投稿類別:英文寫作類 篇名: The Analysis of Reasons Behind the Success of Korean Dramas: Take “My Love from the Star” for Example. 作者: 楊淳斐。國立新竹女子高級中學。二年一班 指導老師: 黃吉慶老師 The Analysis of Reasons Behind the Success of Korean Dramas: Take “My Love from the Star” for Example. I. Introduction 1. Motivation It is no exaggeration that Korean Drama has become part of most Asians’ life, especially in both Taiwan and China. As a matter of fact, any merchandise related to popular Korea dramas would soon be sold out. Among all these popular Korean dramas, the one stands out in 2014 will definitely be “My love from the star (來自星星的你).” In addition to 50 billion Click-through rates (CTR) in China, the drama “My love from the star” also remains No.5 and No.6 in Top searches of Yahoo Taiwan’s mobile and computer version of 2014. Moreover, it had an average of 24.02% national ratings in Korea while being voted as “the favorite TV shows of Korea” in a survey conducted by the GallupKorea last year. Besides, this drama, had taken Asia by storm and the fever had lasted for months. With this instant hit’s tremendous impact on various aspects of Asian people’s life, the author of this dissertation is eager to learn the reasons behind its success. Accordingly, this study aims at analyzing the following two research questions about Korean dramas, by taking “My love from the star” for example: (1) The elements contributing to the success of “my love”. (2) The strategies adopted to gain overseas popularity in Taiwan and China. 2. Methods This study is based on: (1) website data, (2) literature review of books and magazine, (3) results of questionnaire (see Appendix). Total of 100 questionnaires were sent out to collect data and information for the research questions of this dissertation. 54 surveys were given out to students of class 101 and 201 of Hsinchu Girl’s Senior High, while the other 46 was distributed to adults selected at random. II. Thesis The thesis contains 4 major parts and will be presented as follows. In the first part, the background of “My love from the star” will be introduced. Next, there will be discussions about major elements paving the way for the drama’s success in the second part. Then the third part will reveal the strategies adopted contributing to the drama’s sensation overseas. Finally, the last part will be the analysis of the questionnaire’s result and its implication. 1 The Analysis of Reasons Behind the Success of Korean Dramas: Take “My Love from the Star” for Example. 1. Background of the drama 1.1 Facts “My love from the star” (abbreviated as “My Love” below) is a Korean romance drama preceded by “the Heirs”, and followed by “three days.” It was aired at SBS, Seoul Broadcasting System, one of the biggest broadcasters in Korea. It was played from December 18, 2013, to 27 February, 2014, on every Wednesday and Thursday at 9:55 PM. An episode is about an hour long. It was extended from the original 20 episodes to 21, due to audiences’ overwhelming demand. Directed by Jang Tae-yoo and written by Park Ji-eun, the story was rewritten from the record of “Annals of the Joseon Dynasty”. The leading roles were played by Kim Soo-hyun and Jun Ji-hyun, while Park Hae-jin, Yoo In-na, and Ahn Jye-hyun played the supporting roles in the drama. 1.2 Characters The 2 main characters in this drama are Do Min-joon and Cheon Song-yi. Do Min-joon is an alien landed on Earth 400 years ago. He was saved and fell in love with a girl in the Joseon Dynasty who looked exactly the same as younger Cheon Song-yi. He then lived lonely and was eager to return home after the girl died for protecting him. Everything remained unchanged, until he met Cheon Song-yi, a Korean super actress who was thick-skinned at almost everything. After an incident, she faced serious failure in her career, and fell in love with her neighbor, Do Min-joon, who was also her professor at the college. 1.3 Summary An alien, Do Min-joon, landed on South Korea 400 years ago and lived on to modern days. He fell in love with the top actress, Cheon Song-yi, who had deep connection with him in the past. While Cheon faced serious career crisis and was accused of committing a murder, Do was always at her side and protected her. In the end, they finally cleared out the misunderstanding between each other, and overcame all the hardships they’ve gone through. 