Last night Marmot blogged about the new Korean Drama series “Love Story in Harvard” and its budding scandal regarding what a prominent female cast member was or was not wearing in a recent episode. I think there are far more important issues than that here. Even more important than the fact that the show is filmed in LA, which to my limited knowledge of American geography seems a long way from Harvard.
What is at issue here is the actors’ abilities themselves. Now, I am not a fan of Korean dramas but I have been known to switch on from time to time and see what’s going on. The other night I caught an episode wherein the male character Hyun-woo was in a class at Harvard Law School. The professor was giving a lecture on the novel ‘Utopia’ by Thomas More, which was interspersed with questions to his students. What struck me, apart from the amazing piece of over-acting and melodrama by the American professor, was the horrendous pronunciation of English by Hyun-woo.
Then today I found this article, explaining that the actual plot of the series had to be changed because of the actors’ limited English abilities!
According to the report, from Mydaily, the intention of the series had originally been to focus a large part on the lives of the three main characters at Harvard, showing the intense academic competition and “healthy university life”, but because of the lack of English ability on the part of the three main actors, Kim Le-won, Lee Jeong-jin and Kim Tae-hee, that part of the series set at Harvard was dramatically cut.
The result is that our heroes come home from Harvard three episodes earlier than originally planned, in episode 7, having graduated and ready to gop to work at a law firm.
The article says:
after the fourth episode was screened, the English of the Kim Le-won, Lee Jeong-jin (who play international students at Harvard - yuhaksaeng ) and even Kim Tae-hee (who plays a Korean American jaemidongpo ) was criticised for its unclear pronunciation, incorrect intonation, mismatch between dialog and facial expressions etc.”
‘Love Story in Harvard’ is not alone in this, since most dramas these days are being filmed in America, Japan, Australia, China etc, but because the actors are unable to absorb the foreign language dialogue, problems are arising such as the storyline being unnatural or the characters’ personalities not coming alive.
It’s good that Korean dramas are telling the - albeit fictional - stories of yuhaksaeng and their lives abroad as well as dongpo/kyopo, but it is sad that they don’t hire actors that can live up to the requirements. Why should the storyline have to be re-written to fit the actors instead of the actors being recast to fit the script. And are there no English dialog coaches on set? Why does it take until the episodes are screened for this to become apparent?
They should’ve hired our old friend Nulji Maripkan/Shin Jong Il to play the Korean-American - he has such a flair for drama and is clearly au fait with the vicissitudes of the local argot.
28 Comments
On my first day at the University of Puerto Rico law school (Ahem…), I remember looking around the room at the female members I would get to know over the next three years, and thinking: God, where did they come up with these dogs? A classmate next to me whispered that these were the ones who couldn’t get dates in High School and college, so they had stayed home and studied. BUT, six months later, they were starging to look really fine… Law school has a way of doing that to you.
Maybe UCL-Harvard screens out the homely ones?
The TV show originally approached Harvard about filming, however, Harvard is generally very strict about allowing tv shows/movies to be filmed on campus. To address some points brought out in the comments, the site of the show is indeed UCLA. Also, at both UCLA and Harvard, students do wear a lot of school affiliated clothing–wearing the brand so to speak. As an aside, there are actually UCLA and Harvard clothing stores or branches in Korea (supposedly they do okay). Lastly, there are a lot of attractive women at UCLA, both in the law school and otherwise, Harvard on the other hand…well, let’s just say it’s not UCLA
“Even more important than the fact that the show is filmed in LA, which to my limited knowledge of American geography seems a long way from Harvard.”
Perhaps they should have called it “Love Story in UCLA”, where UCLA = University of Caucasians Lost Amongst Asians.
“I am not a fan of Korean dramas but I have been known to switch on from time to time and see what?€™s going on.”
Yes, I totally empathize with you. I not a fan of American sitcoms either, like that popular show ‘Friends’. Watching a TV show about a bunch of white people who look and act nothing like me doesn’t really do much for me. But I tune in from time to time to see what’s going on.
I usually try to avoid watching Korean dramas because I get these urges to hurl the remote control at the T.V. whenever I happen to (as for U.S. T.V., I try to stick to CSI and the news instead of “The Bachelor”-like crap), but judging from the title alone I’m not sure this one would even be worth the bother of throwing something. I bet the people who made this shit have no idea what yoohak life is like. I mean, I’ve never heard nor seen this show but if it’s named “Love Story in Harvard” it might as well be named “Fuckfest in Harvard Square and Blow Job Contests by the Charles River” because there’s no way it could contain an ounce of seriousness.
