[drama 2006] Shin Don 신돈

[Guest 꺼벙이]

"He was born as the son of a princess and a slave"

Uhh... no.

His mother was a slave. His father was a noble. But the social ranks went down in matriarchal lines in Goryeo so he inherited his mother's rank. Well this gets explained a little better down the line, starting with ep. 3.

Don't let the silly beginning misguide you. That silly beginning will become a weightly aftertaste when it all plunges into tragedy. Still, as I said, enjoy the silly times while they last.

[Guest thunderbolt]

Don't let the silly beginning misguide you. That silly beginning will become a weightly aftertaste when it all plunges into tragedy. Still, as I said, enjoy the silly times while they last.

X, is the "silly beginning"

the cavorting (with the ladies of 'paradise') in ep 2

? That took me by surprise, but I enjoyed watching those scenes. OMS's discomfort was so cute to watch. Will there be flashbacks to Monk Pyeonjo's past? I'm curious why he seems a tad untamed.

[Guest puela]

ok episode 01-14 are up... LINKS HERE

[Guest IUPHIMHAN]

Hi all,

IUPHIMHAN.COM Subbing team (Vietsub) just announced to provide vietnamese subtitle for this drama . The 1st episode is out. You can check our thread for the following episodes. You don't have to have an account to view and download.

http://www.iuphimhan.com/sarang/index.php?showtopic=10099

[Guest souichi]

@puela - Thank you SO much for the megauploads!!

[Guest 꺼벙이]

X, is the "silly beginning"

the cavorting (with the ladies of 'paradise') in ep 2

? That took me by surprise, but I enjoyed watching those scenes. OMS's discomfort was so cute to watch. Will there be flashbacks to Monk Pyeonjo's past? I'm curious why he seems a tad untamed.

There's a lot of philosophy and politics and untamed past that made the current (well, in the drama) Shin Don. And of course there's flashbacks of his past, starting from ep. 3. Then all those "hahaha" might assume different forms. ㅋㅋ

As I said, the silliness here and the sillines in Yi San is like two different galaxies. One is carefully prepared, barely cooked yet warm roastbeef, the other raw meat.

[Guest smiley6yrl]

thanks so much for ep 1-2 subs, WITHS2~!!! n thanks Annchong and Puela for the direct links, it made my dl-ing experience a whole lot easier n better.

[Guest souichi]

I started a thread about costumes in historical dramas:

http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=210271

[ay_link]

Brought to you by WITH S2

Written In The Heavens Subbing Squad

EPISODE 3 ENGLISH SUBS

CREDITS:

Main Translator/Timer: MisterX

Timing QC: julier

Editor/QC: thunderbolt

Coordinators: mily2, ay_link

[Guest thunderbolt]

Some ep 3 screencaps:

screencaps by thunderbolt

[mekeo117]

thanks so much for ep 1-2 subs, WITHS2~!!! n thanks Annchong and Puela for the direct links, it made my dl-ing experience a whole lot easier n better.

I have to say a big thank you for uploading the raw files in megaupload . This will enable more of us here to download and watch this series ! I did not know there's this drama till i come across it in WITHS2 webpage .Also not forgetting WITHS2 for taking on this project .

But knowing sageuk this is 61 epi wow .. anyway the costume looks grand .. but it does not seem so "mongolian-ish" to me .. oh well

[Guest 꺼벙이]

I have to say a big thank you for uploading the raw files in megaupload . This will enable more of us here to download and watch this series ! I did not know there's this drama till i come across it in WITHS2 webpage .Also not forgetting WITHS2 for taking on this project .

But knowing sageuk this is 61 epi wow .. anyway the costume looks grand .. but it does not seem so "mongolian-ish" to me .. oh well

Well Late Yuan and Genghis Khan era Mongol costumes are a little different. And of course a lot of this is embellished. But with a few exceptions (CCTV's Genghis Khan?) I haven't really seen too many Chinese series getting that stuff right.

