Mr. Sunshine - 2018 - 8/10
AKA - Miseuteo Syeonsyain // 미스터 션샤인

High stakes K-drama set primarily in the early 1900’s, a few years before the Sino-Russian War.
In the 1870’s, slave boy, Choi Yu-jin escapes a death sentence and goes to America.
Flash ahead a few decades, and Eugene Choi, Marine Captain, is assigned to the US legation in Korea.
The small nation is filled with would-be partners: the English, Russians, Americans, Japanese.
Seeking control.
Friendships and alliances ebb and surge, knives are drawn to carve up the country.

More than most K-dramas, the characters are nuanced and well developed.
Attention to detail is astounding. The series looks like a million bucks.
In line with historical events, the tone grows increasingly fatalistic and foreboding, and begins to deliver one emotional punch after another.

Several romances (this is a K-drama!), in between a lot of “history.”
The personages and facts are as shifty as modern history.
There was a Righteous Army, there was a war between Russia and Japan.
And Koreans fought desperately to retain their sovereignty.
Yet the globe has a dire history of the small oppressed by the powerful.