And yoohaksaengs (at least serious ones, and if you go to Harvard Law you must be serious) do not dress up in those yuppie vests bullshit, and no way in hell are there female yuhaksaengs that look like that actress up there whoever she is. For a more realistic photo of yuhaksaeng life, see here, for example.
Wooj, ok you called me out. I had my own problems with the photo shown and the aesthetics of the show, but thought it would be too shallow to point them out. Now that you, a Korean, has made fun of them, I feel safe to follow - surely Nulji Marikpan/Shin Jong-il wouldn’t jump on me for that?
Notice how the two people in the photo above are posed as if they are walking, and yet the man (Hyun-woo) has one book open while supporting both of the heavy looking books somewhat precariously with his left hand. He looks as if he is looking for something in his book or explaining something to the girl, but it hardly looks realistic.
Ditto your comments on the vests. if you watch the show you’ll be amazed at how many Harvard students apparently wear Harvard ’sweaters’ while on campus. Back at my alma mater I don’t think I ever saw anyone wearing a university brand item of clothing, unless it was a visitor to the uni.
“He looks as if he is looking for something in his book or explaining something to the girl, but it hardly looks realistic”
actually, it kinda looks like theres a sheet of lines in there.
And, if they are law students, they should be carrying a _lot_ more books.
Well, I didn’t go to law school at Harvard, but my law school had lockers where we could pile up all them books. And to be frank, the usual law student trajectory is to buy a ton of books and study supplements that first year, just the basic texts the second, and just the outlines in the third year.
You guys want realism on TV? You must be joking. When has TV in any country ever presented realism?
Why beat a dead horse–which was never alive to begin with. There is nothing on TV, and never has been. And don’t tell me about the news. Spend the same amount of time skimming several newspapers as you would watching the news and you’ll know 10 times as much.
Spend your time watching TV and you deserve what you get.
Brendon - I’ll grant you the locker thing. I never used them myself. However, there still seemed to be a huge effing number of people in class with a whole lot of crap. Then again, I suspect many of my classmates were making up for not getting into Boalt, or something.
And, for God’s sake, update your blog.
I really don’t see the issue(s) here.
Sure, it would be nice if actors spoke perfect English and I’m sure they’d like to. But that they can’t… so what? The fact that they can’t actually shows you that enough television viewers in Korea speak English for the producers to realize that they wouldn’t be able to fool people. If they’d gone ahead with the original script, too many people would’ve noticed.
Anyone see Die Another Day? The Korean spoken in that film (by the non-Koreans) was awkward and hard to listen to. Was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Fortunately they didn’t speak it much, and had somehow the world’s viewers didn’t seem to mind that two guys would greet each other in Korean and then quickly switch to English, which when you think about it is even more awkward.
Obviously the world’s moviegoers will ever speak enough Korean for that to matter, but it didn’t used to matter when Korean actors spoke awkward English on television, so I think it’s actually good news that this time they decided they just couldn’t fake it.
Amadeus was set in Vienna but filmed in Prague. Many an X File episode was filmed in Canada. Whoop-dee-damn-do.
And hey, the title is “Love Story in Harvard.” Nothing gramatically wrong with that, but not quite natural, either. So I’m thinking… maybe we’re lucky the actors weren’t made to recite the English that was originally in the script - it can’t have been natural sounding English in the first place.
As for Korean TV in general, I was down in Hanoi last week and most of the local citizens were staying glued to their TV screens in the mid-evening for a Korean historical drama. Sorry, I didn’t catch the title. But, the fact that Vietnam doesn’t even dub, they do a single person voiceover with the original audio barely audible, didn’t seem to bother the myriad local viewers at all. Obviously, Korean TV dramas have an audience that they’ve earned, and it has spread beyong the borders of Old Choseon. When you can export your own cultural products, you’ve got something going for you.
