As the train rolled into the station, I looked out the window and saw the sign above the entrance: 평양 (Pyongyang). Finally – the capital of the hermit kingdom. KPA soldiers herded us out of the train onto the platform, and down through a dark tunnel underneath the tracks. There were no lights, and it was too dark to make out the red script on the walls, but I had some idea of what revolutionary things they said. Only a few hours earlier that day, I had been in a similar tunnel at Dandong station, except on the walls there were advertisements. I was disappointed, because I really wanted to see what advertising was like in the DPRK.

(Pyongyang station, across) Pyonghwa motors ad with four cars… spoilt for choice!

Right outside the train station was the first advertisement I saw in North Korea: a billboard for Pyonghwa motors, the DPRK joint venture with the unification church. It was also the only advertisement I saw; there were other Pyonghwa billboards scattered around the city, but no other company enjoyed this privilege. I suppose Pyonghwa would have cornered the DPRK auto market if not for all the imported Toyotas I saw, which may reflect the relative cost/value of its product lines.

(Pyongyang highway) Another Pyonghwa ad. This one is for the hwiparam (whistle) aka Fiat Siena. I never actually saw one on the road, though.

I didn’t have time to ask the local guides about it then, as they rushed us from the train station doors into the tour bus, as if to limit our exposure to the people outside (or perhaps their exposure to us). I snapped a brief shot of the ad for later perusal, when we were warned again not to take pictures unless expressly permitted to. Yeah, right. I put away my DSLR, which was perhaps too conspicuous, and switched to my teeny point-and-shoot, which is why many of the street pictures you will see here are somewhat blurry and poorly composed.

(Pyongyang street) Another propaganda mural about songun and juche. There were so many I was almost glad that my vocabulary was too limited to understand them.

As we drove through the city, it occurred to me that it was like I had stepped into a time warp to the fifties and sixties. Some of the vehicles on the street looked like they had been manufactured then. The buildings looked dull, their monochrome paint faded in patches. The only bright colors were the red banners and propaganda murals. I wanted to get off the bus right there to get a closer look at the shops and pedestrians, and perhaps also the jangmadang black markets, and hatched a plan to escape from the hotel as soon as the coast was clear.

(Pyongyang street) I was under the impression that all their school uniforms included red scarves. One kid is wearing his orange cap backwards, no doubt a dangerous nonconformist.

Unfortunately, our tour group was to be accommodated at hotel Yanggakdo. Not Ryugyong hotel. Not Koryo hotel. But Yanggakdo hotel, on Yanggak island. It had not occurred to me that I would be stuck on an island in the middle of the Taedong river, and I despaired, seeing the many checkpoints and lack of cover. Unfortunately, my only stealth training was from playing Metal Gear Solid and watching Bond movies. Which is to say, none.

(Yanggakdo hotel) I guess one way to isolate the foreigners is to put them on an island.

We arrived at the hotel and were given our room assignments when I noticed a large delegation of tourists from the ROK in the lobby – I could tell because they wore special passes on lanyards. A few of them were priests and nuns, which I thought was interesting. The mainland tourists went off to enjoy the entertainments offered in the hotel. I dropped off my stuff in the room, and against my better judgment, told my roommate that I was going out to walk around. He insisted on coming along. I guess I felt better that at least I wouldn’t be alone if I were arrested for ‘hostile acts’ like seditious foreign journalizing.

(Yanggak Island, Pyongyang) The view from the 46th floor of Hotel Yanggakdo. Note the checkpoint on the bottom right.

It was a bad idea to bring him along. We got past the empty parking lot and golf course and took a short detour towards the spiral-shaped building, which was the ‘international cinema house’. And then we saw a group of locals playing volleyball. This kid just didn’t have any discretion – instead of avoiding them by going around, he went right up to announce our presence and tried to chat up the ladies with his phrasebook Korean. (more about his antics later) They looked half confused, half afraid. The entire group stopped playing and stared at us. Soon after, our tour guide came running up from the hotel and told us that we were not allowed to wander unsupervised. Someone must have sounded the alarm that foreigners were on the loose.

(Pyongyang international cinema house) Doesn’t look like its operating… maybe it only opens during the Pyongyang film festival.

