For my third Korean drama I chose to watch Spring Days, as it was the one airing in Chicago when I left for the country of its origin. If I recall correctly, the Chicago broadcast translated the title as Spring Day, singular, but I'm just going by what MySoju calls it. I actually watched a couple of episodes and got semi-into it, so I figured it was the last loose end I needed to tie up with the dramas. I understood the characters and their relationships to each other a lot better after seeing the first episode in its entirety, and it was a relief not to be stuck with my confused assumptions about who's related to whom and how.
Plot
It's hard to explain this story without giving away a few potentially surprising things, so if you plan to watch this drama, consider yourself spoiler-warned.
Eun-Ho and Eun-Sub are half-brothers, and both are doctors. Their father is also a doctor, and both sons entered the profession because of his expectations. Eun-Ho, the elder, is very responsible and decisive. Eun-Sub, on the other hand, hates being a doctor. His true passion is jazz music.
Dr. Pops got together with Eun-Ho’s mother through an arranged marriage, and he had Eun-Sub with a mistress. When Eun-Ho was ten, the father sent away his wife and married the mistress, producing an odd mixed family. Because of the unusual circumstances of how they came together, Eun-Ho and Eun-Sub have always had a strained relationship. While there is brotherly love between them, neither one can fully express it. Eun-Sub’s mother is also very insecure and prone to volatile behavior, which has scarred her son in many ways.
Now in his 30's, Eun-Ho decides to seek out his mother by himself, since his father has refused to tell him where she went after the divorce. His search leads him to his father's former teacher, a doctor on Jeju Island, under whom Eun-Ho had interned while learning his trade. Eun-Ho suspects this doctor knows where his mother is, and he agrees to work with him for a while in hopes of uncovering his mother's whereabouts.
This doctor has an adult granddaughter named Jung-Eun who lives with him and assists him in his practice. Jung-Eun is a woman who’s experienced a life of heartbreak. Adopted as a child, she was rejected by her birth mother when she met her as an adult. She also once dreamed of being a professional pianist, but her dream was dashed when she failed an important audition. To cope with the hurts in her life, she started suppressing her emotions and stopped talking altogether. Eun-Ho falls in love with her during his stay on the island and gradually helps her open up, finally inspiring her to speak again.
Jung-Eun's grandfather eventually gives Eun-Ho the information he wants: his mother's location. Eun-Ho leaves to meet her, but he promises Jung-Eun that he'll return for her. Eun-Ho and his mother, who works as a piano teacher, have a happy reunion, but it’s short-lived. When he heads home his mother insists on driving him to the train station through a heavy rainstorm. On the way there a truck swerves and runs them off the road. Eun-Ho's mother dies from her injuries, while Eun-Ho ends up in a coma.
Jung-Eun gets worried when she doesn't hear from Eun-Ho, so she goes off to find him. She learns about the accident, and travels to Seoul to see him in the hospital. Because she wants to be with him, she agrees to become Eun-Ho’s caretaker during daytime hours, in hopes that she can provide a warm environment that'll help him wake up. While Eun-Ho is in the coma, however, Eun-Sub develops feelings for Jung-Eun, unaware that she is actually his brother’s girl. While Jung-Eun remains devoted to Eun-Ho, she is charmed by Eun-Sub’s attempts to win her affection (which, I’ll admit, were a comedic highlight in a drama that was light on humor).
When Eun-Ho comes out of the coma, parts of his memory are gone. At first he thinks he’s eleven years old, because it’s as far as his memory goes. The doctors determine that he’s blocking out the trauma of his mother’s death, so his loved ones have to treat him like a child until his memory returns and avoid revealing that his mother is dead. Since he has no memory of Jung-Eun, he simply refers to her as “nuna,” which means “older sister.”
The situation gets further complicated with the introduction of Min-Jung, Eun-Ho’s childhood best friend who he asks to see in his amnesiac state. Eun-Sub and Jung-Eun track her down and bring her to see him, unaware that the two had secretly dated when they were older. Min-Jung had been the one who ended the relationship, but it was a decision she later regretted. She sees this reunion with Eun-Ho as an opportunity to win him back, and mistakenly believes at first that Jung-Eun is Eun-Sub’s girlfriend.
