Time machine rides back to the 60s-김수현의 <사랑과 야망> > 문서자료실

The 60s with characters of "Love and Ambition" by Kim Soo-hyun

Of late SBS TV runs a new version of "Love and ambition" over every weekend.

I put hardly a conscious effort not to miss a serial part, however, I find myself engrossed in the drama whenever I manage to catch it. What is most interesting is that I get to compare the new version to an old one.

As many of you are aware of, this is a remake of dramatist Kim Soo-hyun's popular drama of mid-80s. You may ask who's Kim Soo-hyun? She was once famously known as the 'Midas touch' or the 'magician of language' of TV drama and thus enjoyed an immence success with almost every project upon which she laid her hands. Though a self proclaimed addict for the original version of this drama back in my 'golden years', the new version is not a bad one either. The detailed setting and well casted actors fueled by a state-of-art filming technology successfully spice up a new version.

At any rate, if I have to sum it up in a few attractions, it will be the good plot and the acting. The overall story-telling is closely knit together, so that the well-structured plot is complete with ever so often with the writer's smart narratives like a flash of dagger. These then enable the complexities of each character to resonate through and through effortlessly. Besides, the actors' performances are turned out by no means inferior to the oldies. However, yet a room to improve lies with Lee Hoon who plays the younger son "Tae Soo". Even though Lee does his best, I cannot help but to compare him to Lee Duck-hwa who captured the essence of Tae Soo's burning anger in the original. Now how can Lee Hoon win over an actor who seems to emerge by nature to play the role in the spirit of defiance with rebel's eyes!

On that score, Lee Hoon might feel sorry to have many words to say, nevertheless what he manifests himself is devoid of the pathos, as it were, proper to take account of painful grimace. On the other hand, characters that appeal to me the most are the mother(played by Jung Ae-lee)and the manager for actress(Lee Seong-yeon). In my own text, it appears that both women stand as a symmetrical figure. One is a survivor of widowhood and the other a successful career woman. It is easy to see that they are so different but yet they are so alike. There's nothing else that impresses and amazes me more than strong and nice women. Oh, how very incredible they are! They are polite, smart and even considerate all at the same time.

Just looking back into the bygone times may give us that warm fuzzy feeling. The familiar day-to-day reminder of poverty-striken hardship in every corner of lives captures our eyes. The appropriate bond between the poor neighbours was undeniable though the survivor instinct sometimes compelled you to shout your lung out with them over small stuff. Despite all these, life around the photo's, the pawn's, the hairdresser's, bycycle's, paper goods' and mill's shop fit just with the hospital and brewery owned by the richers local. It is too lively and moving, it almost tears you apart.

This is an honest picture of us prior to the full-fledged industrialisation. Against this background of village, you can almost always find an abusive alcoholic father and their obedient wives with a chronic bitterness over prolonged years, and a sister who limps her leg. Why did we have so many disabled people back then? Why all our daddys were either alcoholics or gamblers? Where could an individual go for relief and exile? What about our angly young man at that time? However young minds still survive against all odds and fancy themselves of a beautiful dream...of what? The love with ambition!

Apparently the TV rating of this drama is not rosy about which I am wondering. My best guess is the lukewarm reception especially by 20s and 30s. Well, my nieces who are in their late teen manage to ignore it completely. Then one has to ask what ticks this generation. One might say here that Kim Soo-hyun's brilliant linguistic is already eclipsed and fails to stimulate so called x-generation. If we really think about it, who would want to be face to face with the grim reality of our lives, but then what has been shown to them as 'reality'?

In a nutshell, "Love and ambition" lacks the Korean fantasy of the 21st century fairy tales. To use a term from the fashionable dramas to date, there's no lost soul in Paris who falls in love with a millionaire in Bali Island and lives happily ever after in Prague. If this is the case in point for declinature, I would like them to know that the fairy tales too come from such a reality. The question is that you can have a dream only if a human attempt is made to grapple with that reality, viz.; here is our point of departure. However fictitious the world looks in the drama, there lies the truth that eventually drives our GDP numbers up. (Written by "Forest across River")

약속한 대로(?) 영문을  꾸며 올립니다. 작업 중간에 몇번이고 '원 참, 내가 공연히'하면서 투덜거렸습니다. 허나 해놓고 보니 또 그럭저럭 괜찮아 보이는 듯도 하네요^^. 필경 문법이나 문장에 있을 흠에 걱정이 앞서지만 무엇보다 쉽고 물 흐르는 듯한 구성에서 제일 자신이 없네요(그리고 이걸 보는 분들에겐 어떤 공부가 될런지).

한글 원문은 아래 공부방 23번에 있습니다.