In retrospect I probably wouldn’t have gotten much farther on my own either. First mistake: daylight (I thought I wouldn’t get good photographs otherwise) Second mistake: appearance. While my ‘southern province’ complexion wouldn’t necessarily give me away from a distance, I hadn’t been dressed and groomed conservatively to blend into the populace – I didn’t see a single local rocking a t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and a messy college hairstyle. Also, my DSLR was a dead giveaway. If I had looked the part, brought the point-and-shoot, and snuck out after dark, it might have worked, as it did for Jerry Guo – but the game was up for me.

(Pyongyang TV) I haven’t seen this kind of test signal since the early 90s.

We were taken back to the hotel, and since I have no interest in casinos, bars and the other ‘entertainments’, I ended up watching k-dramas like I always do (DPRK-dramas, that is). The one I saw that night was set in the colonial era. While I couldn’t understand most of the dialogue, it was pretty easy to tell what was going on: Japanese girl is in love with Korean guy, Japanese dude who is into the girl gets jealous, Korean guy prevails. Gee, I didn’t see that one coming. I think I’ll stick with F4, thanks.

(Pyongyang apartment building) All the buildings were grey and dull… the only bright colors are on the banners and murals.

I wondered that evening why I came on this tour if I wasn’t going to see economic reform and real, grassroots market development. Without seeing the jangmadang, everything else would be reading between the lines, seeing between the road stops of regime propaganda at the pain and suffering beneath. And I wasn’t here to see pain and suffering. I don’t want to have anything to do with poverty porn. And unlike the MDV tourism, the profits of the Communism zoo only go to the development of a privileged few.

I remember the older mainland tourists exclaiming to me how the countryside and the cityscape reminded them of the China of their youth, like we had stepped into a time machine back to the Cultural Revolution. The tone they had was a kind of sad sympathy mixed with a sense of schadenfreud relief. They could’ve gone anywhere else for a holiday but chose to come here. Why?

(Mangyondae, Pyongyang) The kids on their school trip seem as disinterested as we are to visit the great leader’s birthplace.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the tour operators to the developing world, or to here, don’t contribute something positive – they do, and I hope they prosper and flourish to the point where they become obsolete, and tourists will come to the DPRK for different reasons altogether (like maybe historical/cultural/eco-tourism or whatever). But to reach that point, we should be aware of the unspoken premise of the tour as it is now: to see an impoverished people living in fear and isolation. To be fair, awareness-raising on both sides, learning more about what’s going on, being part of the solution, are also part of it. I wonder how much we can really learn though.

Previously on Pyongyang Diaries: The Tourists
Next time: The Guides

NEW HAVEN, CT – “Love Story in Yale” (2009, SBS) is the long-awaited sequel to “Wharton Sonata” and “Tsinghua Spring (semester) Waltz“, starring Geoffrey See as the dashing and brilliant business strategy consultant, and Kim Tae-Hee as representative sample Yale girl.

Happy Birthday and Congratulations on getting into Yale! Through our five years of friendship and mostly-healthy competition I’ve been inspired by your ceaseless diligence, prudent foresight, deep compassion, elegant style, love of life and adventure, sheer determination, your exponential rate of accomplishments, and the humility you’ve held onto throughout it all. You’re one of my favorite people in the whole world. Here’s wishing you every happiness and success in the years to come! (incl. w/ hot Yale girls )

My grandmother took care of me for most of my childhood. She wasn’t aware of any Mozart Effect and let me watch hours and hours of daytime television with her, which back in the early 90s was mostly trashy soap operas on the state-operated Chinese-language channel. (Oddly, my Mandarin never improved very much) Due to the heavy regulations and high economies of scale in the industry, the state channels never faced any competition (outside of TVB imports), and as such they made some truly horrific pablum (they still do). In retrospect, this may have been why trashy soap operas are permanently seared into my psyche now.

I stopped watching television from the O-level examination preparation period onward (14/15ish) and only started again during military service, that is, after the exam that defined my teen life had been done with (A-levels). The first k-drama I came across was ‘Love Story in Harvard’ (러브스토리 인 하버드). Back in those college application days I was obsessed with all things Harvard, and I think it came up during a search for ideas for the application essays. I watched a few episodes before realizing how horrible it was.

