''Asphalt Man'' () is a 1995 South Korean television series starring

Lee Byung-hun Lee Byung-hun (; born July 12, 1970) is a South Korean actor. He has received critical acclaim for his work in a wide range of genres, most notably ''Joint Security Area'' (2000); '' A Bittersweet Life'' (2005); '' The Good, the Bad, the Weird' ...

, Choi Jin-sil,

Jung Woo-sung Jung Woo-sung (born March 20, 1973) is a South Korean actor and the first Korean UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. Jung started his career as a fashion model, rising to stardom and teenage cult status with the gangster movie '' Beat'' (1997), for which ...

, and

Lee Young-ae Lee Young-ae (born January 31, 1971) is a South Korean actress. She is known for her appearances in the Korean historical drama ''Dae Jang Geum'' (2003), and as a revenge seeking single mother in Park Chan-wook's crime thriller film ''Sympathy ...

. Based on the 1991 comic of the same title by

manhwa (; ) is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons. Outside Korea, the term usually refers to South Korean comics. is greatly influenced by Japanese Manga comics. Modern Manhwa has extended its reach to many other countries. T ...

artist Huh Young-man, it aired on SBS from May 17 to July 6, 1995, on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 21:55 for 16 episodes.

Plot

Kang Dong-joon (

) is a young car designer who dreams of starting his own car company in Korea. He tries to get assistance from his father ( Park In-hwan), but the family is in financial trouble. His younger brother Dong-seok (

) hates their father, and leaves the country to become a car racer in the United States. Meanwhile, his sister Dong-hee (

) also flees to the U.S. after conceiving a child with a U.S. army soldier.

Cast

Kang family

as Kang Dong-joon *

as Kang Dong-seok (brother) *

as Kang Dong-hee (sister) * Park In-hwan as Mr. Kang (father) * Choi Jin-sil as Oh Hwa-ryun (Dong-joon's wife)

Other people

* Huh Joon-ho as Han Ki-soo * Kim Soo-mi as Natasha *

Jo Min-su Jo Min-su (; born January 29, 1965) is a South Korean actress. She is best known for her role in the Kim Ki-duk film ''Pietà''. Career Jo Min-su graduated from a vocational high school, Gyungbok Girls' Commercial High School, and first entered ...

as Bae Jong-ok *Kim Soo-ji as Song-yi (Natasha's daughter) * Lee Jung-gil as Son Ki Joon * Byun Hee-bong * Song Jae-ho *Daniel Beauchamp as Tom (American Soldier)

Production

''Asphalt Man'' began shooting in late 1994 with an estimated production budget of per episode. Filming took 5 months, at the

Hyundai Hyundai is a South Korean industrial conglomerate ("chaebol"), which was restructured into the following groups: * Hyundai Group, parts of the former conglomerate which have not been divested ** Hyundai Mobis, Korean car parts company ** Hyundai As ...

auto factory plant in

Ulsan Ulsan (), officially the Ulsan Metropolitan City is South Korea's seventh-largest metropolitan city and the eighth-largest city overall, with a population of over 1.1 million inhabitants. It is located in the south-east of the country, neighboring ...

and in Dongducheon, including 45 days of overseas location shoots in the United States, which was rare at that time for a

Korean drama Korean dramas (; RR: ''Han-guk deurama''), more popularly known as K-dramas, are television series in the Korean language, made in South Korea. They are popular worldwide, especially in Asia, partially due to the spread of Korean popular cultu ...

. The U.S. scenes were filmed in

Death Valley Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. During summer, it is the hottest place on Earth. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of lowest elevation in North Am ...

and Silver Peak, Alpine County in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

. The snow rally in the drama's climax was shot in

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

, though several cast and crew members reportedly suffered from

oxygen deficiency Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level. Hypoxia may be classified as either '' generalized'', affecting the whole body, or ''local'', affecting a region of the b ...

. As the drama's official sponsor,

Hyundai Motor Company Hyundai Motor Company, often abbreviated to Hyundai Motors ( ) and commonly known as Hyundai (, ; ), is a South Korean multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, and founded in 1967. Currently, the company o ...

contributed more than . Various models of Hyundai Motors were featured in the drama as concept cars, production models and Rally vehicles, such as the

Accent Accent may refer to: Speech and language * Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers * Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase ** Pitch ac ...

and the Elantra/Avante. In particular, the

Tiburon Tiburon (Spanish ''Tiburón'', " shark") may refer to: Places ;United States * Tiburon, California * Tiburón Golf Club Naples, Florida * Tiburon Peninsula (California), a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area of California ;Mexico * Tiburón ...

was first introduced in the scene of Dong-joon's Death Valley Rally.

References

External links

''Asphalt Man'' official SBS website
{{in lang, ko (archived)
''Asphalt Man''
at SBS Global Seoul Broadcasting System television dramas 1995 South Korean television series debuts 1995 South Korean television series endings Korean-language television shows Television shows based on works by Huh Young-man South Korean action television series South Korean romance television series 1990s romance television series 1990s South Korean television series