August 15, 2011

East of Eden

A 56 episode epic from Korea, this is an ambitious project that in its minute dramatisation of the the fate of a lower class family in a deprived mining village, relates and comments on the drastic changes of the political and social landscape of a half century. With a rather charismatic Song Seung-hun as its leading man and a strong team of supporting crew, in particular Lee Mi-sook as the strong willed mother, it is both entertaining and revealing for those who are vaguely interested in Korea and its culture.

As my exposure to Korean drama and films increase steadily, I am also becoming more convinced in my initial finding: that the Korean spoken language seems a rich kaleidescope of various Chinese dialects, with Hakka being the one of the key components, a fact that appears largely unknown to even those intellectual friends who have regular dose of Korean drama since Korean wave hit China in the early 2000s. I wonder if somewhere out there, someone has been working at it, especially why that the key component seems to be Hakka, a dialect originated mainly from the remote mountainous areas of Southern China. I wish I didn't given up Hakka so radically when I was little.

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