“On Air” Draws Comparisons with Reality

The drama revolves around a newbie director, top screenwriter, top star and a down-and-out manager. Events like fights between management agencies, bribing the television PD, product placement, etc are evidently shown in the drama. Although the drama has taken extreme care to repackage the events, concealing the real identities of people and events that they are trying to re-enact but as viewers we can still figure out who are they hinting at. How many have you spotted?


SW Entertainment is SM Entertainment in reality?
Artist image rights, contract issues, violence against artists, power struggles.

Drama: Because of that contract with SW Entertainment chairman, Jin Sang Woo, Oh Seung Ah is treated as a money-tree and has to put on a fake smile and live life in a humiliating manner for the past five years. In this five years, she has understood the dark side of the entertainment industry and decides not to renew her contract with him. To avoid being pinned down by Jin Sang Woo into acting the drama, she uses every trick in the book to irritate screenwriter Seo Young Eun and ends up getting the violent treatment from Jin Sang Woo. When her contract is up, she arrogantly tears up the agreement in front of me and walks away from him, not even looking back once. Jin Sang Woo doesn’t give it up and so tries to right his humiliation by setting up traps to stop Oh Seung Ah from filming Lee Kyung Min’s “Ticket to the Moon” drama.

Reality: Although SM Entertainment focuses on the music industry and doesn’t have much links with the drama industry, “On Air” seems to be drawing comparisons with it against SW Entertainment. Besides long-standing rumors of stripping artists of their image rights and media bribery, there’s also rumors of Lee Soo Man, president of SM, inflicting violence on its artists which are spread all over the internet. Jun Jin and Andy of Shinhwa are reportedly targets of his heavy hand in the past.

The conflict between SM Entertainment and Shinhwa intensified on 1st May, 2003 when the latter declined to renew their contract and announced the termination of their five year contract 7 days later. In the same year, they signed with GOOD Entertainment and begun their new career. In order to continue using their name “Shinhwa”, leader Eric who belongs to a rich family reportedly forked out a huge amount of money to buy the name rights back.

But it didn’t end there. Before Shinhwa released their 8th album in 2006, a video of Eric and Jun Jin imitating people with disability was posted onto the net. GOOD Entertainment claimed that it was SM Entertainment who did that.

Although similarities are plenty, many netizens (net browsers ^.^) felt that “SW Company” was just poking fun at those management companies that only care about producing stars and much less actors/actresses.

Oh Seung Ah is Kim Hee Sun in reality?
Super beautiful woman, CF star, poor acting, not patriotic enough.

Drama: Kim Ha Neul plays Oh Seung Ah who is labeled as the “National Devil” in Korea. Despite her poor acting plus being labeled as a “fake” actress and having to rely on eye-drops for crying scenes, she still has thousands of fans to call upon. Every drama that she is in achieves ratings of 30% and above and is exceptionally popular in the CF world with advertisers. After signing on with Jang Ki Joon, she starts throwing tantrums as a top star. In order to calm things down, Jang Ki Joon goes to her home and hangs a flag outside, his reason, “Gwangbokjeol coming, I was afraid you might forget to hang it again.”

Reality: Beautiful star but no acting skills, these reminds you of Kim Hee Sun. Since debuting, she has been la belled as “Korea’s Most Beautiful Woman” and is the darling of advertisers and media. The number of products that she endorses is staggering, ranging from jewelry, clothing, household appliances, wedding gowns, etc. How popular is she? Well, she commands at least 3 million for a commercial.

But despite being in popular dramas like “Sunflower”, “Tomato”, she always plays the same role and that’s what holding her back. Everytime she takes on a new challenging role, it always ends up with low ratings and deemed a failure.

Outside of reel life, during Gwangbokjeol last year, Kim Hee Sun was criticised for not loving her country after being caught not having a flag outside her home. Earlier this year, she was also lambasted by newspapers for not fulfiling her voting duties as a Korean citizen at the 18th Korean General Elections, opting to stay at home to enjoy life as a newly-wedded wife instead. How would Kim Hee Sun have loved to have a manager like Jang Ki Joon in “On Air”.

Interesting point to note is that the Korean media loves to scrutinise celebrities for not hanging the flag on Gwangbokjeol when the day arrives and always does extensive coverage on it. As for celebrities like Rain, Song Hae Gyo, Kim Seung Woo-Kim Nam Joo couple living in the high-class apartments in Kangnam district, why do they always have a flag outside their homes when Gwangbokjeol arrives? According to the caretaker for their apartments, “When Gwangbokjeol arrives, the security guards for their apartments will hang the flags for each unit in the apartment.” XD

Prima-donna behavior hinting at some top stars?
Clues include talking arrogantly, throwing fits at any situations…

Drama:In the drama, top star Oh Seung Ah loves to do things that always lands the other party in an awkward situation and splashing coffee at people she doesn’t like in the same line. When she meets junior actress, Cherry at the hair salon, she started saying sarcastically, “Why, even pigs and dogs can be famous in this era…”. When Cherry rebukes back, “Are you finished?”, Seung Ah immediately splashes water at her face, “How dare you rebuke me?”

