“The Innocent Man” Puts on 3rd Crown, New SBS Series Fails to Grab Attention

Park Si-yeon (left), Song Joong-ki (center) and Moon Chae-won (right) wave to reporters at a press conference for KBS “The Innocent Man” held in Seoul, South Korea on September 5. [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

KBS “The Innocent Man” has grabbed another win while SBS’ new drama “The Great Seer” saw lower-than-expected numbers of ratings.

The melodrama has nabbed the biggest number of audiences for three straight weeks after attracting 16 percent of the total viewers in the second week of October, TNmS’ [Total National Multimedia Statistics] data showed Friday.The Song Joong-ki and Moon Chae-won starrer goes around Kang Ma-roo’s [played by Song] unfortunate destiny. Over the course of his life he has learned that there is only one person to believe--his sick sister Kang Choco [played by Lee Yu-bi].

The runner-up of Wednesday and Thursday primetime dramas was MBC “Tale of Arang,” starring Lee Joon-gi and Shin Mina. The fusion tale saw an average rating of 13.2 percent in the same time frame.

The historical fantasy series has only one more week left to tell the love story of district magistrate Eun-oh [Lee] and female ghost Arang [Shin].SBS’ new costume drama “The Great Seer” [tentative title] took the last position with 6.9 percent of the audience who tuned in to see a load of Korean veteran actors in one show.

Starring Ji Sung, Ji Jin-hee, Song Chang-eui, Kim So-yeon and Lee Yoon-ji, the faction drama centers around great seers who team up, and sometimes cause internal wars, to establish the Joseon Dynasty.

Meanwhile, AGB Nielson's data showed slightly different figures in the same order as the TNmS'.

While "The Innocent Man" grabbed the top seed with ratings of 15.1 percent, “Tale of Arang” and ”The Great Seer” followed next, each with 12 and 6.7 percent.

Lee Yoon-ji (top left), Kim So-yeon (top right), Ji Jin-hee (center), Song Chang-eui (bottom left) and Ji Sung (bottom right) pose for their new SBS' historic series "The Great Seer," first premiered on October 10, 2012. [SBS]

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