Shin Hae-sun and Lee Jun-hyuk’s new K-drama Art Of Sarah has stolen the hearts of K-drama fans everywhere. Short clips from the series are spreading like wildfire on social media, and many people are already calling it one of the greatest K-dramas ever made. What makes it even more interesting is that the story seems to be based on a real scam that surprised the whole country years ago. If you want to know the true story behind the drama, keep reading to find out more.
Shin Hae Sun’s Art Of Sarah Inspired By This Real-Life Luxury Scam?
As reported by eyopkr on Instagram, the drama takes inspiration from a massive fraud that happened in 2006 involving a fake luxury watch brand named Vincent & Co. The company held a grand launch event with many Korean celebrities and got lots of attention in popular magazines. They said their watches were special and had been supplied only to European royal families for over a hundred years and many people believed the story.
However, things took a turn and people started to get suspicious. One person pointed out that no Swiss staff showed up at the launch of a “Swiss brand”. After checking with people in Switzerland, it became clear that Vincent & Co did not really exist. The watches were made with low-cost parts from China, put together partly in Korea, and then sent to Switzerland for just a minor step which allowed them to put a “Made in Switzerland” label on the watches. Each watch cost only 50,000 to 200,000 KRW to make, but they sold for millions, earning the scammers around 700 million KRW in profit.
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For the unversed, Art of Sarah is an eight-episode Netflix mystery-thriller series starring Shin Hae-sun as Sarah Kim, a woman who creates a perfect and expensive life that is not real and Lee Jun-hyuk, a smart detective who tries to solve the mystery of her death.
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