Personal Taste (Korean, Drama)

I really wanted to see this drama for a long while, and finally was able to do it. And as expected this drama was something that took my heart.
A really romantic and funny and entertaining story.

The only problem is that I am not really a fan of the lead actress Song yi-jin. I have watched a bunch of films of her, and something prevents me from liking her, even though she is one of the most loved actresses in Korea. So for me the only flaw in the dram is her, the actress. But that flaw is covered by the actor, Lee Min-ho. Loved the actor. And I know you all will like him too...It's worth to watch the drama to just look at him.
Anyway enough with the actors.

The funny side of the drama is really well. We can't help laugh at times. And the romantic side is too cute that we will fell like smiling. And the suspense and mystery side will give us rising heartbeats in fear and sweat. I was literally biting my fingernails and sitting too close to the screen when the 'secret of sangoje' (will explain in the story synopsis) was going to uncover. That part was so rocking that it takes the drama to another level.

This is a dram that you shouldn't miss.

The drama has another name - 'Personal Preferences'.

Technical details : The drama is of 16 episodes  and each episode is of 1 hour duration. It might be difficult to find this in torrent, so try 'asia-torrents' instead.

Characters :

Jeon Jin-ho : A young architect. He is really handsome, and has every skill, and is almost perfect in every way. The only flaw is that he can be a bit self conceited. He has a troubled past and his father is dead. So he has yet only devoted himself to studies and try his best to succeed. In his own words, he has been running towards success with all his might that he didn't have time for anything else.

Park Gae-in : A furniture designer. She likes to live a rouge life and spread things around and doesn't like to be clean much. Yet she is simple in mind, and while in love she will lose her self-respect and will do anything for the guy and will never fight with the guy for anything. And for this reason she is taken grated by guys. Gae-in lives alone in the house named 'sangoje' made my her famous architect dad. Her mother died when she was too young, and for some reason her father doesn't interact with her much, and avoids her or scold her a lot.

Han Chang-Ryul : Another young architect. He is Gae-in's ex-boyfriend, and Jin-ho's rival. His father is the reason for Jin-ho's father's death. And hence Jin-ho can't stand Chang-ryul. Chang-Ryul ends up making mistakes but he originally is not so bad when it comes to heart. He is a bit bullied by his father and made to obey his father.

Kim In-hee : She was Gae-in's best friend, and room-mate until she steals Gae-in's boyfriend, Chang-ryul. In-hee's parents died when she was young, and Gae-in took In-hee to her home and gave her shelter. And for the last 10 years In-hee was living with Gae-in and had been her best friend. But secretly In-hee always was a bit jealous of Gae-in who has house and parents, and for the fact that she has to get favours from Gae-in to live. So in the end In-hee ends up hating Gae-in.
Basically In-hee is this stories Negative character, and we will really hate her character.

Lee Young-sun : Another best friend of Gae-in. She is married to a police-man and have a 5 or 6 year old kid. She works as an advertisement  photographer for an on-line mall. She is a very lively and positive-thinking woman, and is funny at times. Gae-in tells Young-sun everything and they are really best friends. She gets angry at people who hurt Gae-in and try to protect her.

Noh Sang-jun : Jin-ho's assistant. Jin-ho calls him 'hyong' (brother) and is very close to him. He is very lively person, and too funny at times. Has a very significant and funny role in the drama.

Kim Tae-hoon : Jin-ho's family friend, and a co-worker. He is younger than Jin-ho and hence calls him 'hyong' and tails around Jin-ho and Sang-jun all the time. He is really in love with Jin-ho's self proclaimed fiancée Hay-mi, and hence even though he may lose her, he tries his best to make Jin-ho accept Hay-mi.

Han Yoon-sub : Han Chan-Ryul's father and the chairman of MR construction firm, which was originally found my Jin-ho's dad. Han Yoon-sub was originally a subordinate worker of Jin-ho's father, but then he stole the papers of MR firm and became the chairman, and caused the death by heart failure of Jin-ho's dad.
He is evil and manipulative and selfish even now, and will try everything to get things in his way.

