Korean TV dramas

I just finished watching Phoenix, a Korean TV drama series. I watched it in Mandarin but also have the Korean audio track as well. I am thinking I would like to build up a collection of Korean TV dramas like this bilingual one. Of course I will be watching them in Chinese, but later when I start on Korean I'll have a whole library of Korean dramas available. Not only would I be saving money but also time as well.

There are many reviews about this particular drama that you can find by searching the web. My blog is not aimed at giving reviews for dramas because that would not interest most of the people reading my blog. But I do like to mention things that might be of interest to my audience.

As you may already be aware, this drama is the item that I bought which the discs were all scratched up due to improper packaging. The final disc of five cannot be viewed correctly, so I have only watched 4/5 (four fifths) of the series and I may never know how it ends. Amazon China's return policy is that they don't do exchanges for items shipped overseas. I think it would cost me as much or more to return the item at my own expense than the purchase price which they would refund so I did not return it.

The other interesting thing to note is that this version, published by a Chinese company, has 40~43 minute episodes. The original is actually about 55~60 minutes for each episode. About 15 minutes into the second episode you can see some opening credits in Korean on the screen as the original episode number 2 is just beginning. I guess the Chinese broadcast required shorter episodes. I think the publishing company should have packaged it correctly when they made it available for purchase on DVD. By that, I mean, they should have kept the original episode length and removed the hard coded subtitles. They should provide proper subtitles which can be turned off.

Another interesting thing about this series is that several of the characters could speak English and were conducting business in English but that was dubbed over in Chinese. I only know that the original was in English because there were Korean subtitles displayed. And then the Chinese company put Chinese subtitles over those Korean subtitles. Both in white letters with black outlines. Who could possibly read it?! It's a good thing I don't use the subtitles anyway.

My next post will come later today or this evening. I have an announcement to make. So stay tuned!