It turned me off k-dramas, until the second year of military service, when Geoffrey and I went to the APEC youth exchange in Seoul, and when I got invited back for the main conference in Busan. The friends I made there encouraged me to watch something called ‘My name is Kim Sam-soon’ (내 이름은 김삼순), and they kept sending me more afterwards. I got a stack of CD-Rs with ‘What happened in Bali’ (발리에서 생긴 일) on them when they came to visit Singapore.

In those lazy army days, I had all the time in the world to watch whatever dramas I wanted, and I did. It also helped that my immediate superior was a middle-aged lady officer. She, like many middle-aged ladies in Singapore, was obsessed with all things k-drama, especially that Winter Sonata dude. Having common interests made my army life so much easier, and I think that was part of the reason why she let me take so much time off to go to Korea. Twice.

J-dramas were simply the natural next step up from anime. Mandarin ones were for language reinforcement.

As you can probably guess, dramas are the biggest time-sink in my life. (Apart from school-related things like attending seminars and writing essays, that is) It seems like I must be the only guy who watches these to the degree I do – I guess there’s just not enough real drama in my daily life. A friend recently asked me to send her a list of dramas to watch, so this is my accumulated wisdom of five years of watching dramas. In no particular order, the ones I really liked are:

J-dramas:
Maou 魔王
Meteor Bond 流星の絆
Change
Ally of Justice 正義の味方
Honey and clover ハチミツとクローバー
Daddy and daughter’s seven days パパとムスメの７日間
Operation proposal プロポーズ大作戦
Team Medical Dragon 医龍
Liar Game ライアーゲーム
Black swindler クロサギ
Nobuta wo produce 野ブタ。をプロデュース
Queen’s classroom 女王の教室
Densha otoko 電車男
Stand up

K-dramas:
Cain and Abel 카인과 아벨
Lobbyist 로비스트
War of money 쩐의전쟁
Coffee prince 1st shop 커피프린스 1호점
Soulmate 소울메이트
My name is Kim Sam-soon 내 이름은 김삼순
Sorry I love you 미안하다, 사랑한다
What happened in Bali 발리에서 생긴 일

PRC/TW-dramas:
New Shanghai Bund 新上海滩
Fated to love you 命中注定我愛你

A friend recently told me about a k-drama script writing competition, and I’m putting serious thought into writing one. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could make a living using my talent for something I love?

Ryusei no Kizuna 流星の絆 Meteor’s bond
I’m liking this short drama a lot. It’s about 60% comedy, 20% drama, 20% mystery, which makes for wonderful pacing, and doesn’t get as heavy as some j-dramas can be. It stars Ms. Death Note, Toda Erika, who is omg just so beautiful. But she’s not why I watch this, I couldn’t keep up with her previous one ‘Code Blue‘ even though it had the pocky idol Aragaki Yui in it as well. Yes, it’s that bad. Anyway. It also has *bleah* boyband star Ninomiya Kazunari, so Arashi playing the OP is par for the course as per all Johnny-associated dramas, and *double bleah* Nishikido Ryo. But they don’t matter. It’s about three siblings that team up to take revenge for their parents’ murder, while also swindling bad people. I guess you could think of it as a winning combination of Kurosagi and Nobuta wo Produce.

Maou 魔王 Devil
Despite being another ‘ikemen paradise’ type drama, I actually liked this one a lot. Stars Ikuta Toma, who performed amazingly in HachiKuro and HanaKimi, and yet another Johnny’s boybander *bleah* Ohno Satoshi. His Arashi compatriot Ninomiya Kazunari had one teeny cameo in the first episode, then disappeared. Though I must admit Arashi did a good job with the OP.

So the drama is supposedly a remake of a k-drama which I never heard of, but it was surprisingly engaging. It is basically a count of monte cristo story (my favorite novel), where the protagonist (?) exacts his revenge on everyone who wronged him in very complicated ways, which is really suspenseful to see play out. I don’t think a Johnny’s boyband kid can really be an Edmond Dantes, but he did well enough. The drama is 50% psychological thriller and 50% Shakespearean tragedy, so it isn’t the most lighthearted thing to watch – it does not have gags interspersed here and there like Kurosagi and Liar Game did, so it has more in common with Byakuyako.

