[drama 2004] The Count Of Myeongdong 명동백작

[Guest thunderbolt]

[EBS] Park Cheol Ho, Lee Jin Woo, Kim Seong Ryeong, Jung Bo Seok(Narr)

The Count of Myeongdong 명동백작 (2004)

Number of Episodes: 24

Broadcast Company: EBS

Narrated by: Jung Bo Seok

Screenplay by: Jung Ha Yeon

CAST:

Park Cheol Ho, Lee Jin Woo, Kim Seong Ryeong, Cha Gwang Su, Lee Jae Eun, Ahn Jung Hoon, Kang Tae Gi, Park Young Ji, Lee Young Hu, Kim Ja Ok, Choi Sang Hoon, Hwang Beom Shik, Heo Yoon Jung, Yoo Jong Geun

INFO & SYNOPSIS (by MisterX):

Written by Jung Ha-Yeon (Shin Don, La Dolce Vita, The Last Empress, Wife, King & The Queen)

The tears, the blood and ruins of the war left a big weight on Koreans' shoulders, one which was reflected on the many difficulties the country went through during those years. Yet, it was one of the most prolific artistic periods the country ever went through, especially in its cultural center Myeongdong, Seoul. All the trends started there, from that parade of feebly lit streets, the fog-like cigarette smoke and the sound of that decade enveloping the whole district. "The Count of Myeongdong" is not your average drama with a normal story, a beginning and a conclusion, a few characters dominating it. It's more of a docu-drama, a love letter to the Myeongdong that shone between 1953 and 1960. All the coffee shops, the theaters, the publishing companies and even television stations, and all the stars making Myeongdong great. Poets, novelists, musicians, journalists, and their romantic, tragic and crazy lives.

DOWNLOAD LINKS:

http://www.aigoo.withs2.net/category/compl...-of-myeongdong/

ENGLISH SUBTITLES BY WITH S2:

Click here for subs (Episodes 1-5 released)

[Guest thunderbolt]

A few members of the main cast:

And of course, the acclaimed writer:

[Guest thunderbolt]

Some screencaps from Episode 1:

[Guest Dahee Fanel]

Woo-hoo!! Thanks for this thread, Thundie. *muak*

Can't wait to watch the first episode!

[Guest thunderbolt]

Thanks, Dahee. *muah!!*

Here's a passing reference to The Count of Myeongdong by X in his review of Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff:

What’s really interesting is how films can sometime become their makers’ own elixir of immortality, and that’s not simply dealing with the legacy of their work. La Strada certainly made Fellini immortal in our 1.85:1 sized, 24 frames per second memories, just like it did for Kim Ki-Young and his insanely good 하녀 (The Housemaid). But I was thinking more of people like Manoel de Oliveira, still as energetic as he was 40 years ago, hitting his 100th birthday right this year; I was thinking of Im Kwon-Taek, past his 70s and sticking to the bare minimum in lovely trips of energy like 천년학 (Beyond the Years).

If we move to the TV drama canon, I was thinking of Kim Jae-Hyung, the man who jump started sageuk on TV in 1964, and was still as commanding a general in his latest work 왕과 나 (The King and I) as he was thirty years earlier; I was thinking of Jung Ha-Yeon, who after a 40 years career, fame and the endless respect of his peers decided to write a show spreading love for his country’s culture, shot on a ultra low-budget for an educational channel that records ratings lower than the National Hymn at 2 in the morning – the wonderful 명동백작 (The Count of Myeongdong).

********************

More on writer Jung Ha Yeon by X in his La Dolce Vita review:

credit: twitchfilm

Born in Hwanghae Province (current North Korea) in 1944, Jung’s first taste of what would become his lifelong obsession came when, back in college, he entered a theater group. You’d think his reason for participating might evoke memories of The Bard, or the great thespians of the past. But, nah. He just wanted to keep his hair long, and in the Korea of the 1960s becoming an actor was the only way a student could grow them locks and not taste the sweet baton. Then again, things wouldn’t be so easy. If you get on the stage and everything you can think of is “why is that guy in front of me reacting like that?” a change of career is recommended. Thankfully for us, Jung changed his mind, and after abandoning his acting career started writing plays. Mighty successful ones at that.