Jeon Jang-mi : Jin-ho's mother. Since she had a troubled past with Han Yoon-sub, she really hates him, and can't even stand his presence. She doesn't even want to have any contact with him or his son, and hates Gae-in at first because of her past with Chang-ryul.

Na Hye-mi : She declared herself to be Jin-ho's fiancée when she was 7 years old, and has been behind Jin-ho since then. Jin-ho doesn't have any feelings for her, but since Hye-mi is really childish she doesn't want to understand that and always keeps on insisting to be Jin-ho's love.

Director Choi : Director Choi is the director of an Art Gallary, and is a really serious and refined person. A personality which you will fell like respecting. He doesn't believe in being manipulated in any way, and he doesn't take official decisions based on greed, favorism, or any other kind of unfair measures.
He is a homosexual, and have feelings for Jin-ho.

Park Chul-han : Gae-in's father and a famous architect. But he stopped designing and now is a professor. He designed the house names 'sangoje' where Gae-in lives now, and that is his most powerful design. yet after his wife passed away, he stopped designing... and started to avoid his daughter, maybe because he was really in love with his wife and her loss was a terrible blow for him. Or is there another reason???

Story Line :
Gae-in lives in her home named 'sangoje' which is a traditional Korean house (hanok) designed by her famous architect father. She is a furniture designer and design furniture which apparently people doesn't buy.

Jin-ho is an architect struggling for success even when he as a lot of talent. Because his father's company was stolen from his father by Han Yoon-sub, which caused his dad's death, Jin-ho hates the Han family and tries his best to win against them, with his small construction firm.
One day, Gae-in and Jin-ho meets in a bus, where Jin-ho accidently grabs Gae-in's butt while trying to protect his architectural model, which ends up in a fight, and Gae-in breaks the model in the end.
The same day They meet again a lot of times, where jin-ho finds that Gae-in is his rival Chung-ryul's girlfriend, and Chung-ryul is as a matter of fact, marrying another girl the very next day.
Chang-ryul is trying his best to break up with Gae-in and tell her the truth, but simple minded Gae-in doesn't understand or listen.
The girl Chung-ryul is going to marry the next day is Gae-in's best friend In-hee, and In-hee insists to Chung-ryul to break up with Gae-in, and in the end Chung-ryul breaks up, but ends up not being able to tell her that he is getting married to In-hee the next day.
Gae-in gets sad and goes and get drunk, and her assistant Woon-ho has to get her to a motel.
On the other end, Tae-hhon, Jin-ho's co-worker who is in love with Hye-mi, is trying to challenge Jin-ho to an alcohol drinking competition, which if Tae-hoon wins Jin-ho has to date Hay-mi. This ends up in disaster when Tae-hoon pukes on himself, and Jin-ho takes him to the motel, where Gae-in is. Jin-ho removes Tae-hoon's shirt and tries to clean him, and then go out, when shirtless and drunk Tae-hoon runs out and grab Jin-ho and starts talking about rules of love and 'don't do this'and all. Gae-in see this and at once jumps in the conclusion that Jin-ho is a gay.
The next day, Gae-in ends up going to In-hee's wedding and finding out that Chang-ryul is marrying In-hee and the whole wedding ends up in chaos, making In-hee leave Chang-ryul.
A few days pass, and Jin-ho's company is in financial problems, and their only solution is to get the DAAM Art Gallery construction program, from Director Choi.
They learn from secret sources that Director Choi is interested in 'Sangoje', and want DAAM Art Gallery to be similar to Sangoje's concept. Jin-ho and Sang-jun begins to try to find more about Sangoje. And they find that it's current inhabitant is Gae-in.
At this time, Gae-in herself is in financial crises when her assistant Woon-ho, goes in to hiding after taking a loan on her house's name. And since In-hee moved out, she doesn't have a tenant to pay rent also...