Seigi no Mikata 正義の味方 Ally of Justice
I really liked this one too. It’s about a high schooler and her evil older sister, who forces her to do all kinds of odd things like spy on potential boyfriends. The plot is about how the high schooler tries to get rid of her evil older sister by marrying her off, so she has to fool her sister’s dream guy into thinking she’s wonderful. It’s 100% comedy gold.

Change
Political drama about an unlikely second-generation, popular young politician who somehow becomes prime minister and makes reforms that challenge his party bosses. Basically, its a dramatization of Koizumi’s rise to power. Taking Curtis’s Japanese Politics class this semester made me appreciate this drama a lot more than if I had seen it without learning more about the political institutions and practices it satirizes (like the LDP faction system, bubble-era corruption, hereditary politics…). 75% comedy, 25% West Wing drama, its kind of like Mr Smith Goes to Washington set in Nagatacho.

This drama was amazingly popular this summer, far more than any other drama named above, which suggests that something in it resonates with the Japanese public. I keep wanting to write about this in one of my class papers, but the opportunity just never comes up.

—

So it appears there is something of a k-drama dry spell. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen anything good since Coffee Prince, and even that got old fast. For whatever reason, Korean television dramas aren’t keeping up, which is sad since I am running out of good ones to watch. This isn’t just my opinion. Daily NK reports:

In North Korea, the fervor of the South Korean Waves is on the wane; Korean dramas, which have spearheaded the spread of South Korean culture and progress since 2000, are no longer generating huge interest among North Korean citizens. The prevailing response of the citizens has been “I have seen enough” and “I have had my fill.”

H/T Curtis from NKeconwatch.

Soft power is a strategic priority, so I hope the k-drama dry spell ends soon.

Interesting social science research question: If I am right that J-dramas are more popular, and more successful as cultural exports, Why are tv dramas from Japan better than Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong? (Singapore isn’t even in the picture… sad) Something to do with market conditions? Structure of the industries? Creative talent? Speech regulations? Culture? I would be interested in pursuing this as a project if it wasn’t so interdisciplinary.

Zettai Kareshi (絶対彼氏) / Absolute Boyfriend
Fuji TV Spring 2008 season

I find it strange that I like Zettai Kareshi so much. Although I love the romantic comedy genre of j-dramas (as opposed to the melodramas) in general, I can’t help but be reminded of the horrible conclusion that the title is everything that I am not. I’ve only seen the first few episodes since the summer started while stuck in airports and planes without in-flight entertainment, but here are some initial thoughts on the series:

It strikes me that the premise of ZK and how the conflict develops in the plot only makes sense in the context of Japanese social expectations and norms about how a woman should properly behave. In real life, all my female friends in school would simply say itadakimasu when faced with a Mocomichi. And they do. It may not necessarily be culturally-specific – ZK is thematically very similar to an old science fantasy romance novel called the Silver Metal Lover I read back in middle school. Yup, back when I had the luxury of time to read fantasy novels, so much that I could read the shoujo genre ones as well. But Silver Metal Lover was written in 1981. It’s hard to imagine ZK’s already meager psychological realism translating well beyond its shores where those expectations don’t exist.

As a corollary to the above, although it is ostensibly about the perfect boyfriend, a closer look at the series reveals an implicit definition of the ideal girl, because of the equally unrealistically chaste and virtuous protagonist, an office lady at a confectionery company who works hard and makes great cream puffs. I believe the series would be more accurately titled zettai kanojo (絶対彼女) instead, if it is reflective of prevailing social expectations of Japanese women in the labor market, and Japanese corporate culture in general. The protagonist is a diligent worker, yet she is not full-time staff but a temp contracted from an agency, and often appears serving coffee during meetings. Even when she is most productive, she is no corporate professional either – her contribution as a talented pâtissier is a domestic-oriented skill. (See my essay on the Japanese economy for more on corporate gender discrimination)

On a more positive note, ZK also presents a role model for a greater role of fathers in the domestic world. Mocomichi’s character is programmed to do household chores, cook delicious meals, and help with living expenses. Yet the appeal of ZK suggests that this masculine ideal is far from real male aspirations. As much as popular culture may reflect social realities, television serials are more often an escapist fantasy. One can only hope that the men watching ZK catch the message – Japanese women’s expectations of men are changing too.

