Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Star-studded soaps vie for Wed.-Thurs. slots
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Two television dramas kick off simultaneously tonight, seeking to dominate the Wednesday-Thursday night scene with the end of Ko Hyun-jung’s “Daemul,” which won the grand prize at the 2010 SBS Drama Award.
“Sign” on SBS and “My Princess” on MBC are totally different in concept. While “Sign” is a medical crime investigation drama, “My Princess” is a romantic comedy featuring Korean royalty.
Medical thrills in ‘Sign’
Set with the backdrop of the National Forensic Service (NFS), the 16-episode drama will have one main case, running parallel with three to four smaller ones.
Movie director Jang Hang-joon has turned to the small screen and said having 16 separate episodes for each installment will be an adventure in Korea, as viewers can download them one by one.
Actor Park Shin-yang plays Yun Ji-hun, a talented forensic doctor who teams up with newcomer Go Da-gyeong (Kim Ah-joong) and confronts Lee Myeong-han (Chun Kwang-yol), the chief of the NFS.
Park returns to television two years after appearing in “The Painter of Wind” (2008). He was in a dispute with the Corea Drama Production Association for his overly high payment in the 2007 drama “War of Money” and was slow to return.
Park said “Sign” is a drama with straightforward direction — seeking to uncover the truth through dead bodies.
“I have seen a lot of dead bodies prepared for this drama from two months ago,” Park said at a press conference Monday. “I was up all night conducting an autopsy on a dead body on Jan. 1.”
It is the first time for Kim to play such a hot-tempered character and she even interviewed real medical legal experts to understand the character better.
“They were very positive and cheerful people despite their heavy workload. I want to portray such humane aspects,” Kim said.
“Sign” is different from the famous “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” series aired on CBS in the United States.
“Unlike the ‘CSI’ series equipped with state-of-the-art gear in large labs, we will show the reality of the Korean NFS, where some 40 forensic examiners perform autopsies on thousands of corpses,” Jang the director said. “Only the deceased can tell the secrets of death and the forensic scientists are the only people who can read the ‘signs’ on the body. I want to raise awareness that these medical examiners are neglected.”