Amnok River Flows

Description: They called him Mireuk Korean for Maitreya the future incarnation of Buddha born to save us all from oblivion In the Later Three Kingdoms period that was the moniker attached to Gung Ye one of the biggest names to eventually pave the way at his expenses for the birth of Goryeo But I guess Lee Mi Reuk s or if you prefer the slightly sinicized version of his name Li Mirok parents didn t have such grandiose plans when they gave him that name Born into a family of noble literati Lee witnessed the disintegration of that Joseon and the following Korean Empire which had held strong for five centuries finally collapsing in the name of Japanese imperialism Unable to find his voice in the increasingly changing colonial Korea of the 1920s young Li crossed the famous river dividing the Korean peninsula from Manchuria the Amnok Yalu as they spell it on the other side and set sail for what he considered the promised land Europe What he found wasn t exactly a paradise considering his new home away from home was the same Germany which would soon begin the path to the Gro deutsches Reich better known as the Third Reich with the infamous Fuhrer Adolf Hitler on top But what Li Mirok managed to do was impressive his memoirs Der Yalu Flie t where he narrated stories of his childhood and all the peaceful atmosphere which painted his early days was one the biggest literary shock in Germany at the time enough that parts of the novel were added to German textbooks giving him a place in the pages of history The first co production between Korea and Germany made to celebrate the 125th year of diplomatic relations between the two countries Der Yalu Flie t is not only a very faithful adaptation of the original the first episode is more or less the novel s content while the remaining two talk about the rest of Li s life in Germany but also a throwback to the great period dramas of the early to mid 90s like Kareisky and Eyes of Dawn Its slow paced and poetic prose might feel out of place in today s K drama industry so preoccupied with shallow glitz and glamour but it s with substance and narrative fundamentals that this drama succeed on almost all accounts as one of the best overlooked gems of the year

Country:  Korean

Released: 2008

Genre: Drama

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