Sari History

I am doing a series of posts on sari fashions 1870s onwards. Its taking a long time but you can follow the link for updates.

Secret Love Affair - Milhwe - 밀회

Knight in Silent Armour

Secret Love Affair is by no means a shabby movie. Even though its male protagonist does save our heroine, albeit not in the manner of shabby movies where they "completely flip out" to save the damsel in distress.  Rather it is an elegant, unhurried 16 episode long morality tale at the heart of which is a May-December romance. And its heroine is less damsel in distress than a damsel in unconscious wait for redemption. You maybe forgiven for the momentary thought of it being a mash up of The Piano Teacher and I am Love, with perhaps just a hint of The Beat That My Heart Skipped.  But it truly is it's own luminous thing shot through with both the romantic, poetic feeling and the absolute morality of many Korean works.  And in this it is possibly quite different from its source material.

Briefly the 16 episodes follow 40 something Oh Hye-won (Kim Hee-ae), calm and collected professional or an "elegant slave" to the filthy rich, whichever way you like it. Hye-won is a keeper of secrets that allow her a hold over her unscrupulous and opportunistic super rich employers but on more than one occasion the power imbalance is also clear.  Yet she is good at her job of leaving no trail of their dirty dealings (I shall never view music schools and arts foundations the same way again) and perhaps even relishes some of the power games as they unfold in offices and over mahjong sessions. And the job affords a fabulous lifestyle, albeit with a transparently ambitious and easily manipulated husband. That is until she meets Lee Sun-jae (Yoo Ah-in), genius self-taught pianist whose 20 year old self is incorruptible and not for sale. And as it happens, he falls deep in love, equally incorruptible, on a first glimpse of Hye-won. 

Post piano orgasm

Post piano cold shower

That romance unfolds over music. Hye-won herself played the piano as a young woman till an injury stopped a professional career. Music represents their inner selves, more than one character mentions that "Sun-jae plays like Hye-won" i.e. with a certain abandon and passion that cannot be taught. Like with Lucy Honeychurch, the implication is that if Hye-won lived as she played music, it would be exciting for everyone concerned. Just as much as with Sun-jae's playing which is also linked with the life he leads.  The scenes where Hye-won and Sun-jae play together are intentionally orgasmic in nature (a bit heavy handedly underlined by the script). Their attachment is a recognition at a deeper level of being indubitably connected, a fact recognised by Sun-jae instantly. It takes Hye-won longer to recognise this but once she does, she doesn't really turn back. In this, it's treatment of the romance is mature and made believable by the actors. Given so much turns on the two leads, they are excellent.

The world thinks about money more often than sex

 

But the romance is merely a catalyst to the larger questions posed by the drama.  Though a little squandered towards the latter episodes, an ensemble cast on good form provides the underpinning to these questions.  Hye-won's workplace is an arena where female ambitions are constantly played out. From ruthlessly ambitious wives to lonely yet vicious daughters whose social position is assured to Hye-won steely in her resolve to consolidate her social position to secretaries gauche in their desire for professional advancement, the drama differs from everything I have seen in showing female protagonists who are less empowered by careers and more compromised and corrupted by the pursuit of power and money.  The men fare no better, the family space itself is not sacrosanct.  Hye-won's husband is greedy and weak and loose cannon. On Sun-jae's side, his friends have both an easy morality and a morality that is mixed with a street toughness. The plot is largely driven by Hye-won's slow move towards understanding the hollowness of her existence and attempting to remove herself from it. And it is very slow.  Hye-won is complex - and it's a pleasure to watch an actress who can go from self-preservatory cunning to softness and doubt within a few scenes - she is deeply rooted in a corrupt world but also aware that the love and moral force that is Sun-jae is going to willy nilly propel her out of it.  Sun-jae is seemingly far simpler though the actor playing him pulls off the difficult task of conveying the moral steadfastness and purity of his person so that we too can see Hye-won seeing herself in the mirror that Sun-jae provides. And his character grows through the series without losing his essential self.

No plastic surgery then

The drama also touches on the lives we should live and what really matters.  There is a lot of reference to music biographies and artists. Music in fact as they say is a character in the movie. In the absence of musical knowledge, the finer points of this, the meaning behind the pieces is a little lost on the lay viewer. Nevertheless the pieces are placed in the episodes so that each piece conveys its meaning in the context of the episode.