Of all the Korean sageuks, this is one of the few ones to get the hair kind of right (well of course Gongmin too might have shaved parts of his hair when he was in Yanjing as hostage, but you know you're not getting that), especially with the court officials. At least they tried. Go look at Dae Jo Young and tell me those are Khitan or Gokturks... eh.

[Guest souichi]

I don't think that Chinese television producers feel obligated to be historically accurate in the way that many Korean producers do. This is because there is a massive body of internationally peer-reviewed material dealing with Chinese history that establishes a firm base which will not become corrupted by flights of fancy in popular media.

Korean history, on the other hand, is only now beginning to be considered independently of Chinese history, and beginning to be interpolated into the broader context of world history (the controversy raging over movable type, for example).

This provides an opportunity for television producers to present their work as not just creative, but educational. Fortunately for us, they seem to be inspired to act responsibly, and the results are sometimes astonishingly good.

This is in dramatic (no pun intended) contrast to the disaster that always results when Hollywood dips it's fungus infected toes into historical waters.

[Guest 꺼벙이]

Uh... I actually think the contrary. Korean producers nowadays willingly do a mess with history to score in the ratings, whereas I've been impressed with some of the things I've seen on CCTV and Hunan-Tv the last 4-5 years. I might just base this on my Chinese friends, but they're OBSESSED about historical detail, and the stuff I've seen on various history-themed forums aren't too different. OK maybe HK or Taiwan sageuk are a mess, but the mainland ones seem to respect history in a way I haven't seen done in Korean sageuk in... uh almost a decade? Save the few Jeong Ha Yeon. Watch Da Ming Wang Chao 1566, Han Wu Da Di, The Great Revival, any of Hu Mei or Chen Jialin's works really. That's the trifecta... good script, great production values and historical value.

Frankly of the last five years, you can count the Korean sageuk with a respectable quotient of historical value on your hands. Shin Don, 8 Days, Conspiracy in the Court, Sayukshin, Age of Warriors... that's about it. Things like Emperor of the Sea, Seo Dong Yo, Dae Jo Young are just fantasy filled action flicks with a touch of history. Even Immortal Lee Soon Shin is filled with inaccuracy. Entertaining? Yes. Educational? Eh.

Korean history, on the other hand, is only now beginning to be considered independently of Chinese history, and beginning to be interpolated into the broader context of world history<--- that sort of itches me the wrong way. Unless you meant "by mainstream quasi-historians."

[shirley]

oh Shin Don has subtitles available ! wow...thanks for the subtitles ^^

I don't think that Chinese television producers feel obligated to be historically accurate in the way that many Korean producers do. This is because there is a massive body of internationally peer-reviewed material dealing with Chinese history that establishes a firm base which will not become corrupted by flights of fancy in popular media.

i think you might be referring more to HK and Taiwan drama? , seriously i think productions from china in terms of saguek are of such great production values that it is vastly different from what you had comment that they shouw less obligated to be historically accurate , on the contrary , i think it is the opposite if you compare the korea producers to the china production , though some might give a different perspective from what we normally know but ...i do get great educational values from those china production

Uh... I actually think the contrary. Korean producers nowadays willingly do a mess with history to score in the ratings, whereas I've been impressed with some of the things I've seen on CCTV and Hunan-Tv the last 4-5 years. I might just base this on my Chinese friends, but they're OBSESSED about historical detail, and the stuff I've seen on various history-themed forums aren't too different. OK maybe HK or Taiwan sageuk are a mess, but the mainland ones seem to respect history in a way I haven't seen done in Korean sageuk in... uh almost a decade? Save the few Jeong Ha Yeon. Watch Da Ming Wang Chao 1566, Han Wu Da Di, The Great Revival, any of Hu Mei or Chen Jialin's works really. That's the trifecta... good script, great production values and historical value.

yup, the mainland aka china historical dramas are defintely a cut above what the hong kong and taiwan saguek can give you . they cannot afford to make a mess with it , because billion of it viewers probably can spot any mistake straight away and you shall hear from them on forum and everywhere they can be heard .

i havent start on the Great Revival yet ..i was planning to find time to start that.