From what I understand a lot of movies are made for export. I auditioned for a role in a Korean movie several years ago that was being made for export. Didn’t get the part - too ugly - but I never heard that the movie was completed and I suspect that it was one of the scams that were popular a couple of years ago - bilking investors out of money. I also auditioned for a role in Age of Heroes - a weekly drama about Hyundae’s chairman that committed suicide and didn’t get that role because my Korean wasn’t natural enough (probably was too ugly and they were being nice to me with this excuse….^^)
I think Korean TV has come a long ways and though some of the plots are a little weak I am sure that could be said for a large portion of American soaps and movies.
“When you can export your own cultural products, you?€™ve got something going for you.”
The Jerry Springer Show is seen in over 40 countries outside the United States. Still standing by that statement?
Exporting a particular cultural product says absolutely nothing about its quality.
What Korea has “going for it” is the fact they’re the best of the worst. They’re at the top of the heap among Asian countries making cheesy, sappy, overwrought, melodramatic claptrap. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s fundamentally pathetic television.
Korea was initially lucky to find out that the rest of Asia laps up simple-minded, tear-jerking, manipulative drivel as readily as its own population does, and then took the initiative in capitalizing on that luck with a well-executed marketing drive aimed at the sad and lonely. They took their particular brand of shit and convinced people to pay for it because their “actors and actresses” stomp their feet with more panache and look better doing it than the Vietnamese or Thai or Japanese clowns in the same racket.
Let’s not confuse profiting from nitwits (a la Springer) with actual artistic merit. Korea has a potential future of plenty of profit and very, very little merit.
But, the fact that Vietnam doesn?€™t even dub, they do a single person voiceover with the original audio barely audible, didn?€™t seem to bother the myriad local viewers at all.
I suppose the Viets imported the “technology” back then.
Sounds like the Ol’ USSR all over again…
“They took their particular brand of shit and convinced people to pay for it because their ?€œactors and actresses?€? stomp their feet with more panache and look better doing it than the Vietnamese or Thai or Japanese clowns in the same racket.”
The Japanese clowns are not in the same racket. They’ve moved on. The big audience for Korean dramas in Japan consists in large part (not exclusively) of middle-aged and older types nostalgic for a type of drama that Japan used to do often, but the younger people outgrew. Having seen Japanese TV 20 years ago, I can vouch for this. I also can vouch for the fact that Japanese actors or actresses are no worse than Koreans when it comes to–for want of a better term–acting.
hanminjok -
Points on the Springer comment - ouch - that one hurt. I am definitely with you on that one.
D. Lee, I wasn’t aware that Harvard had a branch clothing store in Korea! I seriously doubt that. The only official Harvard clothing stores are in Cambridge and Boston (http://store.thecoop.com/coops.....ations.jsp). Where is the store you speak of in Korea?
Certainly it’s no big deal that they filmed this in LA (Harvard is strict about filming American TV shows/movies too), but I do wish they’d invested even a scrap of effort into making it just a bit more realistic. I am not in Korea now so I can’t watch SBS, but I watched their 15-minute promo video on the website and I was laughing the whole way through. There’s a particularly ludicrous scene of some girl in a dorm screaming because she can’t take it anymore, and another student tries to shut her up. This is so typical of Korean fantasies about what Harvard is. There also seemed to be a lack of any sense whatsoever that law school in the U.S. is a graduate course of study rather than an undergrad department (though the actual drama could have made that clear, who knows). And it seemed like 90% of the student extras were wearing ‘HARVARD’ gear. We actually don’t wear it that much compared to Yale.
Anyway… it’s not like TV in the U.S. or anywhere isn’t a fantasy world too, but SBS obviously spent a lot of money on this drama, so I just thought they could have done a better job.
Hey Aaron,
If I remember correctly, I walked by one store in ?Œ€??™?¡œ…(though I could be mistaken about the location). At any rate, I walked by a store that was selling both official Harvard and Yale clothing and nothing else.
For reference–from a 1998 Yale daily news article…
Even if Yale beats Harvard in the name-recognition game where Korea is concerned, Harvard and other big-name institutions have been successfully competing in this insignia marketplace for much longer.
“We’re just trying to catch up,” Kauder said, adding that Yale hopes to enter a market which averages $5 million in annual sales for both the University of Michigan and UCLA, as well as produced roughly $2 million for Harvard last year.
link to the whole article
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=9469
As far as wearing Harvard clothing on campus…it seems the undergrads and HBS students do it a lot more. It just seemed there were always a few people wearing stuff, especially in most of my non-seminar classes. In terms of Korea, I think UCLA clothing has the larges market share compared to the other universities…at least that’s what I remember when I was working (in a previous life) on licensing agreements related to UCLA clothing being sold in Korea.
