‘Descendants of the Sun’ a hit with Korean, Chinese viewers
SEOUL: KBS’ new series ‘Descendants of the Sun’ has been an immediate hit in the country and China with ratings of over 20 per cent after just three episodes.
It pairs Song Joong-ki, who chose the soap as his first project after his discharge from mandatory military service last year, with Song Hye-kyo.
The rating of 23.4 per cent garnered by the third episode outstrips even the 19.4 per cent record set by the third episode of the most popular series of 2013, SBS’ ‘My Love from the Star’.
According to Sina, the drama series last week alone garnered more than 470 million clickthroughs on social media platform Weibo. Views on Chinese online video platform IQiyi reached 120 million as of Thursday.
‘Descendants of the Sun’ is a love story between a soldier and a doctor dispatched to a fictional war-torn, disaster-stricken country called Uruk.
Song Joong-ki plays the captain of a Special Warfare Command unit while Song Hye-kyo plays the surgeon.
The series is based on Kim Won-seok’s “Médecins Sans Frontières”, which won a storytelling contest in 2011 hosted by the Korea Creative Content Agency, the Chosun Ilbo, and KBS.
Kim Eun-sook, the writer behind such hits as ‘The Heirs’, ‘Secret Garden’, and ‘A Gentleman’s Dignity’, joined the writers team to breathe life into the series.
‘Descendants of the Sun’ is expected to be as popular across Asia as ‘My Love from the Star’. The cast strategically includes a number of popular Korean Wave stars like Onew of K-pop combo SHINee, and Lee Kwang-soo. Yoo Ah-in, another hugely popular actor abroad, will appear towards the end of the series.
In a departure from the norm, the whole series was finished before it went on air, chiefly to ensure that it could be released in China straight away. The producers signed with a Chinese streaming service provider iQIYI. com, which also streamed ‘My Love from the Star’, selling it for over 200 million won per episode.
After just three episodes, the series has had over 100 million hits on iQIYI.