K-Drama Review: 49 Days or Pure Love (In Philippine TV)

Where in the heck of the universe can we find pure love? Does it still exists?

Lately, I became hooked with this new Korean soap opera aired at the Kapamilya network (ABS-CBN) entitled Pure Love (its original title is 49 days). The plot is unique, far from the worn-out and boring telenovelas shown in Philippine televisions with its irritating forte of rehashing old movies and adapting other soap operas.

With Pure Love, everything is different, my fascination towards drama is revitalized once again. It is a simple story about falling in love...about coping with the lost love...about finding a genuine affection...about friendship. 

Pure Love narrates the story of a beautiful and wealthy girl named Ji Hyun (Dianne Shin in Philippine version) whose almost-perfect life was shattered when she gets into a car accident leaving her body in a coma, it seemed she lived a life of perfection: lots of money, a company to inherit and a guy-next-door boyfriend she is about to marry. 

She was unaware with the deception and betrayal that slowly crashing her down, until she became clinically dead. There, the painful truth slowly revealed how her fiance deceived her and how her best friend betrayed her, but the accident had helped her identify the person who truly cared and loved her---her friend, Han Kang (Dave Han in Pure Love version).

When  Ji Hyun dangled between life and death, a scheduler came to her and told her how she could go back to life--- find three authentic tears within 49 days to be given a second chance to live --- but this mission is almost impossible to accomplish as it excludes the tears from direct family members whose love and affection are unconditional. 

So she used the body of the melancholy woman, Song Yi Kyung (renamed Ysabelle Song in Pure Love), to interact with humans.

While watching each scene, I could not help but think also how to find Pure Love. How can we gauge the true intention of a person? How can we know if it is real or just some sort of exploitation? do we need to die first and let our souls wander in order to search the people who truly love us? 

Sometimes it is very difficult to identify True Love because we kept on looking to other directions, we kept focusing our attention to someone whose attention is darted elsewhere---or to someone else.

More than a fiction, Pure Love tells us how difficult it is to find an enduring love in the world of make-believe, how painful it is to find out that the person we truly care is in love with someone else.

 It also tells us that true love, rare as it is, should not be feared off, once it is there, try to be yourself and fight for it because it only comes once in a life time. The most painful thing is to just let it pass when it is really there...never mind the humiliation...it is better to get hurt, after all, that's what life is all about.  

Though this Korean teleserye has many flaws and I did not like the ending (I just finished watching it on DVD because I couldn't wait the story to end in Channel 2), there were so many "kilig moments", the character of Dave Han (Only You) is just so amazing, I am wondering if there are still guys out there who resemble his affectionate character, it's just so fascinating to find out that there's really someone somewhere in this world who cared so much, whose love goes beyond eternity.

With Pure Love, I was able to discern important things in my life. Loving is one of the most human things to do and feel and should not be ashamed of...if it is not reciprocated, then just be glad that you'd given it away rather than kept it inside. Pain and suffering will teach people how to survive the game of life....and that's the very essence of Pure Love.