That is when Jin-ho jumps in to action. He asks to live in Sangoje as new rental, because however Jin-ho and Sang-jun looks at it, Sangoje seems to be a normal Korean style home, and it doesn't have anything special to it, and they wonder what is it that makes it so special that it was famous and Director Choi is interested in it. Jin-ho plans to live in Sangoje and try to find it's secret.
Gae-in is initially really hesitant to rend the room to a man. But when her friend, Young-sun tells her that it is really best to rent the room to Jin-ho because he is a gay. (They both have mistaken him and Sang-jun to be a couple and gay).
So like this Jin-ho comes to live at Sangoje, and is really strict about cleanliness and makes Gae-in clean the entire house and all. But then when he finds out that Gae-in thinks that he is a gay, he finds it really disturbing and even try to move out of Sangoje. But due to his financial problems he has no choice left than to stay at Sangoje and pretend to be gay.

Slowly Jin-ho and Gae-in becomes friends.
And one night Gae-in gets drunk in a soju-stall and yells at a stranger that Jin-ho is gay, which gets heard by Director Choi.
Chang-ryul who is guilt stricken after In-hee leaves him, he finds himself drawn to Gae-in, but Gae-in is not yet ready to forgive him, yet there is a possibility that she might forgive him.

She asks Jin-ho to make her to a girl that every guy might desire to take revenge on Chang-rul. And hence like this the classes start where Jin-ho teaches Gae-in lessons on self-respect, patience, cleanliness, and table manners of women etc.
In between all this he falls in love with Gae-in...
Gae-in also feels really close to Jin-ho, but she can't fall in love with Jin-ho because she think he is gay. And this fact that she is falling in love with someone she is not supposed to love, hurts her and she gets depressed.
In-hee who works for Director Choi, and happens to see Jin-ho a lot, begins to feel Jin-ho is not a gay, even though Gae-in has said so. In-hee thinks Jin-ho is a good catch for her, and tries to pursuit Jin-ho in evil ways.
At this time, Gae-in gets a job in Director Choi's art Gallery to design the children's lounge.
In between all this, Chang-ryul propose to her again, and ask her to give him another chance. At this time, we find that Director Choi is a gay and has feelings for Jin-ho and that is why Jin-ho is always favoured by him. On this Chang-ryul gets agitated and he accuse Jin-ho to be pretending to be gay for manipulating Director Choi. But Jin-ho can't accept his truth as Director Choi and Gae-in were there, so he ends up saying that he is gay.
After that when Chang-ryul bad mouths Jin-ho, Gae-in ends up slapping him, which she has never done even when he dumped her and tried to marry her best friend.
Also at the same time, Yoon-suk, Chang-Ryul's father comes to meet Gae-in and tells her that if he knew that she is professor Park's daughter he would never have let his idiot son leave her. This agitates Gae-in.
She declares to Jin-ho that she is going to get revenge from Chang-ryul, and get together with him and dump him at some crucial point. jin-ho warns her that with her personality, she will fail taking revenge because she will start feeling sorry for Chang-ryul and will end up being with him. But when Gae-in refuse to not do the revenge  Jin-ho tells her that when he tells her 'game over', she has to end the relationship with Chang-ryul, ans she agrees.
But when she is with Chang-ryul, Jin-ho just ends up getting really really jealous and disturbed. Also at this time, In-hee is trying her best to get her claws in Jin-ho, and this makes Gae-in jealous.
Chang-ryul who investigates on Jin-ho discovers that he is not a gay, and that he is staying with Gae-in, this makes him angry, and he try to fight. But In-hee tells him that if Gae-in finds truth now, she will just end up going to Jin-ho because she is in love with him.So he remain silent.
One day when Jin-ho can't hold in his feelings any more  he leaves sangoje.
But the next day, Gae-in tells Chang-ryul that she can't be with him, and that she was just trying to get revenge, and that she loves someone else... Jin-ho hears this, and he goes to her, and tell her 'game over' and kiss her in front of Chang-ryul and In-hee.
Jin-ho's secret gets relieved in front of Gae-in, that he is not gay. even though she is angry a bit, after that she gets ok with it. And like this Gae-in and Jin-ho's love life start.

