Autumn in My Heart (2000) - Global TV – Korean and Scandinavian TV

Autumn in My Heart, also known as Autumn Fair Tale or Autumn Tale is a South Korean romance television drama written by Oh Soo Yun and directed by Yoon Suk Ho in 2000 and stars Song Seung-heon who plays Yoon Joon-suh, Song Hye-kyo plays Yoon/Choi Eun-suh and Won Bin plays Han Tae-seok and is also set in Seoul. As the Autumn in My Heart series was very successful in South Korea, it can be considered a pioneer in Korean melodramatic series, which launches a fever that is commonly referred to as the “Korean Wave”.

The story begins with two toddlers being switched at a hospital, and then jumps forward to the teenage years of the two main characters, Yoon Eun-suh (Moon Geun-young) and Yoon Joon-suh (Choi Woo-hyuk). They think they are children of a professor and think they are biological brother and sister up until Eun-suh gets hit by a truck and is in need of a blood transfusion. After the blood test results, they find out she belongs to Mrs. Choi and Shin-ae is the Yoon family’s biological daughter. They switch to their biological families and Eun-suh moves back to poverty. Many years later, Joon-suh (Song Seung-heon) goes back to South Korea as a successful artist. He goes back to his old town to visit his old friend, Han Tae-seok (Won Bin), who stays at the hotel where Eun-suh works as a hotel maid. Tae-seok falls in love with Eun-suh and annoys her until she is fired from her job at the hotel. Eun-suh and Joon-suh try to have a sibling relationship but they fall deeply in love. Eun-suh discovers she has leukemia, the same condition that killed her biological father. Know one is aware of her condition except for Tae-seok, who offers to pay for her treatment, but she soon falls in to a coma. She finally wakes up but is too weak to carry on with the treatment. Joon-suh wants her to spend her last days with him, so he takes her to his home. Joon-suh proposes to Eun-suh, they get married and dies as Joon-suh is carrying her around the beach where they spend their birthday together as teenagers. Joon-suh is too grief-stricken by her death and is hit by a truck in the same place as Eun-suh’s accident as a teenager.

Episode 4 of Autumn in My Heart includes; good acting as well as on and off banter between Eun-suh and Han Tae-seok. There is a lot of bright lighting as well as the colour white used in most scenes within the episode. The setting, fashion and the lifestyles are different to what we may be used to. The constant rain during the episode helps to reflect the mood of a sad moment of a love story of a long lost love. There are also no improper relationships with men and women before marriage.

The only two things I thought was bad about the drama, was that 2 hours were too long for an episode and the foreign language was hard to keep up with for a very long amount of time.