[Guest souichi]

Korean history, on the other hand, is only now beginning to be considered independently of Chinese history, and beginning to be interpolated into the broader context of world history<--- that sort of itches me the wrong way. Unless you meant "by mainstream quasi-historians."

I mean in the published textbooks that I have been able to find on Amazon and AbeBooks. I have ordered everything that doesn't appear to be outright propaganda. If you can recommend a peer-reviewed history journal that publishes articles on Korean History in English, I will subscribe to it. Practically everything available online is total rubbish.

I have a couple of friends who are Chinese historians and who teach classes on Chinese popular culture. I'm going to ask them for a judgement call on Chinese historical dramas. They go to China to collect vcd's twice a year. Nice job if you can get it ;^)

[Guest souichi]

Please keep in mind when discussing historical accuracy that the personalities, human interaction, and dialog are NEVER going to be accurate.

The only things that can be evaluated for accuracy are events that are significant enough to have been recorded or to have left identifiable enduring traces, and the various objects preserved in fact or in written/drawn/painted/sculpted records of established age and authenticity.

I realize that all seems obvious, but it's easy to get out-of-bounds with these things... Historians do it all the time.

[Guest 꺼벙이]

Wasted lots of pages on my blog about the subject, don't worry. What I care about is what the Koreans call 시대정신, a "period mind." That is, instead of getting all crazy over what the book says, paint a realistic portrayal of the period, read between the lines of such records, who wrote them, what was their agenda and how that might have changed the way history was presented (you know, postmodern view of history et al. ㅋㅋ That's me). But there's a line you can't cross and well, many dramas do that. Things like Dae Jo Young just get a few of the names right, but everything else is a huge mess. You can do great dramas filling the blank spaces between historical accidents with realistic fiction, but the other way around usually doesn't work, and fantasy throwing fake history at the last minute like Legend is even worse.

Good Korean History related material in English.... hmm. I guess that's out of my element, don't really know. If you can read Korean I'd have tons of links, but English I wouldn't know where to begin. I can say Wikipedia has gotten better but it's still dangerously close to asinine when it comes to details and political commentary, and that koreanhistoryproject.org is a decent, albeit veeeeery superficial startpoint. And oh, those who recommend the Annals of Lady Hyegyeong as great history, I wouldn't trust too much. Just as 8 Days showed, we're not dealing with one of the worst victims of late 18th century palace politics, but quite the player. It's a great read but no historical record. Especially when it comes to Crown Prince Sado.

[Guest souichi]

Yeah, I've found wikipedia rough going, because if anyone starts out with good intentions, the Korea-can-do-no-wrong and the Korea-can-do-no-right factions will conspire to beat the article to death immediately.

This book is quite good:

http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Kore...h/dp/0742540057

There's roughly the equivalent of three college level courses in Korean history in that book. It's certainly not comprehensive.

The book has quite a few clerical errors. It's too bad the author couldn't find a few good proofreaders to clean it up before committing it to market.

The International Journal of Korean History appears to have died in 2005 with Volume 8:

http://history.korea.ac.kr

And the top article in the last issue says Vol 8, August 2006...

[Guest 꺼벙이]

Sounds good. But wow... 5000 years (in theory ㅋㅋ) in 256 pages. That's VERY concise. I think there's probably some good material in dual language on one of those Korean online libraries, but you'll probably need a Korean university/high school Id and even have to pay for them.

Fastest way is learning Korean and starting research that way. Most of the stuff you need, including entire records are online. Watching something like Conspiracy in the Court and comparing it with the records is so fun.

Might take a few years to get going, and watching Sageuk sometimes could even help with arcaic Korean (quite different and diabolically more complicated than contemporary Korean) but if you really have a strong interest in Korean history, that'd be the best way. Haven't really been satisfied with anything I read in English about Korean history. And well, a lot of things can't really be translated fairly unless you use a lot of romanization along with literal translation. I mean, how the hell do you translate Goryeo title names? There's no standard so you can just generalize but can't beat Hanja explaining you what he's doing with 4-5 characters. Otherwise Shin Don would become things like First Ranked Chancellor Controlling the Land Reform Law's Obedience... ㅋㅋ