And the answer was get thee to jail

Because Korean dramas often tend to be moral and idealistic in tone, throughout the episodes it is clear that the conclusion is unlikely to be open ended.  As restrained and realistic as it is, the drama requires Hye-won's purification and repentance. True as the drama is to the conventions of its culture, the end episode leaves the viewer in two minds. Because there is a dark side to Hye-won. In the absence of Sun-jae, she would have continued as before. Her friends for example (a lovely, sweet counterpoise to the sterility of Hye-won's life), tread the fine balance of being part of the system and yet keeping their values. Which is an alternative Hye-won has never chosen. In fact so unerring is her knowledge of the world she operates in that in the drama's concluding episodes, it is she who has the power to checkmate before overturning the chess board.   Sun-jae himself is troubled by this, it isn't even clear to him how willing she is to walk away from this.  And he himself is utterly moral to the core, it is all or nothing. Despite the build up to her moment of facing the truth about herself and the redemptive power of Sun-jae's love (in early sequences Sun-jae cleans the floor and stairs of his house, it is evoked later in the court scene almost like a broom and mop has been applied to Hye-won's soul), there is a small part of you that remains unconvinced. Perhaps the shortened run (it seemed to have an original 20 episode run) did not allow a complete exploration. There is in fact a slightly rushed quality to the later episodes.

Sun-jae applies his charm

 

For all that it is a satisfying conclusion holding both the promise of Sun-jae when Hye-won leaves prison and much more importantly the reclamation of  her true self.  Because redemption dramas tend to be male centric - think rise, fall, soul searching, atonement - all of which require a full engagement with the world - Secret Love Affair is quite unusual and perhaps even bold in its subject matter.

Shoe Sex

While Korean movies tend to be explicit in their depiction of sex, the dramas are often restrained. There are a few kisses and barely any skin in the scenes between Hye-won and Sun-jae in the drama. It doesn't in any way reduce the erotic charge between the leads and works to the drama's advantage in being with the overall mood of the piece.  Interestingly almost all the intimate scenes occur in Sun-jae's house or public spaces but rarely at Hye-won's home.  The idea of home recurs throughout the drama. Hye-won's house is a trophy home with not a note of colour.  Sun-jae's is shabby and lived in, crowded with things important to him. The idea of the two being home to each other is brought out now and then, Sun-jae's number is saved as "Home" on Hye-won's phone and in the drama's final moments Sun-jae indicates that where Hye-won is is home to him.

There are so many layers and details to the drama that it almost demands a re-watch.   There are a few missteps. There is self taught Sun-jae (go youtube!) but you can go along with that conceit. The death of Sun-jae's mother is a bit of a drama cliche.   Throughout Hye-won encounters situations that cause her to question her own position, one is with a lady in a restaurant who I think was a leftist in her youth and cannot be bought by money.  It somehow rings false.  There is a Billy Joel song called what else but "Piano Man" amidst all the exquisite music, though to be fair it is intended to evoke a specific time in Hye-won's youth.  And so on. Still those are minor quibbles in a work that asks you to be immersed in its thoughts and pleasures. And you are more than willing to be so immersed. 

__*__

Not that it means anything but I was a little surprised by the classical music world depicted in this drama.  Western classical music as high culture in the East is a little surprising to Indians I suppose given that a similar work in India would be rooted in our own musical traditions.

Also Korean dramas seem to have a lot of female scriptwriters who seem to be quite well known. Far as I know it is true of Secret Love Affair too. 

Photographs - 2

I think this photograph was taken sometime in 2001 at the Botanical Gardens in Kolkata.  It was a happy day.  And it presaged a period of unconditional love, unconditional hate and unconditional acceptance of the way things were.  My exterior is calm, beneath I am on an emotional seesaw but right at my core I am again calm. But never have I been flung on and off that seesaw more violently than during my relationship with P and never has my inner self returned so rapidly to an astonishing tranquillity a few years later.

For a long time, these extreme emotions embarrassed me. Because extreme emotions are undignified.  Being utterly torn, wearing your heart on your sleeve, these make for blowsy sentiments. Bottled up, stoic silent hurt is much more attractive, it can even seem more truthful.. But in all that shakeness as you make your way back to life, you find that you don't regret falling into events without a thought, without anything but some true feeling in your heart.  And when one's heart is engaged, something true always lies at the centre. Not everyone feels this way. It can be difficult to maintain relationships with exes sometimes, especially if your history together is painful or burdensome. It can be hard to get right the balance of  being true to your past feelings and at ease with your present. For some reason this has always been easy with P. 

