A general thread about Korean dramas

[jian]

Hi all,

This is basically a repeat or mirror of a thread I did on rpg.net forums, so apologies if you’ve read this already. I hope I’m not the only person here who watches and likes K-dramas.

This isn't an IWIW thread - there are many, many better sites if you want a blow by blow account of Crash Landing On You, or whatever.

As a Korean-English person (both parents are Korean, came over to the U.K. when I was 6) I've had a variable sense of connection to my Korean heritage and to modern Korean culture. Watching dramas, which I've been doing for about 15 years (which is when they started being readily available in the U.K.) has really helped with that sense of connection, especially when we were watching them with my dad. I say we because my wife (Scottish-English) watches them with me and we went on language courses in Seoul together, partly to enjoy dramas better. If we hadn't watched Dae Jang Geum (AKA Jewel in the Palace, a historical drama about the only female Korean royal physician, one of the most popular K-dramas of all time) together back in 2009 I doubt we'd have gone to Seoul in 2010 and 2011 to learn Korean.

Korean dramas, like TV dramas from anywhere else, are very varied in quality, subject matter, audience, genre, and so on. They have something of a reputation for melodrama, which is justified for many popular dramas, but this mostly means the writers have to very tightly plot dramas to make the cliffhangers and twists work. Most dramas are one season, one and done in about 20 episodes; sequels are rare. Netflix has been a massive game-changer for K-dramas, mostly in funding but also global penetration. Also, Netflix dramas are often better plotted because Netflix is very clear about how many episodes it wants and doesn't change that half way through when the drama becomes more popular like Korean TV studios (this leads to episode lag, where the drama wastes about 5 episodes on filler because the studio has decided a 15-episode drama should now be 20 episodes long).

I'm mostly going to cover dramas we've watched recently on Netflix. First up: Crash Course in Romance!

 

[jian]

Crash Course in Romance (2023, currently on Netflix)

I'm starting with this one because it's been the gateway drug to K-dramas for a couple of people we know (including my parents-in-law, who have now been consuming a K-drama every one to two months). I'm not sure why this is the case, but CCIR was the most popular drama of 2023 and is nicely designed to appeal to a wide audience.

Crash Course in Romance is actually a rather odd translation. The Korean original is Ilta Scandal, where Ilta is a neologism based on the Korean words for one and star, and is used to refer to people at the very top of their professions. In this case, it refers to one of the protagonists, the most lucrative and successful hagwon teacher in Korea. Also, "scandal" in Korean can mean the same thing as in English, but can also mean "personal or romantic situation that might give rise to gossip" and that's more what it means here.

Now seems a good time to talk about hagwon. Hagwon are private after-school academies attended by 80% of Korean high school students (almost 100% of those in Seoul) where, in the last three years before college, said students spend 2-3 hours after school getting extra tuition to improve their chances of college entrance. This is of course a reflection of the extremely conformist and competitive nature of Korean society. Hagwon are universal but controversial - there's been talk of banning them but literally every parent in Korea can't bear the idea of their child losing out on even the tiniest necessary advantage. The best hagwon and their star teachers ("Ilta") are immensely sought after and lucrative.

Anyway (to quote our other protagonist who loves using the English word to change the subject), our two protagonists are Nam Haeng-Seon, the owner of a popular banchan (side dish) shop in Gangnam (a very rich part of Seoul) and Choi Chi-Yeol, the aforementioned hagwon star teacher (in maths). Haeng-Seon is very working-class and down-to-earth, and it takes her a while to realise that her teenage daughter Hae-Yi needs to attend a hagwon to compete. Fortunately, she runs into Chi-Yeol, who is very successful but very stressed, to the point where he can't bear to eat most foods, but her lovely banchan is the exception. He agrees to tutor Hae-Yi in exchange for food, and so our story progresses.

There's a lot more in there, especially about Korean education and its effects on both parents and children, but never fear, there's a happy ending for almost everyone. There's barely a villain. In some ways, CCIR is a response to an earlier drama, Sky Castle (2018) which was incredibly popular and influential, and was far more critical of Korean education. Sky Castle is probably my favourite K-drama of all time and we will be covering it in due course.

 

[Simon The Hunter]

We just watched Crash Course in Romance last week after having it sit on the wishlist for a while... The first k-drama we watched was Hometown Cha Cha Cha back in 2021 when netflix started prompting my wishlist (we tend to watch a few Japanese shows, but we are Aussies (well my partner is Lebanese but I'm English decent)). We basically binge a session over a period of a week or so. We like the fact that most are 16 episodes (though we accidently started watching My Golden Life not realising it was 50+ episodes) though sometimes they tend to feel like they drag a bit.

We also have some friends who have Korean partners (I even got to wear a Hanbok at the wedding of one friend) so have always had it in our lives. I think I'm slowly learning a few words and phrases from watching it to the point where I hear them say something and the subtitles do not match...

The thing we like is that there is such a variety of themes, from ghosts to past lives to corner shop romances to cool hospital dramas, and I guess because it's so removed from most western tropes, they feel really fresh and interesting. We've watched a stack of the Joseon period dramas as well. I'm sure they are far removed from any accuracy...

EDIT: We basically are now planning to go the S.Korea at some point, I want to go to Jeju hehe.