2. Factors that made the drama eye-catching 2.1 Plots This sci-fi drama is considered to be a comedy with the combination of suspense and romance elements, while containing a few historical scenes. The arrangement and setting of 2 The Analysis of Reasons Behind the Success of Korean Dramas: Take “My Love from the Star” for Example. the main characters are similar to all the other previous hot dramas: a smart, fine-looking, and rich man pairing up with a pretty lady who needs to be helped. However, the element of an alien added in this story, has taken the drama to a brand new degree. “People have never stopped discussing about alien” (Tseng, 2014), and the theory was proved true by the drama through bringing a storm of alien in Asia. Moreover, this was the first and successful drama merging alien and human character in Korea. Also, most of women once dreamed to become a super star, so audiences will feel connected with the character more easily. Like Cheon Song-yi, “she’s a super star, but can also be very down-to-earth. She gets drunk at a comic book store. She trips over. She falls asleep at someone else’s house. These are things that can happen to normal people, but it’s fun seeing a top star do that” (Jang, 2014). That is to say, allowing audience to get a closer look at the celebrity’s life and getting these viewers involved makes it one of the selling points in this drama. Global times (2014) points out that the drama “wins out by having two story lines, a romance and a murder case, developing in parallel. This makes for the perfect balance between relaxation and tension.’ The well-knit plots make people more eager to know the ending. Moreover, the screenwriter allows the audiences to know more secrets than the characters did, using specious information to mislead viewer’s predictions, then reveal the surprising truth that are beyond their expectations in the end. 2.2 Casts One of the most important parts for becoming the best-selling TV series is the involvement of great actors. Casts with major box-office appeal, topicality, and classy performance are more likely to guarantee high-ratings when considering their tremendous fan base. The two main characters in “My love” were played by Kim Soo-hyun and Jun Ji-hyun. 2.2.1 Kim Soo-hyung Kim Soo-hyun is a renowned Korean actor, singer, and model. Kim is best known for playing in “Dream high”, and the film “Secretly, Gratefully”, which broke several box office records and was the most successful hit of the year. He is also famous for television series “Moon embracing the sun” and movie “The thieves”, which was his first and successful corporation with Jun Ji-hyun. 2.2.2 Jun Ji-hyun 3 The Analysis of Reasons Behind the Success of Korean Dramas: Take “My Love from the Star” for Example. Jun Ji-hyun is a 33-year-old famous Korean actress. She started her career as a model, switching her career focus to film business during the shooting time of “White Valentine’s Day”. Jun is best known for her clear-cut role as “the girl” in “my Sassy Girl”. This movie made her way to becoming an A-lister in Korea, and helped her to increase good publicity in Asia. Both the movie and she were all the rages in that year. 2.3 Screenwriter Screenwriter is the fundamental part of a TV series production in Korea. Park Ji-eun, the screenwriter of “my love”, has been praised as the screenwriting heavyweights of Korea’s new generation. She wrote the hit series “Queen of housewives” and “My husband got a family”, and won recognition by winning several significant awards. She pointed out a fact when being interviewed by the media, “over 90 percent of screenwriters in Korea are women, and they are housewives just like me. Therefore, being sensitive and having sufficient free time for writing helps to make fabulous work possible” (Park, 2014). Nevertheless, unlike practices elsewhere, only the first few episodes of Korean dramas are shot in advance, the rest are shot and written unceasingly as the series is being aired. Scripts and plots may be changed according to audiences’ feedbacks and critics; therefore, screenwriter can interact with viewers and take their comments as suggestions. With women’s unique viewing, Korean screenwriter is capable of writing touching stories meeting most of views’ imagination. Interactions with netizens help to trigger continual, related discussions, and unceasing filming allows them to come up with more interesting ending and scenes. 2.4 Special effects Without special effects, viewers wouldn’t be able to visualize Do Min-joon’s ability to freeze the time, to control the motion of objects, and teleportation. Overall, the crew has spent over $2 billion NTD on special effects.