Sung Yuri, Lee Jin

Former ’90s pop group FinKL kick-started a couple acting careers, namely with Sung Yuri and Lee Jin, who are set to star in competing dramas this summer. (Fellow FinKL member Ok Joo-hyun has had a successful career as a musical actress, while Lee Hyori — well, no explanation needed for her.)

Sung Yuri’s drama Swallow the Sun airs first, premiering on July 8 and taking up residence in SBS’s Wednesday-Thursday broadcast slot. Lee Jin will join in the ratings battle a month later with her horror series Hon [혼], which means Spirit or Soul; it also stars Lee Seo-jin.

In Swallow the Sun, Sung Yuri plays a young woman whose family meets with ruin and decides to head off alone to the States to study and make money (which probably explains how she ends up in Vegas). She’ll form a love triangle with a rich chaebol’s son (Lee Wan) and orphan Ji Sung. (And we’ve got at least five clichés right off the bat! Poor girl studies abroad and works to support family, has a chaebol suitor and forms a love triangle contrasting rich and poor.)

Meanwhile, this is Lee Jin’s second summer horror series in as many years; she appeared in last year’s summer horror anthology series Hometown of Legends. In Hon, she plays the prosecutor girlfriend of Lee Seo-jin’s criminal psychologist character. The story that begins when the soul of a murdered high school student enters the body of the main character.

Swallow the Sun has the higher budget and the bigger hype, but I’ve never really been onboard with the story. Too bad I don’t have the stomach for horror, because I’d throw my vote to Hon / Soul.

Via E Daily

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Summer doesn’t just mean horror films (like the upcoming Suicide Pact); it also means horror television (like last year’s Hometown of Legends anthology series).

Lee Seo-jin’s new project Soul [혼(魂)] fits the bill, airing in August as a ten-episode horror drama. The plot features a ghost seeking to punish evildoers after suffering a wrongful death. It’s set in high school and deals with issues like college entrance exams.

With Soul, MBC is reviving its summertime horror drama programming after 14 years; it first kicked off the subgenre in 1994 with M, which I remember watching and being sufficiently creeped out by. In retrospect, the special effects were cheesy and laughable (also, Shim Eun-ha as a vengeful ballerina!), but at the time it was fresh and new, and marketed as a way of giving viewers a “chill” in the hot summer months.

This follows a year-long break after Lee Seo-jin’s last project, the long historical series Yi San (as well as a high-profile breakup with actress and former co-star Kim Jung-eun).

The female lead, Im Joo-eun, was selected after a fierce open audition; the 21-year-old newcomer got her start in 2007’s Merry vs. Daegu Battle. A team of three writers will pen scripts (In Eun-ah of Goong and Love & Marriage; Park Young-sook of Hello Miss; and Go Eun-nim of Bungee Jumping of Their Own). Directing is Fantasy Couple’s Kim Sang-ho and Auction House’s Kang Dae-sun. It follows Triple.

Via TV Report

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Say it ain’t so!

One of the most openly affectionate couples in the K-entertainment sphere, who were largely expected to announce wedding plans sometime soon (possibly even this year), has instead broken it off.

Kim Jung-eun and Lee Seo-jin started dating while filming the 2006 SBS drama Lovers, and had been going strong ever since. In the two years they had been dating, they were one of a few celebrity couples who were open about their relationship status (many others choose to be coy, denying rumors even when they’re obvious to the public), and were occasionally seen in public on dates together. Both stars were effusive in praise about the other, and Lee Seo-jin even appeared on Kim Jung-eun’s variety show (Chocolate) to serenade her with a love song, singing the same love theme that marked their characters’ romance in the drama Lovers. The two traveled to the U.S. together as recently as this summer, and shot a fashion spread together in New York in September.

So it’s a bit of a shock to hear from Kim Jung-eun’s own lips that the couple is no more. She admitted it in press interviews on November 22, saying she couldn’t keep lying to the public further — the split occurred at the end of October. It’s particularly surprising since the couple hadn’t given signs of much trouble or fighting leading up to this news.

