Yoo Min-woo's first love was Soh Eun-hye. No love was greater than the love between these two...until Eun-hye get's into a car accident. Eun- hye dies leaving one thing left behind - her heart. Shim Hye-won has suffered from a terrible heart disease ever since childhood. Miraculously she finds that she will be obtaining a heart from a donor, Soh Eun-hye.Suffering from the pain of a heartache, Min-woo goes to Paris to study but the memories of Eun-hye still rest in his heart. When he returns to Korea, fate takes a turn and brings Hye-won and Min-woo together. When the two first meet, Hye-won's heart, oddly beats faster when she is around Min-woo.Park Jung-jae is Hye-won's boyfriend. Park Jung-ah is Jung-jae's sister and she meets Min-woo in Italy and falls for him. Hye-won doesn't know why or what she feels when she's with Min-woo and Min-woo feels guilt toward Eun-hye, because the feeling of love rises once again as he continues to see Hye-won.Summer Scent is a drama about how people that are in love should follow their HEART and not the people surrounding them for TRUE LOVE brings happiness to a person.
... View MoreI normally dislike these ridiculous "Hallyu" (Korean Wave) dramas because of their over-the-top melodramatic nature, but I just finished viewing the final installment of "Summer Scent" starring Son Ye-jin in the female lead and I'd be lying if I said that I was not completely captured by the sight of Miss Son's impossibly lovely facade. One look at those soft, ideally feminine Asian facial features and one moment of listening to her alluring female voice was all it took to melt me. I'm glad that one of the local Korean-language cable TV channels here in my part of the Eastern United States decided to broadcast this series, for I may never have discovered her otherwise. The drama itself is probably average or somewhat above average -- it revolves around a love triangle involving Shim Hye-won (Miss Son), a young woman who received a heart transplant and who struggles to emerge out of a sickly childhood to live a normal life and experience the normal range of human experiences and emotions, such as true love. Someone get the tissue boxes ready, 'cause tears are gonna be a-flowin' on both sides of the screen.What may set this drama apart is the beautiful rustic South Korean scenery in which some key scenes are set and the wide range of stunning appearances that Son Ye-jin adopts throughout this drama. She's a pretty and energetic schoolgirl one minute, a sweet young maiden in conservative dress wandering in the woods the next, and a darling bride-to-be at yet another instance. The combination of breathtaking natural scenery and youthful smashing girl can indeed be a potent and poignant one from a cinematographic point of view. The musical score of the series is somewhat impressive, I must say, and merges harmoniously with the theme of the drama and the scenes in which the music is played. Even when the action in the series becomes dull, redundant, and excessively emotional, the mere chance to gaze at Miss Son washes away all other concerns about the drama. If you want to see what a comely and pleasant goddess from the Orient should look like, check out "Summer Scent" and fixate on the uber-attractive Son Ye-jin as Shim Hye-won for all 20 episodes. You won't regret it -- she's the "purdiest" li'l thing this humble Southern boy has ever seen.
... View MoreYeo-leum-hyang-ki, also known as Summer Scent, is a 20 esp mini-series from South Korea.Basic plot: A young woman, Hye-won, has a life-saving heart transplant after many years of failing health. After her recovery, her personality begins to change, and she develops a passion for life and an optimism that was denied her prior to the operation. She is involved with a young man, Jung-jae, who has been her sweetheart since high school, and things are looking good for her.A young man, Min-woo, loses the love of his life, Eun-hye, in a car accident on what appears to be his wedding day. Unable to get over her, he leaves the country to study architecture in Italy. A couple of years later, he returns to Seoul to try and pick up the threads of his life.Fate intervenes. The two have a chance meeting on a nearby island when Hye-won, there to photograph wild flowers (she is a florist) is injured in a fall, and Min-woo hears her calls for help. Because she cannot walk properly, the two end up stranded there by approaching night and bad weather. They are forced to spend the night in a hut. They find they have a lot in common, a situation further exacerbated by the fact that Hye-won is strikingly similar to his dead girlfriend, from the words she uses when speaking, to her tastes and even the thoughts she expresses. Min-woo is both freaked out by and drawn to her. Hye-won in turn feels her heart beat painfully just by being near him.You can just about guess the rest. Of course, they fall in love. And of course, Hye-won's donor turns out to be Eun-hye. Therein lies the drama: neither party knows the history of the other, but it is discovered bit by bit, and exploited and used as leverage by Jung-jae, and also Jung-jae's sister, who has a wild and unreciprocated crush on Min-woo.Several themes are explored. And explored. And explored. To whit: Is the change in Hye-won's personality the result of her having a new lease on life after the transplant, or is it because she has taken on the traits of the donor? Does Min-woo love her for herself, or because she reminds him so much of someone he loved and lost? Does she, Hye-won, love him, or is it Eun-hye loving him through her, and she's just the body? Is her will her own, and does she even have a 'self' any more? And what of the long-time boyfriend who wants to marry her and will not give her up no matter what? And the sister who schemes to break them up? Stretched over twenty episodes, it becomes at times woefully repetitive. Supporting characters have little more to do than eat, connive and advance the plot. So why watch it? Two reasons: Son Ye-jin as Shim Hye-won, and Song Seung-heon as Yoo Min-woo. They are a match made in TV drama heaven. She is meltingly lovely and he is impossibly handsome. They bring a surprising depth to characters that could've been unbearable in lesser hands. Watching Song Seung-heon's eyes run the gamut from disbelief to fear to unbearable longing as he hears Hye-won speaking words he has heard before but coming from a different mouth, is a marvel of subtlety and beauty. This from the guy who made 'He Was Cool'!! Watch it and be stunned.
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