Goong (princess hours) review

Drama: Goong
Alternate Titles: 궁 (宮)/Palace / Princess Hours / Imperial Household
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Language: Korean
Number of Episodes: 24
Film Date: January, 2006
Favorite Episodes: 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 23
My Rating: 4.5/5

Main Cast: Yoon Eun Hye as Shin Chae-Kyung
Joo Ji Hoon as Lee Shin
Kim Jeong Hoon as Lee Yul
Song Ji Hyo as Min Hyo-Rin




Introduction/Description of Main Characters:
Chae Kyung: A high school student studying fashion design in one of Korea's top high schools. Her wants in life are simple, having fun with her friends, eating tok-poki, a new MP3 player and everything else that teenagers her age are interested in. But one thing sets her life apart from the rest though. Her schoolmate is non other than the Crown Prince to the present day Korean Monarchy, and because of a promise between the Crown Prince's grandfather and hers, she marries into the royal family and becomes the Crown Princess.
Lee Shin: The Crown Prince of Korea, he is to become King in the future. His dad is in bad health, so he is expected to marry just in case his father dies. Shin proposes to his girlfriend of 2 years Hyorin, but she kindly rejects him because she wants to focus on becoming a famous ballerina. As a result, he must marry Chae Kyung. At first he sees her as a clumsy clown, but later starts to fall in love with her.
Lee Yul:The original Crown Prince, his mom and him were kicked out when his father died. They lived in England for 14 years, but upon hearing that the king is in bad health, they return to Korea with the motive to return the place of Crown Prince to Yul. Shortly after meeting Chae Kyung, he starts to fall in love with her personality, and harbours envious feelings to Shin as he feels that Shin doesn't deserve her. He is also aware of the fact that if his own father had not passed away, HE would have been Chae Kyung's husband. It is because of this that he assists his mother in the attempts to bring Shin down and reinstate himself as the future King of Korea.
Hyo-Rin:A dedicated ballerina aimed at reaching her goal to be a world-wide famous ballerina, it is because of this that she rejects Shin's proposal to her, although they've been secretly going out for 2 years. But shortly after her rejection and Shin's marriage to Chae Kyung, Hyorin become jealous and starts to fall for Shin again, trying to win him over. Hyorin meets Yul's mom and when Yul's mom finds out that Hyorin is in love with Shin, she uses Hyorin to make Shin get dethroned from the title of Crown Prince.


My Favorite Songs: Perhaps Love, Stay (You and I are fools), Parrot


Synopsis: Goong is a story about love in face of tradition, politics, and intrigue. In the imaginary world, modern-day Korea is a constitutional monarchy and the royal family lives in the grand palace, the Goong. The story opens up with the sudden death of the reigning king. Faced with the decreasing popularity among the public for the Royalty, a grand wedding for the Crown Prince, Lee Shin, is decided to be the best publicity move to improve the image of the Royalty and at the same time prepare Lee Shin for immediate succession. The intended bride? The headstrong, awkward, and sweet spirited Shin Chae-Kyung that just happens to the same exclusive art school. Chae-Kyung was betrothed to become the next crown princess by her grandfather and Shin’s grandfather. Now another twist is added to this drama. After 14 years of living in England with his mom, Lee Yul appears all of a sudden. He is Shin’s cousin as well as the former Crown Prince. Everything seems to be going normally until Chae-Kyung’s optimistic spirit wins the heart of the internally lonely Yul. As the Crown Prince Shin and simple-minded Chae-Kyung’s relationship appears to be developing deeper feelings, a series of scandals are exposed to the public right after the pair was officially announced married. Will love prevail in a world of political pressures and martial hardships? Or will being in the spotlight of the public be too much for the newlyweds to endure?



Review: I highly anticipated this drama because I recieved so many recommendations to watch it from friends and family. In the first episode, I was automatically addicted by the characters of Chae-gyung and Shin portrayed through Yoon Eun Hye and Joo Ji Hoon. Someone watching this drama for the first time might have the impression that this is one of those old fashioned dramas, but in fact, it's a very modern one - even the setting is in the year 2006! Although this drama started out funny and quite hooking, it became a little boring and sometimes I think the writers added some parts that weren't at all necessary. For example, the first half of the whole drama wasn't that interesting to me and it just seemed like they were trying to find something to do to fill up all that space. Fortunately, starting at episode 12, I finally saw the relationship between Chae-gyung and Shin growing and becoming deeper, and that's when this drama finally got me interested. All the episodes following episode 12 were very good and the cute moments that I had anticipated finally came! (If you see my favorite episodes above, then watch those episodes and you'll see all the cute scenes I was talking about!) I especially LOVED episode 16 and episode 23. :) Those were very good. This drama had good morals and values in it, like family, comparing Chae-gyung's poor yet warm family to Shin's rich yet cold family. It also tackled difficult situations in life like revenge and loneliness. Although this drama started out dull, the end result was very much worth it! And that's the reason why I gave it the rating it deserved. If you like those especially cute dramas despite the number of dull parts in it, then I recommend this one! This is one of my FAVORITE dramas. :D So it's worth watching. AND, even after it was long done, I was still really sad because it was over. :( Like, I don't want the to make a sequel because it's probably going to be horrible, but I wish the drama didn't end. Haha but I think I'm over it now. Normally it just takes me one day to get over a normal drama. But this one doesn't seem normal...because it took me like ONE WEEK. And that's longer than one day....so yeahh. Watch it! I liked it, I bet you would too!

~Source for character descriptions and synopsis: http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Goong, http://www.spcnet.tv/Korean-Dramas/Princess-Hours-Goong-review-r1307.html