K-drama Sh**ting Stars: in romantic comedy set in showbiz, Kim Young-dae is a prima donna actor and Lee Sung-kyung a put-upon publicist
- South Korea’s entertainment industry provides the backdrop and the behaviour of celebrities the fodder for this Korean romantic comedy series
- Kim Young-dae’s idol is loved by his fans but is not so nice to his management agency’s staff, including Lee Sung-kyung’s publicist
“Fame is a fickle food,” Emily Dickinson wrote in her cautionary poem of the same name about the vagaries of celebrity.
A century and a half or so later, the “shifting plate” Dickinson wrote of remains an appropriate analogy for the breathless world of Korean entertainment, with its alternating peaks and valleys for stars who burn bright, and wax and wane, before sometimes extinguishing in a blink before our eyes.
Behind every star is a hard-working agency staffed with determined young managers and armies of publicists and assistants tasked with daily damage control in an industry that hums along on the whims of hungry fans, with an even hungrier media mob fanning the merest spark into scandalous flames.
This world serves as the background for the new series Sh**ting Stars, whose curiously stylised title encapsulates the story’s impetus.
At Star Force Entertainment, the top client is Gong Tae-sung (Kim Young-dae), whose smoky eyes adorn advertisements across the city, and whose current volunteer work digging wells in Africa has made him the country’s national sweetheart.
