Love in Heaven / Dear Heaven – Korean TV Drama

I don’t normally watch Korean TV drama, or any TV drama for that matter. And I particularly hate soap operas that go on for years without any ending. But this particular one caught my attention.

Love in Heaven (or Dear Heaven, ????? / Ha-neul-i-si-yeo) is an 85 1-hour episode Korean SBS TV drama broadcast between September 2005 to July 2006.

Love in Heaven/Dear Heaven - Lee Ja-Kyung and Gu Wang-Mo

The main story circles around a lady Ji Young Soon (Han Hye Sook)who lived through a hardship of love and breakup due to disagreements from the partner’s mother. However, despite the breakup, outside the knowledge of everyone she managed to deliver a daughter, which she unfortunately had to leave due to mental issues.

To cut the long story short, the daughter (Lee Ja-Kyung, Yoon Jung Hee) lived with an evil stepmother (how typical?) while the lady grew older and ended up having a handsome stepson (Gu Wang Mo, Lee Tae Gon) and a daughter of her own with her late husband (Gu Seul-Ah, Lee Soo Kyung).

The main story revolves around Young Soon’s effort to bring happiness and get closer to Ja-Kyung while realising that she is her real daughter. The complication comes from the relationship between Ja-Kyung and Wang-Mo (which some may interpret as intersibling relationship, despite them not having the same parents), and what I perceive as Korean culture of family status in relationships. The evil stepmother was played quite believably by Park Hae Mi while other supporting characters including Wang Bit Na and Kang Ji Sub play very refreshing characters.

Main characters of Love in Heaven

My admiration on this serial is mostly on the inclusion of seemingly mundane and minor situations, such as little and mostly funny intermezzos involving the minor characters in between serious situations to stay away from overtly melodramatic themes, and the realistic ambiance by incorporating background noises (hospital announcements), pets as discussion points, conversations between restaurant patrons, etc. These make the drama much (and I mean MUCH) more believable and allow the viewers to relate with it better despite the almost-fairytale-like main story.

The chemistry within the main character’s love story is very believable, accompanied by frequent longing gaze and subtle smiles between the two as well as small jokes like lovers do. Overall the acting was excellent, and the casting was spot on. And these are not just on the main characters too! For example, there is something about Young Soon’s mother-in-law’s toughness and rude exterior that was so believable, that I couldn’t help but smiling too on moments where she smiled. And I felt pity and sorry on occassions even for the most hated and evil characters in the movie.

To add positive notes, over the 85 Love in Heaven episodes you can observe the characters evolve and change. There are transitions from bad to good, good to bad, weak to stronger, and acceptance from one character to the other. There are learnings and growing up, which put the drama more in line with life.

Some of the pitfalls, as with any drama, are moments in Love in Heaven which can be overdramatic (i.e., overacted, overexposed). There are issues which to me shouldn’t be huge issues, but in the story were exposed to overblown proportions. However, I have to say this is the first drama I’ve watched in which such occasions are few and far between.

What do I think about it? I am a fan of war and action movies. My idea of movies are 300, Valkyrie, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan. My hobbies are motorcycling, computer games and fast cars. Yet for this particular drama I absolutely love it. It may be impossible to find a TV drama which can take my attention off an online war strategy game, yet Love in Heaven managed to do that every night.

I am trying to avoid revealing the ending here, but watching the Love in Heaven ending last night was really a bittersweet moment for me. Probably the main ending for me is realising that there is no more of this drama waiting for me tonight as I’ve watched the last episode yesterday; Realising that some of the characters which I unknowingly and unintentionally came to care for quite deeply in the last few weeks aren’t waiting for me anymore.

Resources:
- More about Love in Heaven on DramaWiki