Kim confessed that it was a one-sided decision; Lee initiated the breakup, which came as a shock to her. She fought tears as she conducted her interview, saying, “It felt like I’d been in an unexpected car accident” and “I felt like I’d been shot.”

She admits that it’s difficult dealing with the shock of the breakup, and had just begun work on her new series General Hospital 2 when Lee dumped her. The drama just began airing this Wednesday on MBC.

I’m sure there are two sides to every story (although I wonder if Lee will suffer more, since he already had a bit of a rep for cool breakups), but still: AWW.

Via DongA.com

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Looks like openly affectionate lovebirds Kim Jung-eun and Lee Seo-jin will be vacationing in the U.S. (very) shortly. The couple was spotted on the morning of Sunday the 20th at Incheon International Airport, although they weren’t photographed together as they arrived and checked in separately.

Lee Seo-jin arrived first, reportedly between 9:30am and 9:50am, but seemed to be aware of the reporters watching as he waited for Kim Jung-eun to arrive and checked in first. Approximately twenty minutes later, Kim arrived in a bit of a rush and hurried to check in, after which she met up with Lee.

The couple is wrapping up a busy year, particularly on his end. She just finished recording for her SBS variety program Kim Jung-eun’s Chocolate, while he’s spent nine months of the past year committed to the unrelenting filming schedule for the long-running drama Yi San, which finally wrapped in June. He held a fanmeeting just the day before his departure, on the 19th.

This trip combines business with pleasure, as both are heading to New York for a photo shoot. Still, it’s likely that this will turn into an extended vacation for them both; at the time Yi San was winding to a close, Lee had explained, “After the drama ends, I plan to take a long break.”

Via Newsen

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Anyone else confused about the weird, constantly changing drama-programming schedule these days? Well, blame it all on Monday-Tuesday’s sageuk juggernaut drama Yi San.

MBC’s extremely popular long-running historical hit (which began airing last September) was originally set to air, I believe, something around 50 episodes. But because of its popularity, the series was extended, and extended again — and then retracted its extension, only to then extend it again. Finally, they’d set today (June 10th, that is) as its finale airdate — until President Lee Myung Bak announced his intention to have a “Talk with the Nation” to air the 9th, which would push Yi San’s finale to the following Monday (June 16). However, then the talk was canceled, bringing the finale back to the 10th, but then MBC decided to reschedule it to the 16th anyway.

As a result, KBS and SBS have likewise scrambled to avoid butting heads with the competition with their new dramas. That explains why Strongest Chil Woo, which was originally planning to premiere yesterday (June 9), moved to next Tuesday (June 17), with SBS’s Gourmet following suit. Tuesday is a strange day to premiere a new Monday-Tuesday show (I wonder if both series will then extend their runs by one episode to even out their broadcast schedule), but with Yi San ending Monday, they aren’t taking chances.

You might wonder why the other two stations would so obviously show their fear of MBC’s drama, but we’re talking brand-new series here. If a minor schedule reshuffling can start the new drama on a clean slate, it’s a small price to pay rather than jinxing its schedule by handicapping its premiere episode knowingly. And MBC’s constant extensions may have frustrated some fans — story always suffers with last-minute tinkering — but MBC’s had a rather lackluster ratings year. Nothing else has matched, or even come near, Yi San’s 30% ratings numbers, which is why they’ve been so reluctant to relinquish it. (MBC follows Yi San with the Kim Sun Ah series When Night Comes.)

In any case, with their finale still to air, the cast and crew of Yi San gathered at Seoul’s 63 Building on the 10th to pre-emptively raise a toast to the end of their drama (maybe they had no time to shift their location reservation with all this last-minute schedule reshuffling?). Stars Lee Seo Jin and Han Ji Min were naturally present, as was MBC president Eom Ki Young.

Who wants to lay bets on how long it takes Lee Seo Jin to announce his wedding plans now that he’s free from filming?

Via New Daily, E Daily

SONG OF THE DAY

Ibadi – “끝나지 않은 이야기” (Unending story) [ Download ]

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