Collectibles

The long weekend holiday kept me busy and this posting took longer than usual… 미안헤요.

I think it started with ‘Autumn in my Heart’ and boomed with ‘Winter Sonata‘. Now, almost every single drama with potential to make it big, has them.

Collectibles… from Korean dramas.

At the peak of ‘Winter Sonata’, thousands of women went out to get a Polaris necklace. I know quite a few of the small jewellers here in Singapore were producing copies of it faster than you can say “BYJ” and at a fraction of the actual price.

A quick check through Yesasia and Perfect Love, a Korean jewellery website, revealed Korean drama/ movie jewellery galore. Obviously, some are more well known than others like the couple necklace worn by Kwon Sang Woo and Choi Ji Woo in ‘Stairways to Heaven’.

Some others… I was puzzled and had to crack my brains and try and remember. Did Ha Ji Won wear this in ‘What Happened in Bali? Hmmm.

Of course, it’s not limited to just fashion accessories. At one point last year, a very lovable pig made it to the ‘must-buy’ list. The pig from ‘My Name is Kim Sam Soon’ cost a cool US$70. The pig really tormented Ji Heon though. Hehehe! But how come the Sam Shik pig is more expensive than the Sam Soon pig?

And we can’t forget Alfred, can we? If you don’t know who Alfred is, read here

Many of these products are sponsored by companies and are likely to be expensive. For eg, the polaris necklace was originally especially made by Golden Dew for the drama, ‘Winter Sonata’. There were 2 versions being sold at that time. The more expensive one was 18k silver, with small diamonds and cost Kr446,000won then. Up till today, it is still being sold and at the last count, there are at least 4 versions in the market ranging from the ultra expensive to the very affordable.

Again, some things are beyond my understanding… like boxing gloves cushion from ‘A Love to Kill’. Huh? I supposed it is Rain related.

But besides these collectibles, there are a million other things in a drama that always catches a fan’s eyes. That’s why companies compete to be involved when there’s a popular artiste (read: Korean Wave artiste) involved. In the latest issue of Asta TV (Oct), there’s an article called Product Placement Revealed and it has some pretty interesting information.

Eg, car sponsorship can cost around 50,000 – 100,000. Perhaps it’s no wonder that most dramas will feature some rich man/ woman. Because seriously, don’t we all lust after such cars? Even if we can’t afford them, it’s still good to drool over them, even better if there’s a hot guy in the car. Who could forget Lee Dong Gun driving his red hot BMW in ‘Yurihwa/Stained Glass’. Gosh, the car was hot and he was even hotter then. Obviously, not many people can rush out to buy a BMW immediately but hey, it’s a nice dream, right?

And this being Korea, handphones are big and according to the article.. different phones/ brands are used for different age groups. Eg:
teenagers- SKY
early 20’s to 30’s – Anycall
late 20’s and above- Motorola

Hey, what about the 40’ers? I supposed there aren’t many hot stars that are above 40 years old. : (

‘In What Star are you From?’, (read my review here), there were fans enquiring the type of phone being used by Kim Rae Won.. which was a Sky phone (a CDMA phone with portable media player!) But wait a minute, I thought SKY was meant for teenagers?

And clothes… ahh… clothes… they are so important… Somehow though, all these actors seemed to be able to wear just any rainbow colours. Pink, purple, blue yellow etc? Just think of Park Shin Yang in ‘Lovers in Paris’. His suits really caught my eye and from there I found out about the brand Maestro. Hehe! I paid a visit to this store in my trip to Korea last year. But it is really expensive and I felt as if I should have been carrying my Gucci bag when I shop in there (not that I have a Gucci bag).

PPL isn’t limited to just products but also locations as well. But I guess I’ll leave that to another posting.

Sometimes, the products aren’t expensive. The scarf used by Bae Yong Joon in ‘Winter Sonata’ was bought for 2,000 won in dongdaemoon. Of course there’s the opposite end where the Frank Muller watch that he was wearing cost $?????? (I lost count of the zeros)

How to wear the scarf… if you did buy one. ^^

I believe the latest hot things are jewellery from the very hot drama, ‘Jumong’

Strangely, I seemed to have collected a large number of stuff…. Of course, my husband comments that these ‘collectibles’ are collecting dust….

Still, I wouldn’t mind having one of this: