2008 is almost over and Hong Gil Dong is still my favorite kdrama of the year: hilarious and heart-breaking, politically fascinating and romantically swoony. If somehow you managed to friend me and yet avoid reading about HGD, it's a 24-ep period drama (though I use that term liberally as it is very tongue-in-cheek with both the sense of time and place and period drama conventions) starring Kang Ji Hwan as Gil Dong, an illegitimate slave son of a noble who is reluctantly drawn into a struggle against a mad king and opressive feudal system, and Sung Yuri as Yi Nok, a slightly dim but good-at-fighting, cheerful, and heart-of-gold medicine peddler with a mysterious and tragic past, as well as Jang Geuk Seuk as the supposedly legitimate and sane heir to the throne his mad half-brother occupies. And I found this MV, which perfectly encapsulates the manic energy of it all which first drew me to it:



And because I adore Sung Yuri, here is her kissing scene with Gong Yoo from One Fine Day, one of my fave kissing scenes in kdramas: