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"Do I have the face of a King?" rages Lee JungJae in one of his most crucial moments in "The Face Reader", and this line goes on to be one of the most celebrated dialogues in all of Korean film history. If you've been a K-Pop or K-Drama fan for any amount of time, you could not have escaped this reference that finds its way even in the most unrelated variety shows. However, it begs the question - what does the face of a King look like? This is Korea Explained, and today, we're looking into the pseudoscience that will (apparently) tell you if your crush is a player, if you're destined for your dream job and even whether you're the person you think you are, all depending on your face - Face Reading. Let's dive into it!
The best place to start a conversation about Korean fortune-telling, divination, and face-reading with a fan of Hallyu would be "Cafรฉ Minamdang". Seo InGuk (Nam HanJun) is employed as a shaman to read the faces of applicants for a high-profile position at a large company. Through a camera fitted in the interview room, Nam HanJun "judges" each one. "The forehead is bright and the smile lines are clear" - he notes, inferring that a particular candidate has the energy to move up. However, his "cheekbones are red" so he must solve his problems from 10 years ago and come back. As it turns out, he blamed a staff member for his mistake, who ended up getting dismissed wrongfully.
On the surface, this sounds like a superpower - the ability to accurately expose one's life just by their face and Nam HanJun is particularly adept at it. However, he isn't, in fact, blessed
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