Lack of planning in Korean soaps.

"Dave's ESL Cafe" poster and fellow Jeonnam resident agentX put up an interesting piece from the Dong-A Ilbo about the extreme lack of planning that goes into making Korean dramas. The two-week-old article reads, in part:

No other countries broadcast more dramas than Korea. Perhaps because of Korea’s emotion-rich ethnicity, Korea offers all kinds of dramas, including morning, daily, weekend, Monday and Tuesday (Wednesday and Thursday), and special dramas. Despite the richness in quantity however, drama producers have to bear with substandard production conditions. A prime example is the so-called “page script” system that gives actors lines for the day’s shooting only. Sometimes actors and actresses do not receive scripts until after they finish their makeup. These “page scripts” arrive by fax or e-mail, page by page. Worse yet, they are sometimes transmitted by mobile text messages sentence by sentence.

Since actors and actresses have to act their parts without knowing what will happen next, it is hard for them to identify with their characters. Furthermore, they cannot rehearse with their counterparts beforehand because everyone is busy memorizing their own lines. Acting by “page script” often means they have to stay up all night, sometimes pushing them to breakdowns. For the producers, they are kept in the dark about the shooting location until the “page script” is released. Since this allows no time to ask for cooperation at the locations beforehand, producers sometimes damage properties on location, such as cultural assets. The biggest problem with “page scripts” is deterioration in drama quality because the flow of the story may be interrupted at each page.

Funny stuff. The assault the article mentions in the first paragraph refers to an incident between actor Yoo Dong-geun and staff members of an SBS drama. Yoo was pissed b/c the last-minute stuff had stressed out his wife, who also stars on the program. From a little piece on the incident and Yoo's apology:

Yoo was enraged because the scripts were turned in late, which exhausted Jeon. He visited the set and had a bust-up with two of the producers, Kim Yong-woo, who took four weeks to recover, and Lee Chang-woo, whose jaw was hurt.
Yoo went into hiding after the incident. Kim and Lee, supported by the SBS Producers’ Association and Producer Journal demanded that Yoo apologize and admit responsibility.