My last observation is on the implicit debate on the definition of masculinity. On one hand we have greek-god “ore sexy?” Mocomichi flexing his muscles topless for the audience. On the other hand we have metrosexual host-club himo-type Mizushima Hiro, who was a supporting character in the blatantly-titled “hanakimi ikemen paradise“. These rival definitions of ikemen-hood (ike-manhood?) interest me in terms of which is relatively less unachievable in my own quest to become, well, the title of the drama. I know, I know. Yappari zettai muri desu ne? All I can do is try to change the things I can and accept the things I can’t.

The long-awaited animated special of my all-time favorite k-drama MiSa (미안하다, 사랑한다 / Mianhada, Saranghanda) has finally been released on DVD. I want it so bad.

In July 2007, the South Korean ministry of finance announced that it had hired the lead actor and actress from a hit television serial that aired May-July to promote their microcredit program. That television serial, “War of Money” (쩐의전쟁), was about the informal moneylending industry in South Korea, reaching an average of 32.8% of households in the greater Seoul area and 31% nationwide, and it was the top-rated serial of the season, so popular that ‘bonus’ episodes were produced – it remains one of my personal all-time favorite kdramas. Much of its storyline emphasized themes of income volatility, uncollateralized credit, innovative entrepreneurship, and good (and bad) borrowing practices – all themes relevant to microfinance. In an interview prior to the serial’s airing, the lead actor Park Shin-yang (박신양, of Lovers in Paris/파리의연인 fame) had even noted that one of the sources of inspiration that he drew from was the work of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank.

Perhaps it may be useful to take “Money’s Warfare” one step further, and consider a similar application of television serials in microfinance education, through its plot, themes, and product placement strategy.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Television Serials as educational medium
Pros:

Proven consumer education tool
No literacy requirement
Highly scalable
Advertising/product placement synergies

Cons:

Requires infrastructure/television access
Highly variable outcomes
Highly culturally-specific
Target demographic mismatch

Pros
Proven consumer education tool. First, that television is effective for consumer education is well-documented in marketing literature, and more recently studies have analyzed its role in educating viewers on such social issues as gender discrimination. (See among others, Jensen, Robert and Oster, Emily. “The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women’s Status in India.” NBER Working Paper Series No. 13305 August 2007) Television content is in an entertainment format, such as popular soap operas, that reach a broad audience. Even if soap operas are not explicitly intended to impart specific messages for social development (as the Sabido Method of socially-oriented programming performed in Latin America), they still raise viewer awareness of the alternative lifestyles and the implicit social values of those depicted. This can have a tremendous impact on rural, less-educated communities where links with the urban populace are few and far between. If the serial is very successful, the impact will be that much greater: the top 10 soap operas in India attract as many as 50 million viewers a night.

No literary requirement. Second, television as an education medium does not require any literacy on the part of the viewer, unlike newspaper advertising or pamphlets. Considering that the adult literacy rate in rural developing countries is low, the value of this should not be underestimated.

Highly scalable. Third, television serials are highly scalable, as once initial investments in public broadcast radio-wave or satellite/cable infrastructure is in place, the marginal cost of delivery per household is near zero. Serials can also be easily reproduced as VCDs or DVDs and made to suit different languages and regional dialects via dubbing and subtitles. This means that if a television serial is successful in one area, it can be spread to other areas easily via different mechanisms.

Advertising & product placement synergies. Fourth, television serials are also opportunities for marketing of microcredit services, whether overtly through advertising slots or more subtle product placements integrated into the storyline, which I will describe further below. Even with microcredit advertising, there will be space for other advertising as well, and for popular serials, advertising revenue may even cover the cost of production, which means greater sustainability.

Cons
Requires electricity infrastructure & television access. Although this may be a limiting factor to outreach in poorer rural areas, it should be noted that for many poor households, a television set is one of the most important status/aspirational goods, because of the relatively cost-effective entertainment value and escape it provides from a dreary life. Also, televisions are quasi-non-rival-goods since the marginal cost of another person watching at the same time is almost zero (up to a point).

