(Cast of GOONG S: Kang Doo, Heo Yi Jae, Seven, Park Shin Hye)

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Part of my latest set of distractions has been getting sucked into the world of kdramas… They’re so incredibly addicting! Not only are they fun as light-hearted entertainment, but what’s worse (or better?) is that I’ve had marked improvement in my Korean language skills since I started getting sucked in a year ago so I justify the time spent as “study.” (It kind of is, honest.)

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I remember watching them as a kid with my parents, before the days of internet filesharing or widespread fansubbing, and I’d have to turn to my mother every other line and ask, “What’s going on? What did they say??” Needless to say, my parents got annoyed a lot, and I didn’t watch very many dramas.

But now with the wonderful wide world of internet filesharing and communities like d-addicts which aggregate fansubbing projects into lovely, bite-sized torrent-able packages (and don’t even get me started on the amount of entertainment hours enabled by clubbox)… Anything and everything you could possibly want is available, literally just minutes or hours after official release.

I’ve been part of a fansubbing team for the past few months, and although I wasn’t sure of my abilities going in, I’ve found I’m actually a lot more able than I thought I was. I can understand a lot more than I thought, and it’s a helluva lot of fun. I’m happy to give back to the community, so to speak, since I’ve leeched a lot from it previously. My latest translation project was doing the first episode for the much-anticipated Goong S (aka Palace S). I knew it would be very popular given the immense and wide-spread popularity of the original Goong (aka Palace, aka Princess Hours), plus the anticipation of seeing Seven in his debut acting gig… so I felt quite the pressure to do a good job. On top of that, it seemed like fans on a lot of sites were asking and demanding just moments after the show was aired in Korea, “When are the fansubs going to be out??” Needless to say I felt I had to do a good job, and quickly.

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The subs were released today (show aired Wednesday, sub released Saturday morning, not too bad right?) and in less than 12 hours there have been more than 2,500 downloads. Wow. I’m surprised and amazed. I had no idea it would be that many, that quickly. I went back and checked to see how many downloads the subs for the original Goong episode 1 had, and it’s nearly 50,000! That’s insane. Nobody can deny the power of the Korean Wave, huh?

(The storyline may be different from the original, but the beautiful palace scenery is still the same.)

Filed under: Fansubs |