Chang-ryul accepts this defeat and wants only happiness for Gae-in, but In-hee declares that if she can't have Jin-he she will make sure that no one gets him. She informs Jin-ho's mother that Gae-in is two timing Jin-ho and Chang-ryul. Jin-ho's mother who hates Han family, doesn't want a daughter in-law who has anything to do with the Han family, and hates Gae-in at once. But Jin-ho tells her that he won't live without Gae-in and holds on to her.

Gae-in and Jin-ho are having a really lovely time together, and at the same time, as the financial problems of Jin-ho's company is increasing. His only option is to figure out Sangoje's secret. But he doesn't want to any more, because he doesn't want to manipulate Gae-in's feelings.
At this time In-hee finds the truth that Director Choi wants DAAM Art Gallery to be like Sangoje, and understands that Jin-ho moves to Sangoje for that reason. She informs Chang-ryul that Jin-ho is just using Gae-in and his feelings is not real, he just wants to find more about Sangoje through Gae-in. This makes Chang-ryul too angry, and he declares that he will get Gae-in back.
And on the top of it all, even though jin-ho is no longer intrested in Sangoje's secret, he stumbles up on the secret, and end up making situations that takes Gae-in in to the secret of her past that is both hidden and dangerous...
This whole situation goes in to a disaster...
 (I won't go to details of the Sangoje secret, coz it will ruin the suspense for you).
And also when Proffessor Park return, the secret of Sangoje becomes a problem  And also Jin-ho is misunderstood to use Gae-in for DAAM Art Gallery Project.
But in the end, after a few problems, things gets cleared out and Jin-ho and Gae-in gets together again, and Professor Park gives them his blessings... and Jin-ho and Gae-in lives happily ever after.

The highlights of this drama are the gay jokes, Sang-jun pretending to be gay, and Sang-jun and Young-sun's  friendship which is really funny and entertaining, and the romance of Gae-in and Jin-ho, and the time where they are a happy couple makes us watch those parts again and again for the sweetness of it all.

But the most prominent highlight is the secret of Sangoje...
It's not just the secret that makes it big, but the way it is presented. There comes a wierd eerie music when anything that concerns with the secret is exposed to either Jin-ho or Gae-in or us, the viewers, and that music creates a despair feeling in us... kind of like a fear. And that makes us mix in with the eeriness of the secret so well that we feel scared about...
That part is directed so well and written so well.

A bit irritating thing I found was that till the end Gae-in and Jin-ho keep using the polite formal tone to talk with each other and keeps calling each other formally as 'Gae-inshi', and 'Jin-hoshi'. Also they add 'yo' at the end of sentences when they talk, at least to some point they kept using 'yo'. (Yo is used for formal polite talks). Jin-ho uses the informal 'Gae-inaa', insted of 'Gae-inshi', two times in the show, and those moments bring-out love; and maybe that's why they use formal all the way, an informal loving tone only in desperate situations only. Still its a bit stupid to always address your loved one formally.

On the whole the story starts a bit slow... You might find the first few episodes a bit boring. But once Jin-ho starts to live in Sangoje, the story starts to get interesting  And then it keeps that pace, and ends up being super interesting at the ending few episodes.

The music and OST is ok, not too good nor too bad. (I said this coz Musical Dramas like Heartstrings, and You're beautiful have better songs than this).

But on the whole this is a terrific drama and is something that is not to be missed.

My Rating of this Drama : 9/10

My Top 10 Korean Dramas

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