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Full of vitality, vigor & inspiration. Love & passion apart from clichés - tender, true & touching
Wonderful. Just wonderful. A highlight among the KDramas of 2022.
I would rate it "particularly valuable". On all levels. Right down to the soundtrack.
The story has a stimulating, inspiring, at times downright thrilling effect, above all thanks to a brilliant Kim Tae-ri. She was 32 at the time of shooting, but effortlessly she plays a teenager with an ambitious dream of her own in times of adversity.
"Twenty-Five Twenty-One" is packaged as a teen story told in two timelines. Then and now. The protagonist from back then is today's mother. Today she is at odds with her daughter, who wants to give up her ballet career. In her grandmother's house, the rebellious teenager finds access to her mother's youthful past, who in turn also had difficulties with her mother at the time, yet courageously pursued her dream of becoming a fencer on the national team.
Romantic feelings are inevitable as the story progresses. Yet this storyline develops quite idiosyncratically beyond expectations, not least because of the two timelines told in parallel. Here, Love is shown more in the quality of an inspiring, encouraging, empowering 'rainbow', as the two protagonists so nicely state. It's a shame that you can't leave love like that, but sooner or later want to capture it, tie it down and pack it into a rather common concept of 'partnership' - with all the expectations and disappointments that come along with it...
"Twenty-Five Twenty-One" doesn't see itself as a Rom+/-Com fairy tale. From the start, it's not a fairy tale. Here the goal in life isn´t the happy-ever-after-family-life as such. It tells about what it means to have a dream and to follow it courageously, even if you wonder why at times. It talks about following your own precious heart, even if it might break the hearts of others in the process. It tells of passion. And of love in its very different shapes and sizes. "Twenty-Five Twenty-One" has its unique focus on love in a very tender, true and touching way - apart from clichés. It's about romance as a formative force in life, yet the story doesn't focus on glorifying romance.
In fact, the story is full of vitality, vigor, hope and joie de vivre in the face of one of the worst post-war economic crises South Korea has gone through.
In this respect, the KDrama also offers an explicit insight into the social and societal effects of the economic crisis of the 1990s.
(So here's a also side note on that context, if you are interested.)
-------------------- SIDE NOTE: ---The Asian crisis of the 1990s, the structural adjustment program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the nationalist sentiment of the people that paved the way for South Korea's neoliberal globalization---
In the course of the Asian crisis, the IMF implemented its structural adjustment (SAP) in South Korea from December 1997 to December 2000, which is still considered a great success today. Others say the rise is due to the people's disciplined national consciousness. However, the massive economic slump that South Korea experienced in the vortex of the Asian crisis is undisputed. Neighter ist the impressively successful recovery since 1999.
After international investors withdrew their loans in the face of the uncertain crisis situation on the Asian continent, South Korea fell into a balance of payments crisis. This is where the IMF came into play, putting together its most comprehensive rescue package to date, with bailout loans totaling around USD 58 billion. The condition: the country was to fulfill an SAP program for three years: In addition to a consistent policy of high interest rates, government austerity measures, complex capital market liberalization and the restructuring of the financial system were required.
As a result of the balance of payments crisis, numerous banks had already filed for bankruptcy or had been nationalized. Due to the IMF's high-interest policy, countless corporate insolvencies followed in the first three months of the SAP, including some Jaebeol conglomerates. South Korea paid the price of its economic boom of the past decades, which was founded on high debt and growth rates. Unemployment tripled. Gross domestic product fell by 6.7 percent within a year.
The impressive recovery that has followed has been possible at the expense of the general population. South Korea's rapid return to the top positions in the world market is a special case worldwide, which was probably achieved less by the SAP of the IMF than by the nationalistically highly motivated South Koreans. They have written the possibly questionable, but at the same time fascinating economic success story on their backs.
First: People became victims of far-reaching processes of rationalization and concentration. On the one hand, this led to mass redundancies and, on the other hand, to a more flexible labor market. Many of the demoralized unemployed didn´t even try to find their way back into the world of work anymore. Others were employed as irregular temporary workers (e.g. with less pay, security and rights). After the crisis, these ´irregulars´ made up more than half of the workforce and their share still is far higher than in other OECD countries.
Second: The benefit of a very unique South Korean nationalism motivated many people to be willing to make personal sacrifices: they consciously avoided consuming imported goods, while at the same time the export of their own goods increased significantly. The need for foreign capital for the upswing is actually estimated at only 5 percent. The share of exports in GDP increased from 25 percent in 1996 to 41 percent in 1998. 95 percent of the net inflow of foreign exchange during the lifetime of the SAP came from the current account surplus. This was made possible by a disciplined population, who did not try to storm banks in a mass panic, but were even willing to exchange their private currencies and savings themselves, including in large gold collection campaigns, in favor of the national reserves in the weak national currency.
The macroeconomic success that has grown out of this nationalist attitude at the expense of the population is enormous. Many lost their jobs and their fortunes. Nevertheless, the South Koreans mostly got involved in the Buy-Korean campaign and avoided imported consumer goods. I.E. incidentally, the market share of South Korean films in cinemas has increased in this context from 23 percent in 1996 to 50 percent in 2001. (An aspect that also gets its own space in this KDrama...)