As with all dramas, the story takes several twists and turns before settling on a place to end, and to recap each one would be tedious.The main storyline though, is the love triangle between Jung-Eun and the two brothers.
Writing and Acting
To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed with the acting. It was passable, but it left me wishing for better at times. Of the three leads, I was most impressed with Ko Hyun-Jung, who played Jung-Eun. I wouldn’t say she was outstanding, but she did a very good job playing the somber, strong-willed, yet sensitive female lead. Jo In-Sung, who played Eun-Sub, was OK most of the time, but he occasionally could be a bit over the top. The actor playing Eun-Ho? Now he disappointed me. He had a good, likable character to work with, but in the intense emotional scenes it was always cringingly obvious that he was acting. Ji Jin-Hee, you are no Spencer Tracy.
To be honest, I thought the best performance was given by Jang Yong, who played Eun-Ho and Eun-Sub's father. He was a secondary character, but he always came through with the right emotions and delivery (at least, to my non-Korean-speaking ears). On a side note, I often wonder about the older actors in these dramas, given what I know about Korea’s history. The oldest of them must remember the Japanese occupation and Korean War, which were devastating to the country. I’ll bet they never envisioned a Korea where they would be making a living acting on television.
From the writing side, I had a few gripes. For starters, I felt the story progressed too quickly at times. I think (though I’m not positive) that there may have been points where we were supposed to believe more time had elapsed than they'd shown us, but the way it was executed didn't make that clear enough. Eun-Ho apparently fell in love with Jung-Eun almost instantly, and I think it would've helped if they'd spent more time showing their romance develop. While Eun-Ho was trying to help Jung-Eun talk again, the affection they allegedly felt for each other wasn't completely apparent, so it seemed completely random when they suddenly acted like lovers. Up to that point, Eun-Ho had seemed more like a friend in my estimation.
Then there's the whole issue of Eun-Sub and the fact that he's not cut out to be a doctor. We learn that he throws up when he sees blood and that he fainted at his first surgery. The obvious question would be how he ever got through medical school, but somehow we're supposed to believe that he made it to his residency at a real hospital.
Ending
I liked the ending to this one. The main storyline turned out the way I hoped it would, and the final shot had a big romantic moment that capped things off nicely.
As with the previous two dramas I watched, there were a few story threads (mainly concerning the fates of certain characters) that I wish there’d been some better closure on. Now that it’s happened for the third time, I’ve realized it’s typical for Korean dramas to shuffle some characters off into the background and downplay their futures. Most likely this is due to the fact that the scripts often undergo several changes and the writers don’t have time to tie up everything (see here for more details about how the production methods of these dramas are often less than optimal).
Music
Because Eun-Sub plays in a jazz band, there are several well-known standards included, such as "Fly Me to the Moon," "Cry Me a River," "Misty" and "The Girl From Ipanema." There’s no question that American culture has been one of Korea’s biggest influences when even jazz music has a following here.
There were several scenes at noraebangs (basically a room where you can do karaoke), but the only song anyone sang there that I recognized was "Eomeona."
Eun-Sub's ringtone is the song "Brotherhood of Man" from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Not that I’m the biggest musical theater buff, but I’ve never forgotten Glenbrook South’s production of that number for their variety show (which we could pick up on local cable in Glenbrook North territory), and I recognized the melody instantly.
There were a few scenes in public locations that had pop music in the background, and the songs I identified were John Mayer’s "Daughters," Maroon 5’s "She Will Be Loved" and one I’d previously been unfamiliar with, The Real Group’s "Substitute For Life." The third song on that list is definitely the best. In fact, it’s a spoof of TV dramas and their melodramatic storylines. YouTube commenters for the video say it's been used in several Korean dramas. Perhaps the creators of these shows have more self-awareness than we realize.
Then, of course, there was the main theme that appeared in every episode, often every 15 minutes. Unlike Lovers in Paris, there weren’t several recurring songs, mainly just this one. It got kind of tiresome hearing it over and over, but hey, it could’ve been worse. I mean, it could’ve been an unbearably crappy song, and then where would that have left us?
This has nothing to do with anything, but some of the background music reminded me of The Flying House at times.
English
I picked up several English words and phrases in this drama, and I kept track of them more scrupulously than I did with the previous dramas.
Among the expressions I heard: "Never!", "one more time!", "stop!" and "bottom's up."