And of course this is an attractive photograph.  Perfect for a novella based on the events of 2001:)

버스커 버스커 (Busker Busker)

K-pop is quite popular in Singapore. Not a fan. Or of K-indie music for that matter.

But I just can't stop listening to Busker Busker. Like anything at all from their albums. Even if it has resulted in a few Bas kar Bas kar jokes:)

Photographs - 1

Because we moved around a fair bit, home for us was just a few possessions.  Books, clothes, curios, photo albums, that kind of ephemeral thing.  About the only things of permanence was my mother's kitchen and the large wooden boxes painted Army green and stamped with my father's name and address that we used for packing.  These doubled as furniture so they moved with us everywhere.  As a result, I am far more careful with the small things that make up my life than say furniture or white goods that I see as entirely expendable.

My photo albums haven't travelled with me for a long time. They are at my father's place in Mumbai and every time I am home I browse through them and digitise them if required.  Of late, more than a few are falling apart which makes me melancholic but also reminds me that the value of photographs goes this far and no further.  Looking at them gives me pleasure, not just for the nostalgia of The Way We Were but because each time there is a difference in the way I perceive them.

The exception to photographs I keep is those of people I have gone out with.  When I was young, the intensity of a relationship was such that in the aftermath a small bonfire of letters and photographs was cathartic.  It is not that one feels less intensely as one grows older, it is merely that photographs of happy coupledom are merely that, photographs. Plus your taste for the dramatic decreases with age :).  So I was a little surprised to find a small stash of photographs dating back to the early 90s of my then boyfriend (a term I dislike but let's stay with it) that had remained behind. Partly I think because this was a time when I was learning to use a camera and I kept the whole lot of my first attempts.  R had an excellent camera, in retrospect it was more than excellent given that my parents couldn't afford even an instant camera and they were not alone in this. To his credit - and he was utterly sweet like that - not only did he teach me the basics but he let me play around with it quite a bit. A number of IIT photographs I have are taken on his camera. I guess I kept these pics for the way they are composed with identical backgrounds but are not really "couple" photographs. In a sense they evoke the mood of the time rather than existing merely as a testament of a romantic relationship. Almost I think like a Frankie magazine project.

This also reminds me that we had possibly the best kept student rooms in the history of student life:)

Newcastle

I had to return to Australia for awhile, principally to meet family in Newcastle.

I hadn't spent much time in Newcastle while I lived in Australia.  It turned out to be a pretty town with spectacular beaches and a relaxed lifestyle.  And it was good to have some downtime with family. Though my life at the moment is a LOT of downtime!

What was most surprising was the mild culture shock in returning to Australia given that I lived there for a decade and it is not long since I moved.  Partly this was because Newcastle is a very white town unlike Sydney which probably has the most diverse population of all Australian cities. Partly because it has been easy to slip back into Asian life, not that I anticipated that it would be difficult given how frequent my trips to India were in the decade I was in Australia.  At any event I felt like I was navigating a familiar and yet strange landscape . Again I had that old feeling best captured by DH Lawrence. A landscape of mystery and beauty yet somehow colourless lives. Having lived in Australia I know this to be not true, rather life is good and bad in equal measures much like elsewhere.  Yet this is the overwhelming impression left by over large houses, quiet streets devoid of people and the general lack of colour and movement in public spaces.

Additionally I had forgotten how large houses are in Australia. Previously I hadn't given it much thought but suddenly it seemed pointless, every house has a good deal of unused space, each room requires furniture and so on.  This in turn creates the feeling of emptiness, already present in a vast country. Compounding this is the poor public transport away from Sydney.

Still autumn is probably one of the best times to visit Australia. The weather is crisp and cool, the Australian light at its best and everywhere along the coast there is dense grey green vegetation broken by blue seas.

My nieces have grown. The elder one is a lot quieter though her zany self breaks through now and then. She is in school and her studies, her peers and their interests occupy most of her time. The younger one, still at home, is a scamp and not surprisingly a lot of attention is focussed on her.

