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.

 

[jian]

We didn’t quite get round to finishing Hometown Cha Cha Cha - it was good but maybe a bit slow for us, maybe we should go back. It does have some good actors we’ve seen in other things, such as Shin Min-A (My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, No Gain No Love) and Lee Sang-Yi (No Gain No Love).

 

[jian]

On to our next drama:

Crash Landing on You (Netflix, 2019)

The most popular drama of 2019, mainly due to the chemistry between the lead couple. The two actors got married shortly after filming.

(The translation of the title is fine - the Korean means "crash landing of love" so this is a little better. However, I'm pretty certain that Crash Course in Romance is supposed to evoke this title.)

CLOY is about Yoon Se-Ri, a chaebol heiress and fashion founder who is blown off course when paragliding and ends up north of the border. There she meets Ri Jeong-Hyeok, a captain in the North Korean army, who ignores all common sense (and the exhortations of his quirky platoon) and helps her escape back to South Korea without telling his superiors.

Love is inevitable, not least because Jeong-Hyeok is the most perfect cishet romantic lead of all time. He's brave, kind, patient, thoughtful, handsome, tall, humble, tasteful, conscientious, well-read, and cooks like your favourite grandma. And he's an effing concert pianist. Se-Ri doesn't stand a chance. If the NKs got a clue and cloned this guy they could conquer the South without firing a single shot.

Anyway (thank you, Haeng-Seon) now seems a good time to talk about chaebol.

Chaebol are the family-owned mega corporations which run Korea - the largest, Samsung, is worth about 20% of the economy and does everything from phones to cars to hotels to restaurants to department stores to clothes. Chaebol heirs are the true 0.0001% - incredibly rich and privileged, almost like royalty. So like royalty, in dramas they're either romantic leads (but emotionally distant and terrible at anything normal) or sociopathic villains (yup, I prefer these).

Se-Ri initially presents as a chaebol heiress who's founded a fashion business with daddy's money, a real nepo baby. But it turns out that's not the case, since she's an uncommon archetype in Korean dramas, the adopted illegitimate child, and she founded the business without family help. Yes, Se-Ri's dad had an affair and then adopted her into his family, which led to serious relationship problems with her stepmom (who admittedly is still making an effort) and her brothers (who hate her because her energy and talent make them look like the feckless losers they are).

Chaebol and chaebol heirs remain a problematic but perennial element in K-dramas, and I'm heartened to see many modern dramas portray them as complete dicks (Vincenzo, Celebrity, Queenmaker, The Golden Spoon, etc).

 

[Tonguez]

My mother has Netflix and so got herself addicted to KDrama (and now CDrama too)

I thought they were a bit hookey at first (especially as we dont speak Korean and the closest we get to Korean culture is a jar of Kimchi and some fried chicken) but the first one that took my interest was Alchemy of Souls, so I started watching a few more Josean era stories, but not the modern era melodrama that my mother watched

then I watched Hotel de Luna and enjoyed that too, so ghost stories joined my list of 'acceptable' KDrama - Fantasy, Historic ,Ghost Stories.

Still cant bring myself to watch a modern romantic KDrama

 

[jian]

We started out watching sageuk (historical K dramas) about 15 years ago, especially Dae Jang Geum (AKA Jewel in the Palace) and Dong Yi (its spiritual successor), but we haven’t really watched any recently. The extremely hierarchical patriarchal society stuff really does my head in, it’s everything I want Korea to stop doing.

(Dae Jang Geum - literally Great Jang Geum - is about Seo Jang-Geum, who is mentioned in historical records as the only female royal physician in Korean history, in the early 16th century. That’s literally all we know about her, so the writers gave her an amazing story mostly made out of whole cloth. She’s an orphan, a chef, and a doctor. DJG was one of the first K-dramas that were seriously exported back in 2003 and was incredibly popular and successful internationally (in South America, the Middle East, India, and China), it probably still holds the record for the most viewed K-drama of all time at well over a billion viewers. Despite that it’s not easy to find these days - your best bet is probably Viki, which has a lot of great older dramas.)

 

[jian]

Vincenzo (Netflix, 2021)

Ah, the most popular drama of 2021 and an iconic role for Song Joong-Ki, Korea's best-looking man (and there's some stiff competition there), voted the Nation's Eomchina (short for Eomma Chingu Adeul, which means "my mother's friend's son" - you know, the one she keeps comparing you to).

Vincenzo (badly transliterated in Korean to Bin Sen Jo, make of that what you will) Cassano is a Korean orphan who was adopted by a Sicilian mafia family and rose to become their consigliere. When the old capo dies and his son (who hates Vincenzo for being so awesome) tries to have him killed, Vincenzo leaves Italy and returns to Korea, where he knows there's a treasure buried below an old multi-use (apartment and retail) building called Geumga Plaza. There he reluctantly gets involved in the Plaza residents' fight to prevent an evil* chaebol, Babel Group, from demolishing their building.

*I know, the adjective isn't necessary.

Our second protagonist is Hong Cha-Young, a young lawyer who has an interesting journey. She starts out as a corporate peon working for Babel and against her own father, who is the lawyer for the Geumga residents. And then things change and she becomes Vincenzo's stoutest ally.

Vincenzo is notable (among the dramas I've discussed so far) for not really being romantic. Vincenzo and Cha-Young engage in some very cool Leverage-style shenanigans but they don't get romantically involved, they're just an excellent team and very good friends.

Finally, gore warning: Vincenzo spends the entire series reminding people that he's an honest to god mafioso and will murder them if necessary, but doesn't do so until the last episode, where he murders the two main villains pretty graphically.

 

[The Firebird]

Good thread! My wife and I watched more back when we had Netflix, but have not done much since. Our favorite was Mr. Sunshine, which was a really great time. A blend of comedy, romance, action, drama, with a great cast and stellar cinematography. It reminded me of South Asian Masala films in that regard; most US media picks a more narrow lane. Also a good soundtrack, and I appreciated the single season.

I also loved the first season of Stranger, which is kind of a crime thriller. It's hard to keep that going for 16 episodes, but they managed to keep it escalating and intelligent throughout.

I do struggle with TV in general feeling drawn out, and a few we've tried ended up in that bin. The K2, and Crash Landing on You end up in that bin. Memories of the Alhambra was also just ok--the first few episodes were strong, but then it became a bit much.

Speaking of shorter ones, Kingdom was a great watch (and hit harder in 2020, when I saw it), but it had vibes of being extended over and over. I'm not sure what happened to it, because we ended Netflix around that time.

 

[jian]

I do think Korean dramas who choose to deliver a great story in fewer episodes, rather than trying to sustain it over a required 26-39 episodes, do very well. Good examples include Queenmaker and Celebrity, which I’ll be covering latter.