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Fever over S. Korea’s hit TV drama gets attention of China’s military

March 22, 2016

KBS-TV’s “Descendants of the Sun”

BEIJING (Yonhap) — The growing popularity of a South Korean hit TV drama in China garnered unexpected attention on Tuesday from China’s official military newspaper, which described the TV soap opera as “a piece of great advertisement for conscription.”

“Descendants of the Sun,” the story of a romance between a chic-looking Army captain and a female doctor in the fictional war-torn country named Uruk, has been aired in both South Korea and China since late last month.

The TV soap opera hit a cumulative 1 billion searches on IQiyi.com Inc., the video-streaming website of Baidu, China’s top search engine.

The Chinese military newspaper, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, called the TV drama a “good example for military-themed dramas and movies.”

The drama “effectively delivers the national culture of Korea (to viewers) and vividly describes the image of the Korean soldiers,” it said. The paper then said that China too needs to take note of excellent actors and actress being fostered by South Korea’s entertainment industry.

It said the runaway success of the drama could inspire and act as a warning to do better for Chinese filmmakers.

Since it was first aired on Feb. 24 in both South Korea and China, the 16-episode TV series has been gaining huge popularity in the two nations as well as other Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.