I have been seeing a lot of hits about Iljimae and this got me curious. I have been out of the drama loop for quite some time now and I was so curious as to why the raised of the popular of the drama again. I was so excited assuming Lee Jun Ki is back on acting.
So I started to research. And I saw some news. First I saw this picture.
Obviously, there is no LJK in the picture. So my spirit went a bit down. lol. And after reading the description in the dramawiki page I realized that this one is being produced by another station. And to avoid confusion they change the title to the Return of Iljimae. I would have been happier if the return includes LJK. hahaha.
But as I probed a little deeper my heart rejoiced. In the wiki pages, I saw something that made me rejoiced. It seems ABS CBN bought the rights to broadcast LJK’s Iljimae locally this 2009. This is really great news.
For those of you who are looking for english subs of The Return of Iljimae seems like Mysoju.com would be uploading episodes in the near future.
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tncdel said
January 29 2010 @ 9:42 pm
This was a good series. In some ways it was superior to Iljimae 2008, because that series failed to give as much history on Iljimae, etc. But I don’t know what possessed the casting department, to choose Yoon Jin Seo to play the role of Iljimae’s beloved.
Iljimae, as portrayed, was a “pretty boy” who girls were crazy about. Surely if he had the picks available to him, he wouldn’t have chosen someone as plain looking as Yoon Jin Seo. Her appearance is better-suited for playing maid roles or nondescript secondary characters lending support to a central actor or actress. But not as a co-star.
When watching this series, it was easy to see there was no physical chemistry going on between her and Woo, who portrayed Iljimae. And I couldn’t help thinking that Woo must have been greatly disappointed when he learned who his co-star would be. No doubt in real-life she wouldn’t dare dream of engaging the interest of someone who looks like Woo. It was almost to the point of being a bad joke being told over and over again.
I’ve watched dozens of Korean dramas over the years. And, particularly for historical dramas requiring plenty of martial arts action, such as this series, it seems that sometimes a person’s looks are relatively unimportant when that person makes up for lack of looks by having an exceptional athletic ability to perform the martial arts scenes, or at least great acting skills.
But Yoon Jin Seo exhibited no athletic ability, and her acting skills were well below the norm for Korean co-stars.
Woo impressed me for his body-speed when executing leg kicks, etc. No other Korean male actor I’ve seen moved as quickly.
Overall the acting was good. And the script was more suited to a historical drama than the 2008 Iljimae. And more consistently interesting than the 2008 series, which took about the first 4 discs before Iljimae started “finding his groove,” so to speak. The 1993 Iljimae seems a bit amateurish by comparison to either the 2009 or 2008 series about Iljimae, but it’s worth a look, if you haven’t seen it yet.