The nieces are about 1000% into Frozen.  I have to confess that I dislike Disney products and Frozen is no exception.  I tend to prefer Anglo-French whimsy and gentleness (like Charlie and Lola) or original fairy tales that are dark and complex, unlike their sanitised Disney versions. Frozen is touted as a female empowerment story but in reality it is a trite tale that is so common to modern Western feminism (I can do without a man, sisters forever!) laced with Disney pop ballads that are simply not my kind of music.  Still it was lovely to listen to my nieces singing, one in her high, clear voice the other with her childish lisp.

Given Newcastle, my niece is probably the only child of Indian heritage in her school.  She is a third gen Australian and yet you can see that there are still issues she has to negotiate.  On the one hand she is (rightfully) immersed in the culture of the country. But this cocktail of Disney stories (and Australian Disney products are overwhelmingly white, its rare to spot a Mulan, Pocahontas or Tiana), fairies, gothic Mattel and the like have little correlation with how she looks. It is one thing to consume it as foreign product as one may in India, another to negotiate it as part of the culture. At the same time, her grandparents tales from Indian mythology are alien to her in some ways. The niece is a well adjusted child but also an intelligent one and you can see that her schooling experience i.e. her position in the larger society and culture at home raises some questions.

We also went shopping for the kids. Everything, and I mean everything, is gender segregated, from clothes to toys to kiddie TV shows. The entire girl section is pink, the entire boy section blue and camouflage print.  In some ways we have to feel grateful that there is no kid consumer base being tapped into in India - for the large part children watch and read and play with the same things. Having said that, the nieces do have the beach, the playground, even their own little garden all of which they enjoy and it is fun for the adults too.

Going back meant looking at everything with a fresh pair of eyes.  I don't know what the future holds but it looks like it will be awhile before I contemplate a return to Sydney. And at the moment being here, dividing time between Singapore and India, feels right.

Singapore Shrines

Some old buildings are preserved in Singapore, you see a few of these when you are walking around Tiong Bahru, Joo Chiat, Tanjong Pagar and Little India, where these pictures were taken. On many of these buildings you often find a small metal shrine of red and gold either mounted on a column or on the ground.  Its a pretty simple affair, largely joss sticks and oranges. Sometimes what looks like a yellow sweetmeat. Though pretty much identical in a way, each is also quite different.  Some are well tended, some aren't cared for at all. And in Little India, sometimes a little idol of an Indian god is added.  

I couldn't get much information about them except of course that they seem to be shrines for houses and shops, for perhaps the usual purposes like bringing good luck or warding off the evil eye.  One old gentleman was amused by my interest in his shrine but didn't speak enough English, instead he pointed heavenwards and made a prayer sign so I take it that they are some kind of domestic gods.  It's possible that these are also present outside flats but of course they are not part of street life in the manner of older structures. 

In fact now and then walking around you see temporary structures for religious purposes. The other day there was a structure with a lot of red paper objects in it, from The Billion Shop I gather its some kind of old funeral ritual.  And it's not uncommon to stumble upon ceremonies that include singing and prayer. 

The pleasures of flaneuring:)

Strathfield, NSW 2216

My first Korean drama post I think was more interesting for its description of Strathfield - or so I was told:) So I thought I might write a bit about the Australian suburbs I have lived in.

When I first moved to Sydney in 2002, I did some preliminary research on suburbs and my heart was set on Wollstonecraft or Bronte, purely for literary reasons:) And there was Glebe, where on a November day in 1999 I thought to myself one day I will live in this city. But when I saw the houses I hesitated. The rentals were high and of course that made a difference. But the charming cottages that were advertised turned out to be pocket sized and inconvenient. These were after all workers cottages in the 19th and 20th century that had gained serious cred simply by aging.  Eventually I decided to be a proper Asian immigrant and take a flat in Strathfield.

