One LINE Romance (2014)

Also known as: Love at first LINE
Country: China
Format: mini-drama in 3 episodes (16 min per ep)
Genre: romance, music
Cast: Lee Min Ho, Bea Hayden, Kim Bo Mi, Kim Kang Hyun
Synopsis: Min Ho is famous composer who is struggling to write new songs. Ling Ling is Chinese tourist who happens to meet with Min Ho without knowing who he is. Min Ho finds his muse in Ling Ling. Despite language barriers they add each other on LINE messenger app.
Rating: 3/5
So yeah, when you know what LINE is, then you understand that it is actually a promotional mini-drama for the app. LINE is widely used in Asia and you can just ask Yanne how famous it is. The drama shows almost every possibility of LINE usage and is great promotion for it.

This drama is gorgeous by its visuals as we have two beautiful leads, amazing scenery and as interior designer I am fascinated by their houses. But the drama is also lacking in many things, starting from the depth of the story and the fact that it is very difficult to understand what they are talking, because both of the actors actually have strong accent. Most of the drama goes without much speaking and just smiling and giving looks while hearts burst out of their eyes. Even though Ling Ling actually seems more confused and embarrassed about the situations because they are unable to fluently express themselves. If you happen to see their conversations then you understand that most of the time they just send emoji's and stickers to each other. I know that in my personal chats I use a lot too, but their amount of usage is giving a threat of cancer. They both know at least that much of English to speak the basic.

Min Ho is actually rather usual character-type for Lee Min Ho, who is used to play rich boys who are used to women and for that reason act cold until they meet some sweet naive girl who makes their heart beat. Basically Lee Min Ho is running on the old skin with just being his best looking him, especially because there are not too many lines to say. Good thing is that acting or not acting, he still is convincing in his role. 

Ling Ling on the other hand is shy and more conservative. She is a huge fan of Cony and I would take you up to a challenge to count all the Cony's in the drama. If you do not know then Cony and Brown are LINE sticker characters and they happen to be in a relationship. They are as big success in Asia as is Hello Kitty. Bea Hayden is Taiwanese actress who started from modelling and you can actually see that her acting is much much less expressive compared to Lee Min Ho. Most of the time I felt that Ling Ling was overthinking everything or not thinking at all.
There are also Min Ho's manager and stylist who have "undercover love" going on, but at the same time stylist acts childish and makes unnecessary jokes that hurt Ling Ling and Min Ho.
I must say that in the end I was actually expecting Ling Ling to grab her phone and just answer something on LINE.

As it is this short drama with no depth then there is also not much to write about, so I would rather like to talk about what is waiting for them after it as this drama is just the beginning of their love story. They are going to face a lot of problems as looking from Ling Ling's baggage she did not come to stay in Korea for too long. But of course the biggest challenge is the language barrier and the fact how little they actually know each other. It might be easy to say "I am now in love with that person", but in reality it takes a lot of effort to make it work for both.

Take it from the person who is living in a foreign country and being in relationship with someone from that country and in my case we both are being able to speak great English and I at least have some level in Portuguese. But that does not change the fact that there are still difficult times - times when I wish I would be already fluent in Portuguese and could express myself without any problem. In their case, they do not speak good English and they do not understand each other's language. In addition, we have no idea what is Ling Ling doing - we just know that she is a tourist and in China spends a lot of time in her room. So in Korea, she would just become Min Ho's girlfriend and live happily ever after? I know that maybe I am taking it too far and just should finish with the drama as it ends, but isn't it good to think a bit more sometimes and see that most of the time "Happily ever after" is just the start of the real thing?
 Rumors say that there is a lot of deleted materials of the drama as we can see different scenes from stills, but we can just speculate over it. I wanted to see it just for the visuals as I stumbled on it while crawling around the Internet.