Unfortunately, the educational impact of the serial, which depends on the its popularity, is highly dependent on exogenous factors like the timeslot it airs, the cast, etc. Impact is also highly culturally-specific, if it is intended to be accessible to the audience. Furthermore, most viewers of television serials are middle-class housewives, and not the target clients of microcredit products. Yet these can still be mitigated by an effective marketing strategy and excellent scripting, which I address below.

Possible plot, themes, and characters
Television serials need drama to be successful. I propose a serial about the development of a microfinance institution (MFI), with two overlapping love triangles (a staple of most soap operas and the standard formula in Korean serials). For my purposes I set the drama in mainland China, where audiences are very familiar with K-dramas. The serial’s plot will emphasize themes like:

Uncertainty about the future and employment security
The failure of social safety nets and the welfare system
The high cost of informal moneylenders and poor access to formal financial institutions
The power of entrepreneurs with microloans

The main characters are:

The activist. A brilliant economics student from a poor interior province studying at Tsinghua University, she is forced to drop out to support her ailing parents, whose spiraling healthcare costs are caused by a substandard and corrupt socialized healthcare bureaucracy and the breaking of the ‘iron ricebowl’ of state-owned enterprises and the danwei system. Unable to make ends meet due to the decaying economy of the interior provinces and the politicized nature of the state banks, her father passes away, and she swears vengeance against the corrupt officials and to revive the provincial economy. Will she prevail, or will her enemies destroy her MFI?

The financier down on his luck. The youngest son of a wealthy private equity dynasty, he must prove himself worthy and make his fortune, but he’s just had a string of failures partly due to his pride and hot temper (although he’s actually a nice guy deep down inside). When the activist miraculously saves his life from a triad kidnapping, their fates are entwined, and he takes a chance on her crazy idea about microfinance, which she explains to him (and the audience). Is he falling for her, or just repaying a debt of gratitude? Can he find it in his heart to understand this business, or is he just about the money?

The bureaucrat out to get her. The doctor’s most hated rival in Tsinghua, now a rising star in the state banks due to her family political connections in the Shanghai clique. Set up for an arranged marriage with the financier, she bitterly resents the doctor’s growing presence in his heart and her rise up the social ladder. How far will she go to get what she wants?

The official who loves her. The doctor’s secret admirer from her school days, now a government official in Zhongnanhai. Will he side with the system, or with her? Can he beat the financier in pursuit of her love?

You can probably tell I watch far too many soap operas, probably to make up for the lack of drama in my life. Maybe when I go to China this summer I can pitch this story at CCTV? Or maybe not. I guess television dramas about civil society activism and government corruption might be unpopular with the censors.

Absolutely ridiculous… but ridiculously good.

For you in full bloom / Hanazakari no kimitachi e (花ざかりの君たちへ)
I can’t believe I’m watching ‘HanaKimi‘, but it’s surprisingly enjoyable. Much better than the lame Taiwanese version (花樣少年少女) anyway, the lovely Horitaka Maki (from my favorites Densha otoko, Kurosagi and Nobuta wo produce) beats that anytime any day of the week, even though she’s dressed as a boy the whole time. Which is completely unconvincing since she could not possibly pass for a guy. The other actresses in the show are pretty too, but they kind of pale in comparison.

So the setup is pretty simple: Girl with huge crush disguises herself as a boy and transfers into crush’s all-male school in order to get closer to him. Pseudohomoerotic hilarity ensues. There’s a complex love polygon involved.

HanaKimi is supposedly full of hotties (the subtitle is ‘ikemen paradise’ lol), which I unfortunately can’t appreciate. The lead male is Oguri Shun of Hana Yori Dango fame, who my suitemates adore. The other guy is Ikuma Toma who won best supporting actor for this role, and he plays Takemoto in the upcoming Honey and Clover drama, which makes him my new hero – playing ultimate unrequited love roles twice in a row. I can’t wait for the new Honey and Clover… the only drama in my life is the one I watch on tv. I watch the show and its cast of host-club candidates with their hairstyles that look like they took an hour to put together with two tubs of styling wax, and think ‘if only I was as handsome…’ But I guess that’s not going to happen. Even pygmalion had better stuff to work with.