Even this was perhaps a little left-field because most Indians are wedded to the mortgage and a  proper house (preferably somewhere out west like Fairfield and beyond) within months of arrival.  In my firm, which was predominantly white, European attorneys would move to the eastern fringes with its beaches or the north shore. In fact Sydney has a enormous deal of suburb snobbery and it can be quite amusing to see the silent judgements being made when you mention where you live.  It didn't bother me, all postcodes being born equal as far as I was concerned:)

The reason for moving to Strathfield was fairly simple. It was well connected by train and it took me about 20 minutes to get to work in the city. Apart from this, it was one of few suburbs at that point that had high rise buildings and flats. There were in fact just a couple, squeezed into land along the tracks as is common in Sydney.  The buildings were mediocre - I still hold that Australians cannot design high rises, plumping for impractical open arrangements with a great deal of glass (making them furnaces in summer) intended to look like advertisements for modern city living or buildings that resembled hotels with long dark corridors.  Mine was the latter. But it was still better than the large expanse of suburbia that is most of Sydney.  The fringes of Sydney are beautiful but its interior is the death of the soul, suddenly all the anti-suburbia literature of the West makes sense.  There is a nothingness to this, as if you would be slowly numbed by these suburbs of similarly lined houses, a strip of the same shops in each centre with liquor, gambling and a supermarket predominant and a station that always led to a Railway Street. Strathfield on the other hand was an old suburb with pretty houses but the influx of immigrants and buildings with shops beneath meant that it remained lively even at a late hour. This was a big deal to me, because at this point almost all of Sydney would fade away by 6 pm.  In fact everything started early and ended early, not the best situation for a night owl like me. The other factor was my father's intended visits, I did not want the usual fate of parents in these cities, the endless wait for someone with a car to take you around to show the sights. This way he could see the city on his own time.

My building in Strathfield had a formidable Russian lady as the manager who was completely intolerant regarding the rules of the building. To put it politely she was a f**king pain in the arse. There was, as can be common in Sydney, a Russian club around the corner and a few other Eastern European structures from memory. The flat itself was comfortable, I had taken a 2 bedder as my brother was to join me later. One peculiarity of the building (and later I found of every other building in Strathfield) was that the fire alarm went off every day. The building was full of Koreans and everyone blamed their cooking practices. But given the regularity I suspect there was something a little more to it, perhaps a cosy arrangement between building management and the fireies.

As I mentioned earlier, the parts of the suburb near the station were full of Koreans.  There used to be minor gripes from visitors about not understanding signage etc. but it never affected me. It stood to reason that if you were an immigrant with little or no knowledge of English, you would aggregate in an area and that any services provided would need to cater to the local community.  Often the lack of English meant that communication was difficult, not that many people tried. This was in fact a characteristic of Sydney, even someone you see for years may not acknowledge you-initially it feels racial till you realise that everyone has had the Sydney cold shoulder and even new arrivals slip into this mode of behaviour.  A lot of folk who ran small services were however pleasant. The flower seller was a a sweet lady. There was a store that did small time repairs on clothes, handbags etc - it's a little hard to explain here that there was a joy in this because it's so hard to find in Sydney. For the most part, we didn't really eat out at the Korean places - though I always wanted to try the piquantly named Mr Dduckbocki Miss Kkochi. Instead for Asian, almost all of Strathfield, went to the Saigon Bowl - though it wasn't the best in town it set me off on love for Vietnamese cuisine. And of course there was the little clothes shop which didn't break the bank but had stylish office wear that lasted forever.  For I found that all my shopping for Sydney had been for nought, nothing was proper for Sydney mores or the weather. One thing that came out of my stay in Strathfield was that to date I know when Korean is being spoken.  I heard a lot of it and it became easy to distinguish (the alphabets too but that is relatively simple to differentiate) from other Asian languages.

Strathfield in fact also had an Indian presence though this grew stronger as you moved towards Homebush. There were more than a few Indian stores and towards Homebush you could also get cheap dosais and the like.  In this sense, it was perfect for a newbie to the city.

I lived in two of the apartment complexes in Strathfield till I moved out in 2006. The second one had a Macedonian manager who was polite and never failed to remind me that Alexander the Great was Macedonian. He had learnt a bit of Korean which meant he was popular with the residents and was in fact planning a visit to Korea when I left.  The building itself was like a plush hotel complete with indoor swimming pool.  Despite all this staying in the complexes wasn't a bad decision given the fact the burglary was fairly common in Strathfield's small apartment blocks with little or no security.

In a way Strathfield was an ideal way to ease into Sydney. It had familiar Indian elements and wildly different ones. Travelling was simple. It was easy for my dad to get around. My family in Sydney was close and yet not too close. Old relos who came around actually liked the sound of trains and shops below, unlike the natives. Signs of life as it were. My decision to go neither East nor West of the city in the initial years served me well.

