Remembering ‘Winter Sonata’ 10 years on

THE first episode of Winter Sonata went on air in South Korea, four months ahead of the highly anticipated 2002 FIFA World Cup in the country and Japan. Korea then, was still recovering from the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The KBS TV drama series however did not become a major hit until its release in Japan the following year. The cult following soon spread through China and South-East Asia. Even Yoon Suk-ho, the producer of the tear-jerker romance that pioneered hallyu (Korean wave) drama, had no idea what the series was about to lead to in Asia as a whole.

Thanks to Winter Sonata’s enormous popularity, its main actor Bae Yong-joon rose to heartthrob status, while its filming location, Nami Island in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, has welcomed more than one million visitors in the last decade.

The year 2012 is surely a milestone year for the history of hallyu, as the famous love saga celebrates its 10th year anniversary. Before it was aired in Japan in 2003, the drama series was just another popular TV series in Korea after a series of romance movies and TV dramas, including Christmas in August (1998) and Yoon’s first installment of the “Endless Love” series Autumn in My Heart (2000).

Culture critic Lee Young-mi, who saw Winter Sonata as an “extension of therapeutic pop-culture products to ease the collective trauma of the 1997 financial crisis in Korea”, said the show’s popularity in Korea and Japan must be understood separately.

“People rejected the ‘traditional’ kind of love throughout the 1990s in Korea by the younger generation,” said Lee.

“These young men and women were confident enough to have fun while not settling down or being too committed.

“But that confidence was totally shattered by the financial crisis in the late 1990s. By this time, we all knew there was no such thing as romantic, ever-lasting love. But we needed to hang on to those fantasies to survive. So what came out were movies and drama series that dealt with death-transcending love stories. The popularity of Winter Sonata in Korea was part of that.”

The show’s popularity in Japan was surprising to many. In 2004, then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, famously remarked: “Bae Yong-joon is more popular than I am in Japan.”

Japan’s most enthusiastic viewers were middle-aged women completely mesmerised by Bae, who starred as a caring and romantic ski resort CEO who would give up everything for his first love.

When Bae visited Japan that year, some 3,000 middle-aged women gathered at Narita International Airport to greet him. Despite 350 riot police being stationed there to guard the scene, 10 women were injured from “pushing and shoving” and hospitalised.

“I had no idea it would become so popular in Japan,” said producer Yoon.

Yoon, who last year produced the musical adaption of the show for the 10th year anniversary, quoted a Japanese critic as saying Winter Sonata awakened the little girls deeply buried in the middle-aged Japanese women’s subconscious.

“I think Autumn in My Heart was popular in South-East Asia as it dealt with social class differences as well as poverty. Japan, on the other hand, was the first country in Asia that went through modernisation and westernisation. The show probably touched on what these Japanese women left behind, as well as their fond memories and values that only exist in their past.”

Yoon is currently preparing for his upcoming TV drama Loverain, featuring young hallyu stars Jang Kuen-suk and popular girl group Girls’ Generation member Yoona as a young puppy-love couple in the 70s.

While the theme of the show resembles that of Winter Sonata – pure and noble love shared by young innocent souls – it will be interesting to see what the edgy and young duo will bring to the show set in the 1970s, Yoon said.