong Kong audience and later released in China and Japan. Broadcast on NHK BS2 television in Japan, it was first shown in April ~ September of 2003. Due to popular demand, it is aired again in December 2003. The demand is growing internationally for this love story that is stealing the hearts of all who watch.
Jeong Yu-jin and Gang Jun-sang, Kim Sang-hyeok, Oh Chae-rin are high school classmates from a small town outside of Seoul. Jun-sang and Yu-jin become each other's first true loves. Sadly, Jun-sang is supposedly killed is a car accident. Flash ahead, 10 years later, Yu-jin is an interior designer and is romantically involved with her high school classmate, Sang-hyeok. Yu-jin's company has recently signed a contract to work at a ski resort. The company heading the resort remodeling project is managed by Yu-jin's first love, who had allegedly died in a car accident 10 years ago. Yu-jin can't believe her eyes when she attends a business meeting with her first love. She is even more stunned to find out the man now known as Lee Min-hyeong doesn't remember her. Yu-jin, who never really got over her first true love, is confused and torn between the man who looks so much like Jun-sang and her current boyfriend, Sang-hyoek. Wanting to live in the past, Yu-jin often talks with Min-hyeong about her first love and the wonderful times that they had together. Min-hyeong was dating Chae-rin at the time he met Yu-jin, but decides to separate from her as he finds himself falling in love with Yu-jin.
Then the plot changes in a big twist, the first conspiracy was that Yu-jin and Jun-sang had the same father and were half-siblings! Sang-hyeok's father was also involved and convinced him to break them up, then their mothers tried to break them up, after a heart-breaking break up, Sang-hyeok's father did a test on Jun-Sang when he was admitted to hospital after collapsing and found out that he was truly Jun-sang's father, but it was too late, heartbroken Yu-jin had already decided to go to France to further her studies, and Jun-sang found out that he had a fatal blood clot in his brain, if he doesn't go for an operation immediately, he could die. But even if the operation was successful, he could go blind.
He made the decision of leaving Yu-jin for good, going to the states to get his operation done and even requesting Yu-jin to go back to Sang-hyeok. These few episodes were the most heart-breaking, when they finally broke up for good, Yu-jin gave him a model of her dream house that was too expensive to build as a parting present. Later Sang-hyeok's father told him the truth and he broke out the real truth to Yu-jin. They rushed to the air-port, but Jun-sang had already left. Soon after Yu-jin left for France even though Sang-hyeok tried to get her to chase after Jun-sang. She left the plane ticket for New York on her seat and headed to France.
But several years later, Sang-hyeok and Yu-jin married, with a daughter. One day, Yu-jin's boss told her that the house she designed turned out to be in a design magazine and was too alike to be coincidental. Hold and behold! She went to visit that place, and there was Jun-sang, he was blind, but realized it was Yu-jin, and they embraced.
Ending Credits.
It's my first time watching a Korean serial, all through the 20 episodes. As a movie buff, I really don't know how to rate this serial and I will not attempt to, but even though the scenes were slow, dialogue was slow, but the plot was very obvious and deliberate. It was a nice watch that has become very popular with the locals and abroad. Watch it if you have plenty of free time, guaranteed to move tears.
http://english.tour2korea.com/02Culture/TVMiniseries/wintersonata.asp?kosm=m2_6&konum=1
So this morning we woke up to a really nice weather and visited the Ski resort that was used in the filming of winter sonata.
Yong Pyong Ski Resort. http://www.yongpyong.co.kr/
Unfortunately, it's summer, and there's no snow yet. It's a really nice place! Cool 15-degree weather, the place also showed the café that Yu-jin supposedly build in the movie and we had breakfast there. Then we went further into the resort where we took a cable car ride, the Yong Pyong Gondola.
The ride is simply amazing! Shadowing what sentosa could ever offer. The technology used couldn't have been from locally, and I guess right, it was Switzerland technology and the Cable from Japan. The amazing thing in Korea is that, the really advanced technologies don't seem to have much maintenance! They just seem to work very efficiently and simply with minimal staff to operate or maintain it, unlike in Singapore where everything seems to be breaking down so often. It must be the weather.
The ride lasted for almost 5-10 minutes. Going up far into the mountains. There's no snow, but you can see the ski-trails and the picturesque scenery. At the peak is Dragon's peak, and there are winter sonata figurines there as well. The temperature was 10 degree at the summit in summer and -10 deg during winter.
The place is just a sight to behold..
Later we left for Dayang, going through many tunnels through the mountains. Along the way, we passed by several pleasant sceneries. I also saw this interesting futuristic high-tech facility that looked something out of Final Fantasy. It turned out to be a water-processing plant.
After a long drive, we had a short stopover at Dodamsambong to take pictures of the brilliant scenery and place. If you look closely, there's a hut built on the right of the middle stone in the centre of the lake. It's so fantasy-like!
Pots used to store Kimchi
Then after lunch at dongmyeong we visited the Dongwasha temple in Dohak-dong Valley, built over 1000 years ago to see a 33-m Buddha statue with a pair of lion statues and decorated with stone lotus flowers. One of the locations included a staircase with 108 steps. It is said that with every step you take, you take away one of your worries, and every person has 108 worries.
Then it was another long drive to Daegu Shopping district, along the way the Tour guide was jabbering a lot about the local fruits being grown in Korea, fruits like Apples, Oranges, grapes and melons were in great abundance.
I roamed the whole of Daegu Shopping District, going through the confusing inter-linked multi-level Sub way that makes Raffles place look like lego. I experienced the local lifestyle, shopping was similar to places in Japan and the more crowded places in Singapore. I noticed that Korean is a rougher language, with pronunciation more guttural and rougher, but the Japanese have a more fluid pronunciation, but guess what? All the languages today all originally originated from China, many words in the Korean language are based on the Chinese Han-yu. The Japanese language doesn't differ much either. The Korean alphabet is similar to English, with 24 letters, words are written in a "mu-ying" and "pi-yun", with always two letters to describe a word. The writing is similar to Chinese pictures depicting the scene or action in letters. All in all, if you know Chinese, learning Korean or Japanese is relatively simple. Even though the Japanese have a more gentle tone in their language, their life-style is far more rough and violent, however the Korean's prefer peace and harmony. They lead very gentle lifestyles.
After that we had a bbq dinner, and spent the night in Daegu Inter-Burgo Park hotel.
6:58 PM