The raging export-oriented industrialization of the 60s and 70s saw a sort of cultural renaissance develop, especially in the capital Seoul, thanks to all the input for great stories Park Jung-Hee’s ruthless regime created. Poets, musicians, novelists, journalists, screenwriters from all walks of life flourished. It was a golden age for Korean culture, prosperity which also influenced Jung in his growth as an author; his view of the world and philosophy displayed in all his dramas was oozing with the smell of that cultural revolution. 산울림 (Echoes) won him the Seoul Shinmun Spring Short Play Award in 1968, followed by Best New Author at the Sejong University Literary Awards for 무지개 쓰러지다 (Falling Rainbow) and several other awards in the late 60s. He went as far as winning the Best Stage Play award at the prestigious Baeksang Art Awards in 1973, right as he was starting to make a name for himself in Chungmuro.

In many ways, the 70s was the darkest decade in Chungmuro history. The talented (Kim Ki-Young, Yoo Hyun-Mok, Jung Jin-Woo, Ha Gil-Jong etc.) continued to excel, albeit it couldn’t be as prolific an output as in the 200-plus film per year rush of the 60s. Problem, of course, was everything else: artless commercial flicks devoid of any flair or passion, keeping the masses entertained while the bulldozer policies were doing their job; sordid propaganda garbage, pornography of the mind used by people who knew all too well the allure of mass media. In such an atmosphere, Jung’s first few film scripts weren’t exactly the epitome of innovation. It was in many ways what Im Kwon-Taek experienced behind the camera in his formative years: a little bit of everything, to form a backbone. Some of it worked, the majority was just there.

More than having any particular artistic value making them stand on their own, the languid melodramas and high teen romances Jung was involved with in the early 70s were just a small fraction of the versatility he’d show in his forty year career. Jung is in fact one of the few, if not the only man to ever write scripts for theater, movies, the radio dramas so popular up to the advent of television; and of course TV dramas, covering the entire scope from the defunct TBC to KBS, MBC, SBS, even EBS and possibly cable (if Dramax ever decides to broadcast that China-Korea coproduction Jung recently wrote). He’s done everything from adultery melodramas to traditional home dramas, from stoic political sageuk to nostalgic, glorious period dramas like 명동백작 (The Count of Myeongdong). But there’s always a consistent, recurring theme in most of his best work. His love for literature.

[ay_link]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY WITH S2

WRITTEN IN THE HEAVENS SUBBING SQUAD

EPISODE 1 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: wichitawx

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

EPISODE 2 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: victory

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

EPISODE 3 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: victory

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

D-ADDICTS SUBTITLES THREAD

TO DOWNLOAD RAWS

[Guest thunderbolt]

Yay, ep 3 subs are out. I really love this episode. Awesome lines!

Some belated screencaps from ep 2:

[Guest MisterX]

weee! Mona Lisa is a gangster. And male at that. The things you learn from TV....

[Guest thunderbolt]

weee! Mona Lisa is a gangster. And male at that. The things you learn from TV....

Haha, X, that should pique everyone's interest. *falls off chair*

[Guest thunderbolt]

Here's a sampling of X's awesome subs for The Count of Myeongdong:

Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes...

The form of a most seductive woman.

And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical...

Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres.

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God.

Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst...

Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted.

And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment...

Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds.

And... all the bloody instruments of Destruction!

More screencaps from ep 3:

[Guest thunderbolt]

A glorious docu-drama, The Count of Myeongdong. Not make-believe characters but real people.

The woman who lived like a butterfly, the mad genius of Jeon Hye Rin.

Despite not being a novelist nor a poet, the writer who had countless readers, Jeon Hye Rin.

If you really must attach a label, would "literature translator" do?

