Comments on: Gaksital: Episode 3

By: ariha

ariha — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:24:07 +0000

waaaaaaaa!!!!i just watch 2 episodes in kbs…and i am loving ittt!!!joo won looks very very very bad!!!but he reminds me of bidam of QSH…and the actress in this drama???i love them!!not some damsel in distress…kyaaaa!!

By: ladida

ladida — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:20:50 +0000

Hmm…”Do you like hyung so much?” He does seem to be jealous of his brother, doesn’t he? And not just jealous, but jealous that his brother still gets so much love even though he’s (seemingly) disabled now. Like, it’s the fact that his mother still loves him and isn’t angry at him for being tortured into his current situation that makes Kang To so jealous and angry. He wants his mother to have the same reaction to his brother that he has, which is a mixtures of disgust, betrayal, and pity. This makes me think that what’s really getting at Kang To is shame. Shame that his family has fallen from the position they used to occupy (active revolutionaries) and shame that his brother is disabled. Which just makes me dislike him even more than his alliance with the imperialists.

By: ladida

ladida — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:02:36 +0000

Oh, I forgot to mention: when Kang To is angry it’s actually scary, but when Kenji is angry it’s comedic. Which is why I said Kang To is more of a threat to the resistance than the Japanese are right now. Kenji is so ineffectual that he’s besides the point, but Kang To just destroys everything in his path.

By: ladida

ladida — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:58:01 +0000

Joo Won is a great actor, and so far he is the only reason I’m continuing to watch the show. Kang To is a selfish, narrow minded, imperialist dirtbag and right now all I want is for Mok Dan to kick his ass, team up with his brother (who I have problems with, too; I mean, why is he pretending to be mentally disabled? Why put his family through that, especially since the way the story is setting it up is that it’s his disability that pushed Kang To over the edge and into the arms of Japanese police bureaucracy and cruelty. It’s kind of disgusting that the straw that broke the camel’s back is a lie.) and get the Japanese the hell out of there. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because when it comes to film depictions of fighting imperialists/expansionists I always think of Casablanca and the whole “look beyond yourself and your own suffering” mentality. Not necessarily “fight for the greater good” because we all know the “greater good” can be fabricated and used to subsume ethics and is usually used to justify an “ends justify the means” standpoint, but more like fight against what is clearly the greater evil.

Joo Won has this ability to show unbridled rage, which is frightening, because the way he screams and kicks and whips fellow Koreans in the show (so far) makes him more of an enemy than any of the Japanese! What I loved about his character in OB was that he also had a lot of rage, but he kept it in check, and it only boiled over at specific moments, when it was triggered. But this character’s anger is just always there, on the surface. And to me it seems that it blinds him to the suffering of others. I feel that he’s more angry than hurt, and he’s fueled by that anger.

What I’m particularly interested to see in his transformation is how he’s going to cope with having the might of the Japanese military and police behind him to fighting alone. How is he going to fare when he doesn’t have all those resources at hand? Is he going to be the one to bring all the fractured arms of the resistance together? When folks find out he’s Kang To (which they will, if the show has any narrative cognizance) will they still be loyal to him, or will they be so repulsed by his previous actions (which is totally understandable) that they’ll turn against him? When he becomes Gaksital will he be made to see how he personally has made people suffer and how he directly and knowingly helped the Japanese subjugate these people, and will he be made to answer for it? Like, is Mok Dan going to make him remember that he TORTURED her???

By: dee

dee — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 15:51:07 +0000

ji won is so good playing kang ta… can’t wait to see hs next action

By: needlight

needlight — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:00:00 +0000

this is so exciting!!! thanks for the recap!

By: panshel

panshel — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 00:49:16 +0000

This show is a heart attack waiting to happen… When Kang To was beating that guy senseless, I swear I saw signs of psychosis in his eyes. He literally was not going to stop until the guy was dead. Then kicking his own hyung screaming “Die!”?! Kang To was teetering on the edge of insanity, and he seriously made me want to vomit. x_x Though I don’t understand the Sato Hiroshi thing when he obviously goes by Lee Kang To at the station… o_O

WTF is wrong with the count?! Why does he act like a friggin’ two-year-old?! He was excruciating to watch. >_< Gaksital should have killed Director Oh at the hospital. What was the point of sparing his life when he has to come back and kill him again? Mok Dan taking off her shirt in the closet was so clever.

Thanks for the recap, javabeans!

By: ecs

ecs — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 20:49:28 +0000

I know of one, but it’s fiction, sort of a novel/memoir. It’s called ‘Lost Names’ by Richard Kim. It’s based on the author’s childhood in Korea in the 30′s and 40s.

By: J

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:03:52 +0000

A tiny mini detail that eludes this wonderful recap:

When KT came to visit Shunji, he freakin’ took his shirt off!

I guess all the insanity and darkness in the ep totally clouds that little joyful treat the drama gave us kkkk~

Anyway, he was only topless like a mili-second or so but boy did I squeaaaaal xD And then shortly we get the leading lady ALSO topless (or implied, lol). I guess Dan got the idea to took off her clothes from peeking at KT. Random, I know.

By: MEalways

MEalways — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 02:55:57 +0000

Sometimes, living carrying your sin is the utmost punishing than death.

I am glad ‘The Man from the Equator’ replaced by ‘Gaksital’. Both are so intense, both are full of layers, and both main character are ‘brother’ in 2D1N…. Uh, oh, yes!

If you see how ‘The Man from the Equator’ ended, you know what I mean by living is harder than death. Note that Jang Il lost his sanity before he decided to end his life.