The character of Min-Jung had spent some time living in America, so she frequently incorporated English words into her speech. Several were positive words such as “fantastic,” “fabulous” and “marvelous.” When learning of Eun-Ho’s memory loss she quoted the titles “Back to the Future” and “Fly to the Past,” as well as the phrase “time machine.”
There’s a scene where Eun-Sub’s mother calls the father on the phone, and she asks him what the English phrase is for when you’re longing to see someone. He answers that it’s “I miss you,” and she starts acting gushy because actually, she’d just wanted to hear him say those words. Yes, the father gets annoyed.
Other words and phrases I picked up: “Coma,” “IQ,” “pump,” “presentation,” “audition,” “jazz band,” “jazz bar,” “wonderful,” “piano,” “pianist,” “relax,” “gown,” “role-playing game,” “stress,” “trauma,” “perfect” and “CPR manual.”
Other Observations
The thing that stinks about watching these dramas online is that technical difficulties are not uncommon. In one episode there was a point where the audio, video and subtitles were all on a different page, and it was as annoying as you can imagine. It's hard to comprehend on a 30-second time-delay. There was also one video server that had ads pop up periodically, obscuring the subtitles. You could click the X to minimize the ad, but by the time you did you might have missed something.
It was pretty obvious when the musically-inclined main characters were performing that they weren’t really playing. In one episode Eun-Sub is playing his upright bass and walks offstage in the middle of a song. The sound of the music doesn’t change at all, of course. I guess the electric bass player in the same group really knew how to pick up the slack. Also, they showed a close-up of Jung-Eun's fingers when she was playing the piano in one episode, and the sound didn’t seem to match the visual.
They actually used clips from the movie Big non-diegetically. When Eun-Ho thinks he’s a kid again, he has a hard time believing that he’s actually an adult who lost his memory, so Eun-Sub tells him that he made a wish with Zoltar and was given an adult body, just like in the movie (which is an error, I might add, because “child” Eun-Ho thinks it’s 1986, and Big came out in 1988). They then show some random clips from Big, like the kid making the wish at the carnival and his reaction to his sudden adulthood as Tom Hanks. It was a little awkward, but I guess they had to explain it in case someone hadn’t seen the movie.
Min-Jung’s family name is Kim, which surprised me a little. In the other two dramas I watched, it seemed that only minor characters ever had the name Kim (Min-Jung isn’t one of the lead characters, of course, but she’s definitely in the second tier of importance). I’m basing my assumption on a small sample size, but my theory is that because Kim is the most common name in the country, writers feel it would make the characters seem lackluster to have that name. Perhaps it’s similar to why most main characters in American movies and TV shows don’t have names like Smith, Johnson, Williams, etc. They’re too vanilla.
I was surprised that this drama actually showed two characters in bed after having spent the night together. My understanding is that Korea is stricter about portraying such things in media, so it caught me off guard when I saw it. At other points in this drama, as well as in Lovers in Paris, there were moments when it seemed like they were trying to leave it ambiguous whether the characters slept together. I like ambiguity better, since it allows you to hold the characters to a higher moral standard if you so desire. Of course, it became a semi-significant plot point that the characters slept together, so I guess making it clear served a greater purpose.
There were several times when they showed Eun-Sub getting along well with the children at the hospital in spite of his own discomfort with being a doctor. My thought when I saw that was that he’d end up becoming a pediatrician, but it never happened. Was it an idea they ended up scrapping, or were those moments merely intended to show a different side to the normally-immature Eun-Sub?
The subtitler for the version I watched online was clearly different than the one who subtitled the version shown on TV in Chicago. There were a few lines I specifically remembered from certain scenes that I didn't see this time around. It makes me wish I spoke Korean, so I could understand what was actually being said without having to rely on the subtitles.
Final Thoughts
Of the three dramas I’ve watched now, this one was my least favorite. I’m not saying I disliked it, I’m just saying I got bored with it frequently. There were definitely some points where I was more engrossed than others, which was part of the reason it took me so long to finish it (I actually finished it about a week ago, but I’ve been putting off writing this recap).
Overall, I think Spring Days was a pretty standard, run-of-the-mill Korean drama. If you're looking for a drama to watch, there are probably worse choices, but I can name two others that should be higher on your priority list.
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