Explain your username (and/or avatar).
My username is inspired by stories my grandmother made up for my siblings and me when we were kids. I used a version of it on a blog I started in high school, and it kind of evolved from there into my internet username for a number of sites. My avatar is from the DAY6: Even of Day music video for Where the Sea Sleeps. (DAY6 is my favorite band, and that MV is special both as a fan and personally.)
What is the first drama that you watched (or the first drama that made an impression)?
First drama was Playful Kiss. But the one that hooked me permanently was Boys Before Flowers.
Name a job or two that you’ve had in the past.
Straight out of university, I taught English in China for four years!
Have you ever lived a moment that you thought belonged in a drama?
When I studied abroad for a semester, I remember joking that I was staying in the Flower Boy Next Door apartment complex – seriously, every resident my roommate and I met there was suuper good-looking, and the ones we interacted with were all very nice, too. (But no, I didn’t end up dating any of them…)
What drama genres do you especially like?
I’ve had favorite dramas in many different genres, but I tend to gravitate towards fusion sageuk, fantasy, sci-fi, crime, thrillers, and youth.
What drama genres do you especially dislike?
I’m not the biggest fan of melodrama, slice-of-life, or medical dramas, unless something about the characters or storyline really grabs me. I also don’t enjoy horror.
Is there a drama character you’ve ever strongly identified with, and why?
Nobody Knows’s Cha Young-jin. I see a lot of myself in her, but I also see a lot of the person I want to be: strong, independent, and secure in herself without being callous or unempathetic. Thinking about her inspires me to work at being the person my younger self needed. (And hooray for introverted characters who don’t lose their introverted traits as “character development”!)
What drama character would you want to be?
Aside from the aforementioned… maybe Her Private Life’s Sung Deok-mi? An interesting, stable job in a creative field, friends with my favorite idol, and loved by THE Ryan Gold? Sounds pretty great to me! (But we’ll pretend that childhood friend/almost-like-a-brother/thinks-he-owns-her guy doesn’t exist, because no thank you.)
What was your major in school?
English Writing, which was a hybrid between literature and creative writing.
What’s a random skill you have?
I play the piano, though it’s been years since I took formal lessons.
Favorite non-Korean movie and/or TV show?
Probably Doctor Who.
Which Hallyu celebrity would you actually want to meet and spend an hour with?
If I could only choose one, I think it would have to be Hongjoong of idol group ATEEZ. The guy’s mind is a fascinating place, and I feel like it would be a really deep but chill conversation.
Which of the 7 deadly sins would be your undoing? (Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, or sloth.)
Definitely sloth. I’ve had to learn to set and self-impose deadlines, because if I don’t have a deadline, it very likely won’t get done – even if I want to do it.
Your favorite drama has an unholy alliance with your most hated drama and produces a mutant baby drama. Describe the plot.
The main story is set during the Japanese occupation. A baby is kidnapped and raised to become an assassin to carry out his surrogate father’s revenge on the political leaders who betrayed him. When the child grows up, he returns to Korea and joins an (allegedly) Olympic-bound basketball team to hide his true identity. But as he secretly carries out his mission, he becomes entangled with a female reporter who’s tasked with hunting down and exposing his alter-ego. During one of their encounters, she shoots him in the hand, not recognizing who he is. The bullet takes off his thumb. This forces him to learn an entirely new basketball technique so he can keep his cover. The show ends just as he is about to be unmasked and with a literal bomb hurtling through the air, threatening a second season that will never happen because literally no one wants to watch it.