The seventeenth drama goes to You Are My Destiny 너는 내 운명. It's also my first daily drama. It aired Monday through Friday for twenty minutes, totaling to 178 episodes. Many people who watched this drama, were watching it because of who the main female lead. Im Yoon Ah (usually seen stylized as YoonA) is a member of the popular girl group SNSD/Girl's Generation. You Are My Destiny is the first drama that stars her as the main lead. As both a drama addict and an absolute SNSD fanboy, it seemed pretty necessary to check this drama out.
Jang Saebyuk (Im Yoon Ah) is an orphaned girl who tries to live life to the fullest after she receives an eye cornea transplant. Saebyuk finds out that she received her eye cornea transplant from Kim Na Young, who was the same doctor that took care of her when she became blind. As with most organ donations, Nayoung had already passed away in a car accident after returning from a trip to Africa. Nayoung's father had found out, but couldn't break the news to his wife because of her already high blood pressure. After Saebyuk's surgery, she decides to thank the Kim family. However, by doing so, she accidentally reveals the tragic news. Despite much opposition early on, Saebyuk slowly becomes closer to the Kim family. Saebyuk also meets Kang Hose (Park Jae Jung) who is the manager of Lohas, a company designing kitchen sets. Nayoung's twin brother Taepoong dislikes Hose very much because both his parents worked for Hose's family, his father as a chauffeur and his mother as the maid. Although Hose is engaged to Taepoong's cousin Soobin later, Hose finds himself attracted to Saebyuk's bright personality. However, a number of people reject the idea of Hose and Saebyuk being together.
Watching a drama with 178 episodes also means watching 177 cliffhangers. At times, the cliffhangers were so good that I ended watching several episodes in a row. However, there were other times where the episodes felt slow and thus I only watched one episode for the day. Having watched sixteen dramas in the more standard format of 16 or 20 episodes, a daily drama was a very interesting change of pace. In a daily drama, there are various different arcs, similar to a manga. Also, since the length of the drama is significantly longer, the love story is extended a lot more, giving more time for development. It also means that relative to shorter dramas, these daily dramas are more plausible. The drawback to such long time for character development means that any characters that give off a detestable personality, remain that way for at least a good 20 episodes. This drama also really brings out the issue of social status with regards to dating and marriage. It seems no matter how great a person is, his or her social status and whom their family members are, are too important to ignore. This issue, of course, is actually very important in East Asian cultures. Still, I couldn't help but feel bad for Saebyuk who goes through so many unnecessary obstacles throughout a single lifetime. Nevertheless, one thing I really enjoyed was Saebyuk's dream to become an interior designer, specifically designing kitchens. From the perspective of the drama, the work of an interior designer seemed interesting and quite possibly really fun. Of course, I'm still debating if it's because I studied engineering and pretty much anything is seemingly more interesting.
As with a number of daily dramas, the soundtrack isn't all too impressive. Given a general time frame of about 20 minutes per episode, there are very few scenes where any two characters are just sitting around thinking about something with a song from the soundtrack playing fully in the background. Nevertheless, I'll still point out the songs. The main theme is "I Like It 그대 좋아" by Yang Sun Mi. It is a nice light song that is appropriate to the feel of the drama.
You Are My Destiny is overall a very enjoyable drama. However, given the length of the drama, some should probably think over whether or not they would be willing go through with watching the entire series. Some parts of the drama seem like they can be skipped, but I suggest that episodes should not be skipped in order to maintain the flow of the story. I can guarantee that most of the people who finished this drama completely were most likely SONEs like myself (SNSD's official fan members). In fact, I think that anyone who claims to be a fan of SNSD's YoonA, should watch You Are My Destiny. The drama fully captures her abilities as an upcoming actress, as it showcases so many different facial expressions. Even if someone is not a fan to begin with, this drama can easily make anyone a YoonA fan. Also, if someone is interested in YoonA's future work in acting, it's best to start right at the beginning with You Are My Destiny.