After spending her college days in Germany, she brought a new wind to the wasteland known as translated literature.

She introduced Herman Hesse's "Demian," and Luise Rinser's "The Middle of Life," creating a whirlwind of interest in the sector.

- subs by MisterX

[Guest thunderbolt]

Episode 4 subs are out at d-addicts. Thank you, X!

I love the Kim Su Young story and have tried finding out more about him. He was born in 1921 and passed away in a traffic accident in 1968. Here's an excerpt from a 2001 Korea Times article:

Kim Su-Young studied in Japan for a while, and also at what is now Yonsei University. He was a gifted intellectual, interested in the avant-garde literary movements in Japan, Britain and the U.S. His first published poems (in a 1949 anthology of poems by young writers) were typical of much poetry written in Japan and Korea at the time _ difficult poems full of arcane symbolism, after the manner of the movement known as Modernism, best known by the work of T. S. Eliot. Kim was deeply marked by the Korean War, when he was forced to work for the invading Communist Army for a while; this meant that when the tide turned, he was interned by the anti-communist forces in a prisoner-of-war camp in Koje-do. In 1960, he was an ardent supporter of the students who led the April 19th Revolution, in which many were killed before Syngman Rhee stepped down, but he soon realized that Korean society would not follow the students' and intellectuals' idealism. Much of his poetry is a reflection of hope under trial.

From May 1961, Korea was ruled by the military and Kim found himself a spokesman for the dissident, socially conscious side of intellectual and literary society. He was by now working in journalism and becoming well known as an essayist. The conservative military encouraged those writers and critics who claimed that literature should be entirely concerned with aesthetics and have nothing whatever to do with social issues (except for promoting very general humanistic values) or politics. In a noted essay, he wrote in response to that opinion: ``All avant-garde literature is subversive. All living culture is essentially subversive. Quite simply because the essence of culture is the pursuit of dreams, the pursuit of the impossible.''

It was in the 1960s, as part of the same exploration of the relationship between poetry and life, that he realized that the language of Korean poetry was largely sterile because a sense of literary ``decorum'' was preventing poets from using the everyday language of ordinary people. He therefore set out to write poetry using ordinary language, colloquial expressions and such, although his work remained mostly far more ``intellectual'' than was usual in Korean poetry.

source: Words That Span Generations

Here's more on Kim's poetic voice and conscience:

Amidst the literary environment of the 50s and 60s, which was often alienating in its brittle displays of languishing sentiment, its extreme privacy, and its use of rhetoric to avoid self-absorption as well as irony, Kim Su-Young's poems stood out. His poems reveal many different faces to readers and they reveal the mutually interlocking relationship among avant-garde experiment, freedom, love and conscience.

Although Kim Su-Young could be considered a traditionalist in his concern for scrupulous attention to artistic craft, he does not organize his poems according to pre-established conventions of rhyme, meter and stanzaic patterns, which would limit the reader's experience of the poem to a small set of received meanings. On the contrary, he writes in a highly aestheticizing vein and often compels his readers to discover distinct and particular meanings as they work through the unpredictable poetic tensions found in "Games in the Land of the Moon" and "A Gladiolus."

His later poems, however, are more accessible and have much to share with readers in their efforts to bridge the gap between art and life. In this vein he privileges the idea of the artist who is doomed to struggle against those who oppose freedom, intelligence and humanism, as articulated in his essays "Poetry, Spit It Out" (1968) and "Theory of Anti-Poetics" (1968). Rejecting the artistically crafted and lofty image of the artist celebrated in the poetry of So Chong-Ju (1915-2000), Kim Su-Young believes, on the contrary, that the artist must immerse himself in history and the ordinariness of life. Kim respects no boundaries between art and life and, furthermore, makes the transgression of boundaries a centerpiece of his poetry by embracing the undisguised encounter with ordinary life and freedom from the aristocratic use of language, as exemplified in "First Tear Down His Photo," "A Prayer," and "Colossal Roots" among others.

