Just saw that my submission for this month’s theme was posted the other day, and I’m over here all giddy, lol. Thought it didn’t get accepted because it was over 1500 words (I HAD FEELINGS, OKAY?!) so I told myself to forget about it and then I really did forget, lol. Now Dramabeans just needs to put out a monthly theme that lets me talk about the MySoju days, because Boy. That was the Wild West of western drama viewing, and somebody needs to teach the chitlin’s about that. ‘When I was your age, I had to walk 10 miles in the snow, do a cartwheel through traffic, and a voodoo dance on my roof just to watch a drama.’

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    MySoju was never available to me, but when I was young (!) there was a shady site which had you download an app, then download the drama episode in 5 parts and feed it into the app to rejoin. Then download the subs. Open the episode with a specific player. Load and time the subs, aaaand watch!!! I did it only once. It was nerve-wracking, and I didn’t need any more nerves wracked with a toddler and a newborn!

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      Woooooooah. That’s intense. MySoju was not like that. You watched everything on their site. You did need a strong adblocker though, because it was littered with pop-ups. And I think it could be quite slow sometimes too, but when you got an itch, you gotta scratch it, lol.

      Now I want to collect people’s stories from the wild west of drama viewing days and turn it into another post for the site, lol.

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        😂😂

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        Even back then I refused to watch anything online. I think the closest I streamed online was myasian.tv but I hated the awful quality. When clubbox was gone, Daddicts offered a ton of torrent links that WITH S2 and Haru subs based their softsubs from so that’s where I used to get torrents. And that’s how you used to support fansubs too for their efforts. By their rules, it was illegal to hardsubs. So you download the episodes and use their softsubs!

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          Gaaaah good old memories slowly coming back!!! when WITHS2 and Haru subs team slowly became hiatus due to personal matters, darksmurfsub then emerged. Their fan sub concept was sort of what viki is now, like there was a template of sub per episode. So it was autosubbed from Korean to Chinese to English. Fans of would then be involved in translating/editing the subs to make them readable for other fans and you could also see the progress too in %. Then I believe that’s when viki came around.

          Gahhh don’t you just love how fans come together and help each other out sharing their love for dramas! 😃

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            I believe Viki was actually not wholly legal in the beginning and slowly transitioned into being a legal streaming site (unless I read that wrong somewhere). It was the only way for them to continue existing if they didn’t want to be eventually shut down or legally punished. I know that’s probably part of what happened to MySoju.

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            @ohsoenthusiastic yes correct! Viki had online streaming up for free just like the illegal sites today, and boy were of low quality videos! That’s why I didn’t use viki stream at that time. I Still resorted to downloading from daddicts. Anyways To prevent the site from going down and mostly owners receive legal actions, they decided to do things under the law. It took me quite a while to sign up on their service cuz dramafever then emerged, offered HQ which then turned to HD quality videos. Dramafever didn’t have 8hr turn around of subs until recent years. Then the dramas and subs turned into dramafever vs viki competition for whoever got the licences fast. I remember if viki got the exclusive, dramafever would have to wait weeks until they could offer that same drama on their site. Vice versa with viki.

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          I never used torrents, except for I think in two cases. I was terrified of downloading things that might have virus or other nasty stuff attached. Not to mention the process of downloading torrents is confusing as h*** to me. Now I have no idea how to get into torrenting dramas, and I’m afraid of getting in trouble for it, lol.

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            Yes. I guess whether you watch it online or download, both were done illegally, so there was always that risk of getting virus from them. But torrent files offered HQ 720p of episodes, and daddicts supplied us all those torrent links, (there was a thread where you could request for seeds if drama was years old and no one was seeding), so I guess that gave an extra safety net for us when downloading videos. Then they got the memo too that they were going to be shut down, so they removed all torrent services off their sites. I *think*(haven’t been there for a long time now) they become sort of soompi now; just a forum to hang out for fans.

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      Lol I do remember those good old days with clubbox and hjsplit! And megaupload days!!! 😂😂😂 WITH S2 and Haru subs with those 1 week wait and you could see the progress of subs on their site.

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      I totally forgot all about MySoju!!!! It’s been soooooo long

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    Congrats on getting published. Your article was a wonderful tribute to Dramafever 💔

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      Thank you! It was the first time I ever submitted something, and I was very nervous about it, lol.

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        I enjoyed reading it. It’s always interesting to read about things people have great enthusiasm for. Sorry that the it got shut down so precipitously.

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    lmao
    Seeing you guys talking about mysoju, with s2/haru sub, darksmurf… bring back memories yo!
    I still have hj split on my laptop and various external harddisks, dunno why… pretty sure I didn’t need them anymore

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      Omg! Same!!!! Well I don’t download dramas now since legal licences of viki and dramafever era, but I still have those dramas and soft subs I had downloaded and saved on my external hard drive! You’re Beautiful, Dal Ja Spring, My Prosecutor Princess, Dream High to name a few.

      I remember too javabeans used to fansub for WITH S2. So the routine was she would offer recaps of Dal Ja Spring on here, then we would have wait days (perhaps weeks too) until the softsubs that she was part of translating were out! Gaaaah!!!

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        oh my…
        bow to Beanie ancestor~

        This is another trip down the memory lane~
        When I think about it, can’t believe DB has existed that long and that we are still here~

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    Congrats!

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    Congratulations! It was a good write up! You still have time to write another one before tonight’s deadline! I want to know of the good ‘ole days!

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      I wasn’t part of any communities during eh MySoju days, unfortunately. Really wish I had been though.

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    I had completely forgotten about MySoju but what a throwback! I always used illegal means to watch drama online (oops), and although I’ll always remember the fear of downloading a nasty virus by mistake with the torrents, I still look back at those days fondly. :)) I would love to read up on the genesis of these various online streaming sites and subbing teams. It would be a fun trip down memory lane!

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