I don’t envy the kdrama subber or recapper for doing a thankless job with little compensation. So my intention here is not to bash the subber for the Top Star Yoo Baek kdrama. There are mistakes in grammar but I don’t care because my brains can still unscramble the gist of the conversation.

However, there’s one instance (so far) where I think it would be better if I explain something. It’s this scene in Episode 4 at 4:31 when the hero Yoo Baek told the girl, “Oh KangSoon, you’ve already entered my world.”

I thought I heard him say the English word “frame” as in “Oh KangSoon, you’ve already entered in my frame.”

To me, the original word “frame” should be left as is, instead of translating and interpreting it as “my world.”

You see, everything started when he’s soaking in his tub and reflecting on that disastrous night of the cake and the car chase.

On the ledge of his bathroom, an hourglass (Ep 1 at 16:01) steadily pours its blue sand from the upper bulb through the skinny neck and down to the bottom bulb. To me, it symbolizes inevitability; that the events in his life are fated to happen and inescapable. There’s no stopping the flow of his life. And note here: the sand is blue, as blue as the sea.

And he submerges into the tub.

In the next scene, he wakes up the following morning and he glances at the FRAMED painting of a seascape or, to be more precise, a cove as viewed from a hill.

Then the camera switches to the scene in the painting where Oh KangSoon is diving with her group of old ladies in the deep blue sea. She sees a turtle which the other diver tells her is sign sent by the Dragon King that there’ll be a new King.

In the next scene we see Yoo Baek acting in his next-drama-to-be. He’s saying, “For you, I’ll come back safely as King.” lol.

And the director even insist on calling his condo the “Top Palace” in case we missed the reference. lol.

Later, Yoo Baek will be exiled to the island, and he’ll be nicknamed “Top Star” (and a King is a top star, lol). He’ll oust the island’s own reigning but absentee “Top Star” Choi Ma Dol in arm-wrestling. The flow of his life is inevitable, and he cannot escape the call of the sea.

He must have struck by the beauty of it all, but if I understand his words correctly, he downplays the breathtaking beauty and describes that the panorama as “kwenchana” or okay. From Episode 1 at 46:30:

I doubt he realizes that the scene looks familiar because it’s the same as his framed painting in his bedroom. He has lots of self-portraits so it’s interesting to find this particular one in his bedroom.

In Episode 2, after he faints, he dreams of that incident when he was poisoned and confronted his mother in the hospital. He wakes up in terror and flees to the hilltop with the view of the cove. There he catches his breath and is moved by the sight before him.

At first, all we hear is him gasping for air, but slowly we begin to hear the sound of the sumbi sori, or the whistle of the women divers (at 53:20). Their whistles soothe him while the sight of the graceful divers in the serene blue water move him to tears. There’s beauty in this scene that overwhelms him. And when she waves at him, he wipes his tears away.

He eats with them and afterwards, she draws him his hot bath.

Compared to his luxurious bathroom, his current situation is absurd but he remembers her waving at him in the sea.

He doesn’t know that back in his luxurious bathroom in Seoul, the blue sand of the hourglass begins to flow backwards.

Then, just like in Episode 1, the next scene shows him waking up.

There’s no framed artwork hanging by his bed, but outside his window, the blue seascape greets him.

He opens the other window to the courtyard.

KangSoon arrives and hangs the laundry in the sun, and he watches her unobserved from the bedroom window.

These are the two reasons why I say “frame” is the right word:

For one, KangSoo looks like a painting as she does her mundane chore. Seen through the wooden frame of the window, she’s a beautiful work of art, just like the seascape he’s just been admiring.

What makes her doubly beautiful is that she’s oblivious to her charms.

Whereas before he saw her only as a country bumpkin, now her unaffected and natural beauty is evident to him because he’s looking at her from different framework. His newfound “frame” excludes the things he dislikes about her, like her chattiness and her propensity to use her as a buttering ram to injure him when she’s angry. Instead, the new “frame” includes the things he likes about her, like her simplicity, her sincerity and optimism.

For another, when at 1:03:40 she pops her head through the window and rests her arms on the windowsill, she visually and symbolically enters HIS frame.

You see, he’s also in a framed picture himself. When she looks at him sitting cooped up inside his bedroom, he too looks like a picture. He makes a handsome picture himself.

Similarly, within this “frame,” we don’t see his unlikable qualities like his rudeness and selfishness. In fact, the “frame” only shows the touching side of him, like loneliness and vulnerability.

As an actor, he’s very much in the limelight and aware of his appearance and image…unlike her. But his being a “top star” doesn’t prevent her from encroaching on his life. Whether she’s welcome or not, she invades his space.

View from the inside:

View from the outside:

Either way, she’s in his frame. lol.

That’s why I think “frame” is the correct word here. For me, the frame doesn’t signify ONLY the borders or the “boundaries” that Yoo Baek maintains to keep people out or his prickly, sea urchin-like exterior to hide his pain.

The frame is also the point of view or perspective in which to understand the characters. Both of them are beginning to see the other person as something more than annoying and bothersome. Their “first impressions” are getting a second look. Think of the “frame” as providing context. It prepares our eyes and minds to accept the characters, warts and all.