Iryu (医龍) Team Medical Dragon Season 2
It’s hard to describe this as part of the medical drama genre because it’s kind of like ER and Gray’s but without any romantic content whatsoever. It has some renzoku (human drama) elements and a little bit of comic relief here and there but on the whole it’s mostly hardcore medical.

Iryu is fairly interesting as a barometer of Japanese popular sentiment on corporate governance reforms. The primary antagonist is the bureaucrat in charge of the hospital’s commercialization/corporatization drive and declares himself an agent of capitalism, which I suppose the writers believe is a bad thing. The secondary antagonist is a Japanese representative of a private equity firm that hostile-tookover the hospital management. Although it’s not explicitly presented as a foreign entity (all the staff seem local), the name of the firm is ‘eagle partners’, which is clearly meant to be as American as apple pie. And to top it off, the firm’s rival is ‘goldberg brothers’, which sounds like a merger between three bulge bracket investment banks and PE firms. Considering that this drama was written and produced over the Livedoor scandal period and various controversies about foreign buyouts, this may reflect popular opinions about the post-bubble corporate governance reforms. Furthermore, the drama also plays on recent political scandals on pension benefits, and the broader healthcare/social security problems Japan faces.

Thankfully, the drama does not portray everyone in the capitalist/corporate camp as evil. One of the characters believes that the corporatization drive will save more lives on net in the long run. Unfortunately, it looks like the writers have set her up as a ’straw man’ to be shot down.

Father and daughter’s seven days / Papa to musume no nanokakan (パパとムスメの７日間)

Mmm… pocky.

Classic body-swapping comedy, really addictive since it peeks into the salaryman life without being lame like Sapuri or Hataraki man. And OMG the lead actress (Aragaki Yui) is So. Heartstoppingly. Pretty. Now I can die happy knowing that someone beautiful like that exists in the world – almost on par with Ms. death note 2.

Delicious Proposal / Oishii Puropozu (おいしいプロポーズ)
Almost the exact same setup as My Lovely Samsoon (내 이름은 김삼순): older chef lady with a younger restaurant owner, except Hasegawa Kyoko is more of a model-type than the more healthy-looking Kim Sunah. All the actresses are really pretty. Typical romantic comedy, pretty funny (and thus enjoyable), and just melodramatic enough to pull at my heartstrings. I refuse to watch the ones that are too serious like Byakuyakou or Tatta hitotsu no koi because they’re just too heavy. Dramas have to be like tiramisu, light and creamy, but not too sweet.

Stand Up!!
A really old drama that I never finished watching, but a classic: it stars the Johnny’s models Ninomiya Kazunari (Letters from Iwo Jima), Oguri Shun, the awesome Yamapi, and Suzuki Anne (Initial D). Basically Japan’s American Pie but a little more conservative, a pretty good romantic comedy with an interesting narrative style. I really feel for the DB4.

Anyway there are a lot more I’m watching here and there, but these are the main ones. Hopefully watching hours and hours of j-dramas nonstop will burn enough nihongo into my brain that I will be able to do things without too much difficulty when I get there next week.

The male and female leads of a hit Korean drama about the illegal loan sharking industry were appointed public relations envoys for the Finance Ministry on Wednesday. For one year Park Shin-yang and Park Jin-hee of “War of Money” will promote the ministry’s “micro-credit” system which offers low-interest loans to people with bad credit. The government in February will use dormant deposits to establish a W200 billion fund to finance the micro-credit program.

I absolutely adore the SBS k-drama War of Money and I think it is so awesome that the stars of the drama have been co-opted by the Korean finance ministry to promote their microcredit program, which no doubt needs a lot of help, although I think they should pursue a more commercial approach. Also, given the number of SK dramas imported to the north through China, the stars might well be supporting much-needed microfinance/small-business education in NK and paving the way for economic reform and development efforts in the north.

I have only seen the first episode of the drama, but it is incredible: there is this scene in the hospital where the protagonist both makes a huge character transformation (Broken by the loansharks’ psychological games, he swallows his pride to accept help from his love interest) and reveals his tragic flaw (he is too proud to face her as a man after taking her money). The girl then throws the money at him in slow-motion while the theme song takes over.

