Winter Sonata

Winter Sonata refers both to the hit South Korean Soap Opera and its Animated Adaptation. It was broadcast on Japan's NHK and has been a major part of the 'Korean Wave' both there and throughout Asia.

The story revolves around the fated love between pretty Yuujin and brooding Joonsang. They first met when Joonsang transfers to her high school, with the secret intention of discovering the identity of his biological father, whose name his mother has hidden from him to the extreme point of removing it from his memory. Armed only with an old, damaged photo of his mother standing between two men (one of whose face's is burned), Joonsang is looking for one or both of those men, as possible candidates. He comes to believe that the father of one of his classmates, Sanghyuk, is also his father (possibly making them half-brothers); to complicate matters, Sanghyuk is Yuujin's friend-zoned best friend. Meanwhile, Chae-lin, the class Alpha Bitch, decides that she will conquer Joongsang's heart.

Despite (or rather because of) their different personalities, the free-spirited Yuujin and aloof Joonsang fall in love, to the chagrin of Sanghyuk and Chae-lin. But during a melodramatic visit to Yuujin's home, Joongsang discovers that she has a complete copy of the photo Joonsang has, with the burned face revealed to be the late father of Yuujin (possibly making Yuujin his half-sister). Now dubious about his conclusions, he decides he confess everything he knows to Yuujin on New Year's Eve, but before he can meet her, he is hit by a truck. The next day, the school receives news that Joonsang has died, leaving both Yuujin and Chae-lin in despair.

Ten years later, Yuujin (now an architect) and Sanghyuk (a radio host) are engaged to get married. But the night of their engagement dinner, Yuujin mets a man who looks eerily similar to the late Joonsang, and becomes so shocked and distraught that she fails to go to the dinner. The mysterious man happens to be Chae-lin's new boyfriend, an American-raised architect named Ming-hyun. Yuujin becomes greatly troubled, exacerbated by a series of coincidences constantly causing her and Ming-hyun to cross paths, and she fears that she is falling in love with him. Although the very open and easygoing Ming-hyun is nothing like the serious, brooding Joonsang, there's just something about how both men are so alike that Yuujin's heart simply can't let it go...

Needs More Love. Seriously.


 * Alpha Bitch: Chae-lin.
 * Bastard Boyfriend: Sanghyuk seems to love alternating between piling the guilt on Yuujin and pressuring her through her mother, not to mention.
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Joonsang
 * Bittersweet Ending
 * Beta Couple: Two of Yujin's classmates get married halfway through the anime.
 * Pair the Spares:
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Why Mi-Hee, Joonsang's mom, is against him and Yujin hooking up.
 * Childhood Friend Romance: With Sanghyuk.
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Junkyuk, who is very cute for a psychic veterinarian.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: Yujin, and how!
 * Ironically subverted by Joonsang.
 * Easy Amnesia
 * Evil Matriarch: Mi-Hee, to the extent to.
 * Gene Hunting: The reason Joonsang went to his mother's old town and high school.
 * Generation Xerox: Joonsang' mom and Yuujin and Sanghyuk's dads formed a love triangle very similar to the one their descendants have.
 * Heroic Bastard: Joonsang
 * Incest Is Relative: Who is the real father of Does it really matter?
 * Karma Houdini: Guess...
 * Love Dodecahedron
 * Love Triangle: Oh boy, where do we start!?
 * Triang Relations Type 4 --> Type 10
 * : Turns out
 * : When Yuujin falls in love with Min-hyung, she isn't sure if it is for himself, or because he looks too much like dissapeared Joonsang.
 * Luke, You Are My Father: Joonsang does this twice. He doesn't invoke this back in high school, but after the Brother-Sister Incest fiasco with Yujin, he demands a DNA test.
 * Foreshadowing: Every time Jinwoo brings Joonsang to the hospital, he gets questioned whether he is Joonsang's father.
 * Meaningful Echo: Joonsang gets into a truck accident, which leads to him forgetting Yujin. Later, as Minhyung, he gets into another accident..
 * Missed Him by That Much: Yujin misses her engagement party while wildly looking for someone who looked like her first love.
 * Parental Marriage Veto
 * Race For Your Love: Practically every time someone goes to the airport.
 * Scenery Porn: The Pilot of the anime contained copious amount of it. The original series wasn't lacking of that aspect, either.
 * Snow Means Love
 * Snow Means Death:.
 * Star-Crossed Lovers
 * Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Joonsang
 * Troubled but Cute: Joonsang
 * Sleep Cute: that's how Yuujin and Joongsang first met.
 * Your Cheating Heart
 * Sleep Cute: that's how Yuujin and Joongsang first met.
 * Your Cheating Heart