I had arrived in Sydney in the somewhat contradictory states of excitement and clinical depression. These ebbed and flowed, in the beginning I was anxious to return home once I got my degree. Events back home had left a peculiar kind of hurt, the reasons were insufficient to feel so much and yet all these messy emotions were there. A lot happened in those 4 years. By the time I left I was in a calmer frame of mind, I had settled into my job, I had a degree and I had decided to stay on a bit more.

Reading

One of the nice things about Singapore is that you get a lot of SE Asian and East Asian "cultural offerings".  Kinokuniya is not too far from my brother's place and it has a much larger stock of titles from the region (including Indian titles) than I ever saw in Australia.  I have been bingeing a bit on translated Japanese books, mostly from the early 20th century and I truly haven't had enough of them whether it is Tanizaki, Dazai or Soseki. There is a lot of non-fiction too, e.g. Essays in Idleness that I haven't got around to. Suffice it to say that one can send a few hours browsing titles.

I haven't read much contemporary Japanese literature, bar Banana Yoshimoto (many happy hours spent at Melbourne University devouring her books).  Almost all contemporary literature shelves are taken up by Murakami, a writer I have never taken to. So when I spotted Strange Weather in Tokyo, I decided to give it a spin. Like so many Japanese books I have read it is written with a spare simplicity but never feels facile or lightweight. Unfolding in bars and trips where a good deal of food and copious amounts of alcohol are consumed, it traces the growing affection between a 30 something woman in the city and the much older teacher she meets by chance. Though not as hypnotic and more quotidian than Banana Yoshimoto, it draws you in and you have finished it in one slow but constant gulp, at one point I was reading it while walking to and fro from the station:) Next up, Manazuru!

Like with Murakami, I don't get the appeal of graphic novels aka comic books either.  I don't mean to diss them but they are just not my thing. Of course the Japanese produce a LOT of this, Kinokuniya in its English section itself has titles that run into several books.  But I was attracted to Oishinbo (Japanese Cuisine) - a bit strange given my usual reaction to books about the preparation of food is:

It turned out to be quite fun, an easy read. informative but never weighed down by descriptions of food. Though getting the hang of right to left reading takes a few pages. And what is with fictional Japanese and Korean fathers, on the 1 to 10 bastards scale, they are doing an admirable job holding up the 10 end:) 

K-Drama Overload

Eun-chan and food

I feel like I have watched one too many Korean dramas. This was partially because I was knocked out by a minor illness for nearly a month and it was an easy watch to while away the hours. In retrospect it wasn't a huge number of dramas though sufficient to pick up Korean TV tropes:)  Hello My Teacher and Pasta was largely because of my Gong Hyo-jin love (I first saw her in this segment on a flight, nothing special about the segment but I noticed her and I have liked her in almost everything I have seen, the best of her work being Crush and Blush). Hello My Teacher's "noona romance" was cute and I surprisingly liked Pasta's depiction of a somewhat sadomasochistic romance. I tried Lovers in Prague (what's with lame Korean drama titles-and let's never speak of the soundtracks) but gave up despite it starring one of my favourite Korean actresses, Jun Do-yeon.  But the best was reserved for the last, Coffee Prince. It was one of those dramas that suffuse one with a happy feeling at the end, kind of like watching 17 episodes of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (though the lead actor reminded me more of Shahrukh).  It's a great ensemble cast, where the casting is right for even the small parts.  And it has a secondary romance with a girl who doesn't go in for simpering innocence or fidelity. And it is based on a novel - novels that are rooted in genres (in this case romantic fiction and with more than a nod to Shakespearean cross-dressing tropes) but try to do more with it than a paint by numbers plot are always intriguing, if the TV serial is any indication the novel is neatly plotted and well thought out. But without doubt, the thing that makes Coffee Prince such a great drama is Yoon Eun-hye's portrayal of the garçon manqué, Eun chan, who never changes colours.  There has never been a better or more adorable tomboy on film. So if you have to watch a Korean drama, let it be Coffee Prince!

I am not the greatest fan of TV dramas, it is hard for me to sustain interest even in something like Mad Men.  Few K-dramas are perfect and there is a similarity to them once you watch a few - yet they have a certain hook which keeps you watching. But I can't see anything topping Coffee Prince so I will give it a rest. Though for research sake I should probably watch the original K-drama that started it all, Winter Sonata:)