THey should have done Love Story in University of Wiconsin.
Brian
funny - on American TV shows such as the notable “Shield” on FX channel, the actors hired to be “Korean-Americans” can barely utter a decent sentence in Korean. Of course, as I grimace and chuckle, my non-Korean husband thinks he must have missed an inside joke. Kinda like the cult movie “Kentucky Fried Movie”, the ninjas are Korean and, in one scene, the actors complain that they weren’t given any specific lines but were told to just say anything in Korean - I was the only one in my college dorm room to burst out laughing. Ah, the wonderful world of “acting”.
pooh’s comment re: Asian-American actors being given “Korean” dialogue brings to mind the ABC television drama LOST. This season they’ve got Daniel Dae Kim, a Korean-American, playing “Korean man” and in my opinion — and the opinion of a lot of viewers, it seems, from this webpage some crazed fan put up — his Korean is pretty obviously non-native. He puts it up to a “Kyongsang-do accent” but when compared to Korean-American actress Yunjin Kim (from “Swiri”) it’s clear that he is struggling. Poor guy. This is the first time he’s been given any actual character to play, and they make him a caricature “wifebeater Korean man” (but let’s not get started on the “gangster chaebol owner” father-in-law from their backstory) plus force him to speak this foreign language.
Anyway, it’s pretty interesting that this drama features so much foreign language dialogue.
Pooh,
Don’t forget, “Jjajangmyung, Jjambbong! ATTACK!!”
Mr. Han is trully a man of extra-ordinary magnitude. We should all give him a big hand.
virtual wonderer: oh my god, thank you for the laugh - I laughed so hard, I’m crying. Now, I gotta rent that movie again.
On the issue of bad acting in Korean - I remember that, in the 70’s, entertainment industry (including sports) was still considered a ‘lower-class’ business, the way they were in the Victorian era, i.e. only poor people aspired to use their god-given talents to entertain (or humiliate themselves in front of) the public. So, I’d say Korean entertainment has yet to develop into its potential.
Unless UCLA has changed a lot since I went there (admittedly, nearly 20 years ago), I don’t think that’s UCLA. It does look quite like parts of the USC campus however. Actually, at the time I was at UCLA, the university had a strict policy against commercial filming on campus and routinely denied requests to film there.
Korean WMD’s
My parents get a few Korean TV channels via satellite, and this afternoon my dad was watching one of those TV dramas that I absolutely cannot stand. Apparently, a certain Japanese acquaintance of my Mom’s is a big fan of…
?€œ?€?Yong-sama??€?
To give credit to the natives, they have discriminating tastes too. I know as many Korean yoohaksengs who shudder in revulsion while watching Winter Sonata as those who have enjoyed it. I liked it.
You have to know how to watch a Korean drama, like the way you?€™d approach watching Spiderman or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Otherwise, you?€™d be leaving the theatre informing others around you how Chinese people don?€™t fly in real life.
I think exporting Korean culture through dramas is definitely a good thing for Korea, especially with Western culture doling out images that are not very flattering. And with time, Korean media will grow more sophisticated, but hopefully the product will still be essentially Korean.
I think Koreans living abroad are starting to feel alienated and insecure when they see native Koreans enjoying more sophisticated lifestyles than they are (via dramas). I can foresee that the ?€?diaspora?€™ will end up more ?´Œ??¤?????Œ than the natives, especially considering Korea is more international in its consumption of culture compared to the more insular, domestic consumption found in the states.
At any rate, I do wish Koreans would just be content with themselves wherever they are (North Koreans excluded).
Oh, and that historical drama was probably Damo. And that Kim Tae Hee is hot, more so because she?€™s smart too (SNU caliber).
You know what, I see all yall stupid motherfuckers saying “ohh this is some bullshit right here” You didn’t even see the godamn show! Try watching something before you judge it. If you just watch the show you would know that there are lots of serious parts to it. The characters are studying constantly. And you know what, at least those actors can speake more than one language. But just going to race and saying all Korean TV is pathetic is just hippocritic. I see bullshit on American TV all the time, but do I say All American shows suck? No I don’t, I stay open to everything unlike yall. Failed actors, people that don’t have a life and just critisize everything