I received an email from someone at YA Entertainment, which, as you may know, is the company that licenses Korean dramas for sale with English subtitles. I’m passing it along for all of you with accounts at Netflix to help get more Korean dramas available at the online rental service:

Hi,

I need your help. In an effort to continue to reach out to the mainstream with our K-dramas on DVD with English subtitles we have signed on with Netflix. According to their reports there are not enough people adding our titles into their queues and we are at risk of not being able to share this very important and popular genre with the millions of people that Netflix has access too.

If you didn’t already know, K-dramas are enjoyed throughout the world by millions of people already either dubbed or subtitled in several other languages. For some reason it has yet to catch on in the US and Canada outside of mostly other Asians and other ethnic groups.

We will be releasing the wildly popular K-drama Boys Over Flowers this November 17 and Netflix currently has it available on their site but I just got an email this morning saying they will hold the order until they see the numbers prove that there is a demand for this title and our other titles.

Clearly there is a demand for it but, unfortunately, the majority of people who currently watch our DVD’s are collectors and tend to purchase rather than rent. Although we have reached the tip of the mainstream by having our DVD’s available at Barnes and Noble, Costco, Borders, FYE’s and several independent retailers, we are still stunted due to the fact that even they don’t believe that there is a demand yet, so we are given very limited shelf access and a very small number of stores carry our products. Over 90% of our end consumers are not Korean, which means that we KNOW that this is entertainment for ALL and that if given a chance then most people will enjoy the dramas.

Please help me and the K-drama industry a chance to share what we have to offer by asking all your friends and family who have Netflix accounts to add one of our titles into their queues and give it a chance.

The following titles are available at Netflix to rent and there are still so many more to add but we will not be able to unless they start seeing that it’s in demand!

You can start by adding Boys Over Flowers V. 1.

http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Boys_Over_Flowers_Vol._1/70127182?lnkctr=srchrd-sr&strkid=2014803991_1_0&strackid=1426dfc813c6962_1_srl

Please send this out to everyone you know!

Thank you very much for your time!

-Alyx

Full list of titles available at Netflix >>

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I’ve been reading a lot of comments wondering about recaps lately, so I thought I’d put up a post to let you know where things stand.

• You’re Beautiful: Ongoing.
• Smile: I hope to keep this going. If things get very busy, I may not be able to keep up in a timely manner, but I hope I will be able to.
• Sons of Sol Pharmacy: Ongoing. Main recapper smallfish and I will be switching off for the next few recaps, but this drama will get done.
• City Hall: Ongoing. The recapper is about to have his first child (congratulations!) and therefore you can imagine that recapping takes lesser priority! But I am confident this drama will be finished.
• Triple: Will be completed. I only have two episodes to go and I will get there, I promise, but it does take lesser priority to dramas that excite me, like You’re Beautiful.
• Iris, Hero, Chuno, and any drama that has not yet aired: When a drama hasn’t begun yet, my answer is always “I don’t know.” I won’t commit to something without watching it first, so it all depends on how I like it. Just FYI, I’m more interested in Iris than Hero. I’m keeping an eye out for Angel’s Temptation. I’m intrigued by Chuno, a little less so by Jejoongwon.

 
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Um. So I’ve been really bad with emails lately, folks. Well, I’m always prone to being bad with emails, but lately stuff is taking over my offline life and I’ve been really awful, and my inbox is overflowing, and I feel stressed out about that and guilty, but most emails ask for stuff and responding to requests for stuff takes time and I don’t have a lot of time these days and OMG did I mention the stress? I do have a job and a life (sometimes) and also a pretty busy blog and somehow I woke up and it was already June. June 2009. (Anyone who’s spent a number of years in the dreaded Real World knows the horror of realizing one day that not mere weeks but months or even years have slipped by, and boy isn’t that depressing.)

Also, I get a lot of repeat questions, and maybe I should just update that durned About page or make another FAQ but like I said, have! no! time! and also this site is also overflowing with too many pages and subpages already.

So anyway, I figured, I’d make a post where you could just ask me questions and I’d answer them as they came and maybe then I could alleviate some of that email-backlog burden, because face it, that backlog is more of a wasteland about now.

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With the recent death of actress Jang Ja-yeon, we can expect to see a flood of paparazzi photos of celebrities paying their respects to the deceased. Every time a celebrity suicide occurs, I feel conflicted about (1) the press’s intrusion and the media spectacle this inevitably presents, and (2) posting about it.

I’m betting it’ll be particularly frenzied this time, as the cast of Boys Before Flowers attend her wake; I’m already seeing photos. So, I’ll leave it to you: Do you want me to post those pics, or not?

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I’ve uploaded a few more scripts on the kdrama scripts page, which is also where you can find instructions on how to read them if you’re new to the whole deal.

Here are the newly added files:

• Beethoven Virus
• Boys Before Flowers, Episodes 1-4
• General Hospital 2, Episodes 1-6
• Love & Marriage
• The World They Live In

 
As always, these are in Korean and no, there are no English translations available. I was eager to take a look at the Boys Before Flowers files because, as you know, I’ve found the drama promising but flawed, and I was curious to see how things read on the page.

(The Boys Before Flowers scripts are pretty close to the broadcast version, except they don’t end the episodes at the same points. Also, the fourth script goes long and includes a chunk of what was eventually shown in Episode 5.)

A look at BOYS BEFORE FLOWERS scripts 1 through 4 >>

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