The Korean Embassy in the Philippines and the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) in the country will be bringing together a group of experts for the “Rediscover the Korean Creative Industry: A webinar on K-Drama Scriptwriting and Marketing.”
It will be streamed exclusively starting at 1 p.m. on June 30 on KCC Philippines’ YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/kccphil. The webinar is in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and APOP Books.
Following the success of last year’s K-drama webinar, this year focuses on learning how to write an actual K-drama script and discovering how these amazing dramas are brought out into the global stage.
Screenwriting and Marketing
Amor Aljibe, a media professional for over 30 years and has worked on box office hits and critically-acclaimed works in the country, will facilitate the webinar. She is also an educator who teaches courses on television and film production and developed a course on Korean Drama Analysis for the University of the Philippines-Diliman in 2020.
Korean script writer Park Ji-hyun, who has written a number of Korean dramas including “All About Eve” (2000), will be a speaker at the webinar. She won the Best Writer Award at the KBS Drama Award in 1997, 2001, and 2006 and was also previously a Creative Writing lecturer at Chung-Ang University in 2018. At present, she is a lecturer at the Broadcasting Writers Education Center of the Korea TV and Radio Writers Association. Aside from giving a background about Korea’s Scriptwriting Education Program, she would also be conducting a basic K-Drama scriptwriting workshop.
Lee Hyo-young, on the other hand, will be talking about the K-drama promotional landscape and the various and tested international marketing strategies of K-drama production outfits. He has 26 years of combined service in KBS media as Digital Business Team Leader, Strategic Planning Team Leader, Overseas Business Manager and Entertainment Department Director. He is behind the exportation of leading KBS dramas such as “Winter Sonata,” “Full House,” “Boys Over Flowers,” “Sungkyunkwan Scandal” and “Iris.” He is the former chairman of the Korea Broadcasting Content Export Council and a former executive director of the Busan Content Market. At present, he is a review and evaluation consultant at the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) and the CEO of Young & Content Co. Ltd.
Initiatives and New Narratives
Two acclaimed Filipino director-script writers will be taking part in the webinar to talk about the current situation in the TV drama production and screenwriting industry.
Rona Co will be discussing the current effort to improve the local script writing scene. She has 15 years of experience in TV and film writing for ABS-CBN. She co-wrote the box office hit OFW romance film "Hello, Love, Goodbye" as well as the Cinemalaya film "Nabubulok." She also wrote some of ABS-CBN's most sought after and top-rating TV dramas including "Forevermore," "The Legal Wife," "Ngayon at Kailanman," and "A Love to Last."
Popular director Joey Reyes will be returning to the K-drama webinar this year and will discuss the changing narratives during the pandemic and the impact of K-dramas in the local script writing scene. Aside from being part of the TV and movie production scene, Reyes is also an award-winning essayist and educator at the Department of Communication, College of Liberal Arts at De la Salle University. Presently, he is the chairman of the Digital Film Program at the School of Design and Arts, De la Salle College of St. Benilde. He is also the competition director and monitoring head of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and Competition Director for CineFilipino.
Viewers who will be participating in the webinar stand the chance of winning special prizes by joining the K-Drama Webinar Q&A Challenge. To participate, all they need to do is post their best and relevant question regarding the webinar on KCC’s Q&A post (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), follow all the KCC SNS accounts, tag 3 friends to watch the webinar, and share the post on their account. Three winners with the unique and interesting questions will be selected per platform to win special and exclusive K-Drama goodies and some goodies from APOP.
The webinar is the Korean Embassy and KCC’s initiative in helping the continued enrichment of Filipino TV producers and scriptwriters in terms of script and production of dramas, through a participative exchange and discussion between speakers from relevant fields and organizations.