Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Seoul Drama Awards, desperate self promotion

Desperate self promotion for desperate self promoters. I am in the middle of watching the 2007 Seoul Drama Awards, and boy are they a piece of work.
First of all, the logo for the awards ceremony is an abstract three legged bird/samjogo/삼족오, which happens to look like the logo for Jumong, one of the Korean dramas in competition.


Oh wait, the logo in the video from their website is exactly the same.

Second, the use of English is comically spotty. The Japanese winners all give at least part of their speech in English, but not a single Korean has uttered a word of English, except one of the hosts, who told an Australian winner who had his acceptance speech in his hands "We would like you to say a few words, please."
Third, the hosts (The guy from the Capentech commercials and the hostess of one of Korea's many exploitative news magazine shows) take time out between every award to point out that Korean dramas are now in international competition with dramas from all the top countries. A Korean miniseries beat out a British miniseries with Helen Mirren in it, and this fact was explicitly pointed out.
One of my favorite parts is when Lee Hyori and some dude present the nominees for some award, one of which is The Tudors, and Hyori just went off on how she totally loved the Tudors, but as for the rest of the nominees . . . dunno. The camera went to a Japanese "Hallyu star" in the audience in what appeared to be the Japanese section, and both he and the woman behind him had a sort of shocked, 'we are not amused' look on their faces.
Also, when they introduced 'foreign dramas' and 'Korean dramas' and every single example of a foreign drama they showed during that montage (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Prison Break) was an American show, and yet I don't think any none of those shows were even up for any awards.
To be fair, when the award show started I was convinced that every single award would be won by the Korean nominee, and they haven't gone that far. Way to show restraint. I guess its enough that now Jumong, Hwangjini, and all the other big dramas this year can honestly say that they've won awards in international competition.

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