More importantly, Kim Su-Young's poems capture the changes in people's sensibility before and after the 4.19 Revolution and extend beyond the self-reflective internalized sense of reality of the complacent bourgeois to offer a strong sense of social responsibility. For example, Kim discovers grass as a poetic theme in "Grass," and observes that "The grass is lying flat. / It lies flat more quickly than the wind. / It weeps more quickly than the wind. / It rises more quickly than the wind" (121). Similar to Kim So-Wol's adoption of the azalea in his poetry, Kim Su-Young selects grass, an ordinary and even worthless object that is not deemed appropriate in poetry, and reads the undying spirit of the people within it.

Source: Variations: Three Korean Poets

Will be back with some ep 4 screencaps.

[Guest riehae]

Looks interesting. I'll watch and dl this when I have extra time. Thanks for the updates.

[Guest thunderbolt]

Looks interesting. I'll watch and dl this when I have extra time. Thanks for the updates.

Hi riehae

Welcome to the CM thread.

********************

I was reading up on Park In Hwan and interestingly, the real and reel versions look quite alike.

Here's some info about him from wikipedia:

Park In-hwan (1926 - 1956) was born in Inje, Gangwon-do, Korea during the period of Japanese rule. He graduated from Kyunggi High School in 1945 and entered Pyeongyang Medical School.(평양의전 平壤醫專). Once Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, he quit school and started a small bookstore named 'Mariseosa' in Jongno, Seoul. Park had been interested in poetry ever since his early teens and in 1946 published his first poem entitled "Street" (거리) in the Kukje Shinmun Newspaper. In 1949, he co-authored a poetry book titled 'New city and unison of citizens,' together with Kim Gyeong-rin (김경린 金璟麟) and Kim Su-yeong (김수영 金洙暎). This book put him in the spotlight and gave him a reputation as a modernist poet. Park was an active journalist in 1949 for the Kyunghyang Sinmun Daily and later became their war correspondent in 1951. In 1955, he traveled to the United States by ship and in the same year published the Park In-hwan Poetry Collection. These poems were known for their depiction of the Bohemian experience and propensity.

*******************

On the other hand, the real and reel Kim Su Young look very different!

(Kim Su Young is in the 2nd row, right)

Source: Top Ten Korean Modern Poets Selected

[Guest thunderbolt]

Okay, some ep 4 screencaps.

My favorite Kim Su Young... :blush:

Yup, love Jung Bo Seok!

Familiar faces from Shin Don...

[Guest thunderbolt]

Stumbled on the following article which describes the Myeongdong depicted in the drama:

Myeongdong’s shadow

Today’s Myeongdong doesn’t seem to remember the old stories of our generation. It is a space to consume and excrete.

by Chung Jong-sup

September 17, 2008

Myeongdong, central Seoul, is a district of desires and consumption. Streets are packed with fashionable coffee shops, restaurants, boutiques, cinemas and hair salons. Surrounded by skyscrapers, people dine out, shop, chat and strut down the street all day long. People enjoy life and youth to the fullest. Neon signs glitter on the street and shops, restaurants and bars are lavishly decorated inside.

Myeongdong was a vibrant place in the past as well. The only difference now is that the poverty that made it difficult for people to eat three meals a day is absent, along with the fatigue people get from carrying the heavy burdens that life imposes. The tragic beauty the district once possessed now seems weird. The world has changed.

During the Korean Empire, Myeongdong Cathedral was built in the place where the Minister of Personnel Yun Jeong-hyeon used to live. The cathedral stood out among low houses from the Joseon Dynasty and created an exotic sight. It was in the 1920s that Myeongdong started to be modernized. As Japan occupied Joseon and controlled it as a colony, Myeongdong was called Meijimachi by the Japanese and became the central street for Japanese living in Seoul.

