It has been over 2 decades since the release of this drama. This drama marked the advent of Korean dramas outside of Korea. It took the drama scene by storm at that time and Bae Yong Jun became the heartthrob of Asia.

While I had watched the Untold Scandal (movie) and The Legend (drama), and was impressed with Bae Yong Joon's acting skills and certainly his good look, and heard a lot of the Winter Sonata, I had never watched this drama, partly because of it 'low' rating on Mydramalist. With the large number of dramas to choose from, I typically do not pick a drama with rating less than 8. This time, I decided to give it a go - afterall, it was once a blockbuster and a classic.

I highly appreciated Bae's and Choi's (the main leads) acting and their onscreen chemistry in this drama, it had a very good cast and the cinematography was great. However, this story was not my favourite genre - the melodramatic romantic makjang with sobbing being the mainstay, but I had enjoyed most part of it. The entire drama would take you on an emotional roller coaster. And it is slow-moving as it worked to build up the emotions - given my impatience to get to how the story would develop, I clicked the forward button many times.

It had all the classic cliche of a makjang drama - love triangles, a scheming love rival, an upright patiently waiting fiance, unreasonable parental objections, unexpected death, dramatic return of an old flame, amnesia, attempted rape, flirting with incest, deceits, blindness, unwavering love, birth secrets and more. (Makjang = highly melodramatic, outrageous storylines that keep viewers hooked despite how exaggerated the stories become.) While all these can happen in real life, you have it all played up in one makjang drama. It played up my emotions so much that I was irrationally thinking: yah, just eloped together, who cared if you were half-siblings if you loved each other so much and had gone through so much together (although I did suspect that they were not real half-siblings).

Then, there was all these coincidences : the right / wrong person hearing what they should not hear, walking into the person you wish to see etc. I had encountered walking into classmates in countries away from where we had studied, seen incidences of being caught between 2 lovers, unexpected deaths, read in news about incest of siblings not knowing they were closely blood related. But they were few and far apart. Certainly the triangles were resolved quite quickly with little ramifications - there is a life to live, move on.

And definitely the moral of the story is: honesty handled with tactfulness is the best policy. Also, stop deciding for others what is best for them, let them decide for themselves. The obsessive, neurotic Kang mother in the drama and the two male lead characters certainly had lots to learn from this. If the mother was honest, a lot of anguish would have been avoided and certainly the accidents.

However, if makjang is your thing and you enjoy the emotional roller-coaster, then this is a must-watch for you. But if I rewatch, I do wish to find a version of the videos which are played in its original size and not stretched to fit the screen size of newer computer/TV screen, which makes it all blurry and the characters look fat.