School Days

I was most interested in seeing how they would integrate the multiple mutually-exclusive storylines of the game into a linear plot for the anime, but having never played the game (language skills required are beyond me, even though it is not text-based as most others in the genre are) it is difficult to appreciate what liberties they have taken with the original. Furthermore, much of the popular appeal of the game has nothing to do with the ‘happy ending’ type romance story but with the multiple-storyline ultra-violent ‘bad endings’ that have made it infamous, and they can’t have those because these really are mutually exclusive and there’s simply no way to integrate the ‘A kills B’ scene with the ‘B kills A’ scene short of a ‘A and B kill each other’, which is completely different altogether. So I suspect this adaptation will be very much of a disappointment to fans of the game, or at least more so than usual.

What I do like about it so far is how psychologically realistic it is (well, as psychologically realistic as a wish-fulfillment fantasy can be). Basically the plot is essentially the same setup as KGNE, except without the accident and timeskip: best friend sets up boy with pretty girl even though she likes him too, love triangle ensues. At the end of the third episode, the protagonist Makoto remarks to his best friend Sekai (i.e. the other love interest) that being with his dream girl Kotonoha is “tiring”. Now this may only be a plot convention to help integrate the multiple storylines, but I think it works very well. Its “tiring” to be with the dream girl, because to do that he has to be her dream guy, and it takes so much effort to be that guy, whereas he is loved for simply being himself with his best friend. Damn, this show just makes me angry.

Dramas:
Tokkyu Tanaka 3 Go should be marketed as the real ‘densha otoko‘ since the overarching metaphor is train-related: the characters are trainspotters and their relationship is like the slow journey along countryside tracks in how it progresses in a roundabout way, both beginning to discover the best things about each other. Rather like the two rails of train tracks, running parallel with each other and never to meet, yet travelling together always. The protagonist is stupid and almost unlikeable but so honest and determined in his love for someone who won’t even give him the time of day that the audience begins to fall in love with him a little bit too. Stars KAT-TUN member Tanaka Koki and Kuriyama Chiaki, though she’s less pretty than Kato Rosa who is in a supporting role. KAT-TUN sings the OP, which is as usual, insanely catchy. My dream is to be as seksay as Kame from KAT-TUN. That, or Rain.

Proposal Daisakusen is starting to really irritate me because the main characters have feelings for each other and the only thing in the way is the protagonist’s stubborn pride. In every other drama, although the match-up is obvious, the conflict is far more plausible or at least substantial. In this case it’s just him not being able to tell her, which irritates someone like me to no end since it implies that all love needs is courage to reveal your cards, which is nonsense. Also, it’s a sign that I’ve been watching far too many j-dramas since this one likes to make references to other dramas, and I’m able to catch them all.

Liar Game gets better with every episode. I am surprised that the viewer ratings for this show are so average. Maybe it’s because it’s not a ‘family’ show – it airs late Saturday night after all.

Anime:
Heroic Age, Bandai’s new space opera epic, is basically Starcraft with Evangelion-style giant mecha. You have your Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss. Incidentally, Starcraft 2 has been announced, and hell it’s about time! So much speculation that it was going to be World of Starcraft. Fortunately I gave up WOW two years ago, otherwise a new Blizzard MMO would consume my life. It’s also a little bit like Battlestar Galactica in how the protagonists are chased around the universe completely outnumbered.

Production IG’s Seirei no Moribito also has incredible production values. I like this one a lot since it appeals to high fantasy.

Otaku favorite Lucky Star is ridiculously cute. The first ten minutes of the first episode was just the four characters discussing how to eat various foods properly. I can’t get enough of the OP either. It’s like Hare Hare Yukai on crack.

I tend to dismiss the Americans on my floor for watching far too much television. It’s like the floor tv is always on and someone’s in the lounge lying on the couch with some reality show airing. But come to think of it, I probably watch as much television… it’s just that mine comes from a different country.

On the k-drama front, since I absolutely detest the current season I’m watching all the good ones I haven’t seen yet, and I’ve seen a lot of them. I started on Delightful girl Choon-hyang, which is well, delightful indeed. I should really stop watching these romantic comedies before they spoil me for real life irreparably.