As Western culture and products entered Korea, the words “modern” and “new” as in a “modern boy” and “new art” were frequently used, pushing aside our traditional lifestyle. Wearing Western clothes, using Western products, eating in Western or Japanese restaurants and hanging out in bars or dance halls were regarded as part of modern life. All this started in Myeongdong.

After the 1910 Korea-Japan annexation treaty, some Koreans set off to Primorsky Kray in Russia and worked to win the country’s independence. Others who were studying in Tokyo saw “modern” women in Ueno Park, feeling guilty that their wives remained in Joseon. This contradiction was probably nobody’s fault. It was the course of history, just like some drowned themselves in the Korea Strait while others lived decadent lives in Myeongdong. All of these were part of life.

After liberation, Myeongdong was full of joy. Many writers, artists and intellectuals hung out there and held animated debates. They listened to classical music and discussed philosophy in cafes such as Madonna, Oasis and Dolce, which Jun Suk-hee and Sohn So-hi opened. They ate jajangmyeon, cheap noodles with black bean sauce, for lunch in the Chinese restaurant Donghaeru. They talked about their times and lives. Putting on worn-out jackets, they dropped by Munyeseorim or Mona Lisa during the day. At night, they drank together. Literature and art were born among these people.

O Sang-sun, Seo Jeong-ju, Mo Yun-suk, Kim Gwang-gyun, Lee Yong-ak, Kim Dong-ri, Cho Yeon-hyeon, Kim Gi-rim, Cho Byeong-hwa, Cho Ji-hun and Lee Jin-seop all frequented Myeongdong. Kim Su-yeong, who appeared in “Figaro,” discussed poetry with Han Ha-un and shared the pain of a frustrating history. When the country’s national per capita income was less than $100 and the country was going through a war, Myeongdong offered a place for exhausted intellectuals to rest.

“Times come and times go./ Life is not that lonely. It is just mundane like the cover of a magazine.” This is part of the poem, “The Wooden Horse and the Lady,” written by Park In-hwan. Park was recognized as a young, talented poet in Myeongdong and he died at the age of 31 in poverty. Both Yun Yong-ha, who wrote a song called “The Barley Field,” and the famous poet Kim Gwan-sik struggled in poverty before they passed away. Paintings by Lee Jung-sup, Park Su-geun and Kim Hwan-gi are now sold for billions of won among the rich.

But they portrayed tired people and the artists felt exhausted themselves. Jeon Hye-rin, an author who studied in Germany and came back to Korea with memories from Schwabing in Munich, also went to a traditional Korean bar, Eunseong. She killed herself at the age of 31.

In the 1970s, Myeongdong was still the district of romanticism and it was reborn with a passion for democratization. Myeongdong Cathedral became a central point of the democratization movement.

Today’s Myeongdong doesn’t seem to remember the old stories of our generation. It is simply a space to consume and excrete. However, the present can’t exist without the past. Today’s Korean literature and art exists in the shadow that Myeongdong casts from the past. We can build a museum to show Myeongdong’s history. We can restore our past. In doing so, we will learn that to live is not to judge. The only important thing is to cherish and embrace one another.

Myeongdong is not the only such place in Korea. Our past footsteps still remain in Busan, Tongyeong, Mokpo, Daegu and Incheon, as well.

*The writer is a professor of constitutional studies at Seoul National University

Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff

source: JoongAng Daily

[ay_link]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY WITH S2

WRITTEN IN THE HEAVENS SUBBING SQUAD

EPISODE 4 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: victory

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

EPISODE 5 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: victory

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

D-ADDICTS SUBTITLES THREAD

TO DOWNLOAD RAWS

[Guest thunderbolt]

Episode 5 screencaps

[ay_link]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY WITH S2

WRITTEN IN THE HEAVENS SUBBING SQUAD

EPISODE 6 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator & Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: victory

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

***

D-ADDICTS SUBTITLES THREAD

TO DOWNLOAD RAWS

[Guest imbestigador]

This is The Best EBS Drama...even though the station is Low Budgetted....

Sadly,It didn't rate well,It got almost 1% on its First Episode