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I would rate it "particularly valuable". On all levels. Right down to the soundtrack.
The story has a stimulating, inspiring, at times downright thrilling effect, above all thanks to a brilliant Kim Tae-ri. She was 32 at the time of shooting, but effortlessly she plays a teenager with an ambitious dream of her own in times of adversity.
"Twenty-Five Twenty-One" is packaged as a teen story told in two timelines. Then and now. The protagonist from back then is today's mother. Today she is at odds with her daughter, who wants to give up her ballet career. In her grandmother's house, the rebellious teenager finds access to her mother's youthful past, who in turn also had difficulties with her mother at the time, yet courageously pursued her dream of becoming a fencer on the national team.
Romantic feelings are inevitable as the story progresses. Yet this storyline develops quite idiosyncratically beyond expectations, not least because of the two timelines told in parallel. Here, Love is shown more in the quality of an inspiring, encouraging, empowering 'rainbow', as the two protagonists so nicely state. It's a shame that you can't leave love like that, but sooner or later want to capture it, tie it down and pack it into a rather common concept of 'partnership' - with all the expectations and disappointments that come along with it...
"Twenty-Five Twenty-One" doesn't see itself as a Rom+/-Com fairy tale. From the start, it's not a fairy tale. Here the goal in life isn´t the happy-ever-after-family-life as such. It tells about what it means to have a dream and to follow it courageously, even if you wonder why at times. It talks about following your own precious heart, even if it might break the hearts of others in the process. It tells of passion. And of love in its very different shapes and sizes. "Twenty-Five Twenty-One" has its unique focus on love in a very tender, true and touching way - apart from clichés. It's about romance as a formative force in life, yet the story doesn't focus on glorifying romance.
In fact, the story is full of vitality, vigor, hope and joie de vivre in the face of one of the worst post-war economic crises South Korea has gone through.
In this respect, the KDrama also offers an explicit insight into the social and societal effects of the economic crisis of the 1990s.
(So here's a also side note on that context, if you are interested.)
-------------------- SIDE NOTE: ---The Asian crisis of the 1990s, the structural adjustment program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the nationalist sentiment of the people that paved the way for South Korea's neoliberal globalization---
In the course of the Asian crisis, the IMF implemented its structural adjustment (SAP) in South Korea from December 1997 to December 2000, which is still considered a great success today. Others say the rise is due to the people's disciplined national consciousness. However, the massive economic slump that South Korea experienced in the vortex of the Asian crisis is undisputed. Neighter ist the impressively successful recovery since 1999.
After international investors withdrew their loans in the face of the uncertain crisis situation on the Asian continent, South Korea fell into a balance of payments crisis. This is where the IMF came into play, putting together its most comprehensive rescue package to date, with bailout loans totaling around USD 58 billion. The condition: the country was to fulfill an SAP program for three years: In addition to a consistent policy of high interest rates, government austerity measures, complex capital market liberalization and the restructuring of the financial system were required.
As a result of the balance of payments crisis, numerous banks had already filed for bankruptcy or had been nationalized. Due to the IMF's high-interest policy, countless corporate insolvencies followed in the first three months of the SAP, including some Jaebeol conglomerates. South Korea paid the price of its economic boom of the past decades, which was founded on high debt and growth rates. Unemployment tripled. Gross domestic product fell by 6.7 percent within a year.
The impressive recovery that has followed has been possible at the expense of the general population. South Korea's rapid return to the top positions in the world market is a special case worldwide, which was probably achieved less by the SAP of the IMF than by the nationalistically highly motivated South Koreans. They have written the possibly questionable, but at the same time fascinating economic success story on their backs.
First: People became victims of far-reaching processes of rationalization and concentration. On the one hand, this led to mass redundancies and, on the other hand, to a more flexible labor market. Many of the demoralized unemployed didn´t even try to find their way back into the world of work anymore. Others were employed as irregular temporary workers (e.g. with less pay, security and rights). After the crisis, these ´irregulars´ made up more than half of the workforce and their share still is far higher than in other OECD countries.
Second: The benefit of a very unique South Korean nationalism motivated many people to be willing to make personal sacrifices: they consciously avoided consuming imported goods, while at the same time the export of their own goods increased significantly. The need for foreign capital for the upswing is actually estimated at only 5 percent. The share of exports in GDP increased from 25 percent in 1996 to 41 percent in 1998. 95 percent of the net inflow of foreign exchange during the lifetime of the SAP came from the current account surplus. This was made possible by a disciplined population, who did not try to storm banks in a mass panic, but were even willing to exchange their private currencies and savings themselves, including in large gold collection campaigns, in favor of the national reserves in the weak national currency.
The macroeconomic success that has grown out of this nationalist attitude at the expense of the population is enormous. Many lost their jobs and their fortunes. Nevertheless, the South Koreans mostly got involved in the Buy-Korean campaign and avoided imported consumer goods. I.E. incidentally, the market share of South Korean films in cinemas has increased in this context from 23 percent in 1996 to 50 percent in 2001. (An aspect that also gets its own space in this KDrama...)
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