Korea Falls in Love With Historical Dramas… Again

Beautiful costumes, lavish sets, the chance to rediscover your own history without having to go through hours and hours of boring lectures… 사극 (sageuk, Historical Dramas) always had that strange charm. And from time to time, Chungmuro tries to go back to that treasure trove, adapting its peculiar tropes to fit that period’s popular needs.

In postwar Korea, Lee Gyu-Hwan’s 1955 film 춘향전 (The Tale of Chunhyang) was one of the first to mark the beginning of a revival in the industry, which eventually led to a Golden Age in the 60s. In the 80s, one of the most popular genres—the erotic melodrama—often used the Joseon Dynasty as the perfect background to develop its stories of corruption and decadence. And one of the biggest trends of the last few years has been the emergence of ‘Fusion Dramas’, adding comedy, action and other genre elements to that Sageuk structure Koreans were so familiar with. With Lee Jae-Yong’s 스캔들 (Untold Scandal) and Lee Joon-Ik’s 황산벌 (Once Upon a Time in The Battlefield) Fusion Dramas became a force to be reckoned with, and Lee’s latest film 왕의 남자 (The King and The Clown) brought the genre into the mainstream, with the kind of success even gangster comedies and most North/South divide films couldn’t show. You know you’re popular when writers try to sue you for alleged ‘plagiarism’ (we’ll talk more about this in the next Korean Weekly News, but let’s just say it’s another case of wild opportunism)…

And it seems the boom of Historical Dramas will continue. We’ve followed the amazing story of ‘The King and The Clown’, which just passed 실미도 (Silmido) to become the second most successful Korean film of all time (now at around 11,200,000 tickets), but another, similar film might re-ignite the fire, or just continue to burn. The debut film of Kim Dae-Woo, who wrote the script of ‘Untold Scandal’, 음란서생 (淫亂書生, Forbidden Quest) might have been extremely well received, just like what happened with the clowns. But to capture the attention of the public, it usually takes more than a few critics saying positive things about the film. The first online pre-sales figures show that all that acclaim might have had an effect though, as ‘Quest’ is beating all its competition with impressive figures.

The current ranking at Maxmovie, one of the biggest ‘pre-order’ portals in Korea, puts ‘Quest’ ahead of everyone else with 64% of pre-sales, ‘The King and The Clown’ trailing at around 15%, and everyone else eating sour grapes. Still too early to call this another possible repeat of the clowns’ success, but it sure is a revival of Koreans’ love for the genre. Keeping the sleaze at bay, the film convinced the public with its mix of star power (Han Suk-Gyu), sex appeal (Kim Min-Jung) and comedy (Lee Beom-Soo, Oh Dal-Soo) enough to push the sensation of this early 2006 off the Top spot in pre-order sales, for the first time in 8 weeks. ‘Forbidden Quest’ releases tomorrow.

[Source: Maxmovie]