They meet again later during a fashion show where Seung Ah once again steps out to teach Cherry a lesson, grabbing her hair, telling her that she must bow when greeting her seniors. Many viewers were astounded at Kim Ha Neul’s portrayal of Oh Seung Ah’s arrogant and haughty behavior. It’s so real and convincing that it makes you wonder if there is really someone like her in reality...sccaarryy..

Reality: Although the Korean media has been pretty protective towards their stars image, you still get the occasional odd reports of prima-donna behavior from Korean celebrities. So Ye Jin refuse to let anyone take pictures of her during a fan meeting last year led to her being barracked by the Korean media. In 2008, during Kim Tae Hee’s autograph event, there were rumors of fans being upset by her demand of, “Only autograph, no pictures please”.

With regards to this, Song Yun Ah who has been in the business for 14 years said, “There’s one Oh Seung Ah among 10 actors/actresses. When I see people like this, I will find it to be very sad for him/her. Actually, our jobs is like being in a war, you have to fight for what you want. But some of them are just too greedy and makes others unhappy at their own expense.”

Good and critically acclaimed drama but low ratings
This was evident in the case of “Ticket to the Moon” which was an excellent drama story wise and a particularly challenging role for lead actress Oh Seung Ah. But it achieved poor ratings as another big budget drama starring Ha Ji Won (they just made this up) was in the same time slot. This has been played out many time in reality as the drama scheduling plays a big part in the drama success, ratings wise. Just look at “Spotlight” which debuted in the final week of “On Air” and suffered single digit ratings. They have to face “Iljimae” next week and is almost facing the same fate as “Ticket to the Moon”.

Sex Tape Scandal
Drama: High school student, Oh Seung Ah comes to SW Entertainment and in her 1-on-1 audition, Jin Sang Woo asks her to strip for the camera. She however couldn’t overcome this and decides to abort her attempt. Another management agency boss chances upon this but didn’t finish viewing the whole tape and thus thought otherwise. He threatens Jang Ki Joon and later leaks the news to the media, causing a great deal of distress to Seung Ah.

Reality: There are many instances of this in the entertainment industry where management agencies uses these “tapes” to control their artists, for money or revenge. Regardless of whether it’s real or fake, most often, these scandals will result in artists suffering a great deal of distress, having to step out of the limelight temporarily and hope that it dies off eventually.

Many felt that Oh Seung Ah’s case was hinting at artists like IVY (2008), Kwon Sang Woo (2006), Lee Tae Ran (2005) and Baek Ji Young (2001).

Female Stars Commiting Suicide
Drama: Yang So Eun (Min Seo Hyun) was once a top star who only wanted to lead a normal life which her manager Jin Sang Woo agrees. But he doesn’t realize that So Eun actually wanted to be together with Sang Woo himself. On So Eun’s birthday, she comes looking for him but he treats her coldly. He was only keeping his love for her under wraps and because he doesn’t explain it clearly, So Eun finds herself feeling miserable and eventually ends her life.

Reality: There has been many cases in recent years where female artists end their young lives in the prime of their careers (i.e. Jang Ja-yeon-Boys over Flowers) .Was it because of depression (Lee Eun Joo)? Anti-fans (U:Nee)? Too much pressure (Jung Da Bin)? Well, no one knows and it would probably remain a mystery to us forever. T_T

Unglamourous Side of the Entertainment Industry
There are many materialistic people and greedy management companies. To get ahead fast or bag that leading role, female stars will throw themselves at rich businessmen, high ranking officials. And if that fails, management agencies would resort to bribery which explains the large amount of money that management and production companies always have at the tip of their fingers.

Drama: Jin Sang Woo pours money into the production so that Cherry bags the leading role and resorts to underhand methods to ensure it stays that way. Yang So Eun (who eventually dies) and Oh Seung Ah had been forced to dine with businessmen and go to bed with them even. Things like this do happen.

Conflict between TV stations and management companies
Drama: SW Entertainment Chairman Jin Sang Woo threatens to pull Cherry out of the drama if the script isn’t changed to give her more exposure. SBC doesn’t compromise and decides to cut off all ties with SW Entertainment, rejecting their artists on their shows and not allowing them into the tv station.

Reality: TV stations and management agencies have a love-hate relationship in that they rely on each other to serve their promotion aims. Just last November, Super Junior was caught in a fix with Kangin having to choose from MBC or SBS programs to appear on. He had only recently appeared on SBS and had been on MBC programs for a longer period. SM Entertanment decided on SBS which angered MBC (they felt betrayed) and wanted an apology which didn’t arrive.

This resulted in MBC issuing a “restriction” on SM artistes like Super Junior and So Nyeo Shi Dae and they were absent for most of MBC’s year-end programs. The issue was only solved after SM Entertainment arranged a meeting with MBC with things back to normal now.

Crazy as the drama may seem, it is based on real events. What a scary world we live in...