A general thread about Korean dramas

[jian]

Ah, time for my absolute favourite K-drama so far.

Sky Castle (Netflix, 2018)

We all lie
Just tell me the truth
Shout it out!
What you want from the world
Money, honour, beauty
Everything you want

Those are the iconic lyrics to We All Lie, the iconic OST of the most popular drama of 2018.

Sky Castle is brilliant about Korean education and hypocrisy, and as such is not the best choice for your first K-drama - get a few others under your belt and get used to some tropes first.

It's a true ensemble piece, with five gen-X couples and their teenaged children, who all live at the eponymous elite apartment complex which is provided by a university trust for their best professors.

- The Kangs: Dr Kang is an arrogant neurosurgeon who is very proud of his position and of having been top of his class at Seoul National (SNU). His wife Seo-Jin is obsessed with getting her older daughter (Ye-Seo, a spoiled monster) into SNU. They both hate the Hwangs (see below) for different reasons. They also have a younger daughter (Ye-Bin) whom they neglect.

- The Hwangs: Dr Hwang is basically perfect - a kind empathic neurosurgeon who specialises in minimal invasive treatment and who's very popular with his patients, and is an adoring and supportive husband and father. His wife Su-Im is nearly as perfect but is something of an interfering moralist, but that's because unlike most of the other characters she has a functional conscience. Their son Uju is also perfect.

- The Chas: Professor Cha is not a doctor and boy does he resent it. He's a law professor who used to be a public prosecutor and would-be politician and is bitter about the collapse of his political career; he takes this out on his twin sons, pressurising them as hard as possible, holding up the example of their older sister who’s already made it into Harvard. His wife Seung-Hye is calm and gentle, and does her best to shield her children from her husband; as the story progresses she decides that's not enough and fights back hard. She's my favourite character in the series.

- The Woos: Dr Woo is Dr Kang's subordinate and is a natural follower; his wife Jin-Hee is a Sloane (sorry, English term - she's from a rich family from a rich part of the city, not clever) who follows Seo-Jin's lead in doing her best for her young son but is often conflicted about how to keep him happy but also on track.

- The Parks: Dr Park was Hwang's predecessor at the hospital; his son Young-Jae gets into SNU in the first episode to general congratulations, and then the family falls apart. Not main characters but very present in spirit (and occasionally in person).

The last important character is Coach Kim, an elite academic coordinator with a 100% success rate at getting kids into SNU. She was Young-Jae's coordinator and is now Ye-Seo's.

The story is complex and incredibly tightly and well plotted, with barely a spare moment. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight and their scene where you'll weep for them (yes, even Dr Kang). There's a lot of unexpected dry comedy (take a bow, Seung-Hye). The writers delight in building up various characters' pomposity and hypocrisy and then puncturing them fiercely. This show is about education, sure, but more than that it's about how the foundations of Korean and every society are built on hypocrisy and lies we tell ourselves and each other.

Sky Castle was very popular and controversial in Korea when it was released and remains extremely influential. If you can take the time and have a Netflix account, I urge you to get into it at your earliest convenience.

 

[jian]

And here’s Queenmaker!

Queenmaker (Netflix, 2023)

A short, sharp, and beautifully made drama at a succinct 11 episodes, Queenmaker has two middle-aged female protagonists. The first one we meet, Hwang Do-Hee, is the fixer and spin doctor for Eunsung Group, a powerful chaebol. She is extremely loyal to Son Young-Sim, the very competent and evil matriarch and CEO of Eunsung, and less so to Son's daughters. She bonds somewhat with Baek Jae-Min, Son's son-in-law and apparently decent chap who plans to run for Mayor of Seoul on Eunsung's behalf.

Our second protagonist is Oh Kyung-Sook, a forthright and brave human rights lawyer and activist who is protesting Eunsung's poor treatment of its female employees on the roof of their flagship department store. Of course, Do-Hee is tasked with removing her and making this PR problem go away - but as she does so, she discovers certain truths about Eunsung and Jae-Min particularly that shatter her loyalties. Impulsively, she leaves Eunsung and makes an amazing offer to Kyung-Sook - run for Mayor of Seoul and she'll run her campaign, using her inside knowledge of Eunsung to ensure she wins and becomes a mayor who can genuinely root out corruption and chaebol influence in Seoul.

Let the games begin.

As a short political drama full of intrigue, Queenmaker is astonishingly tightly plotted and relentless about Korean political and social hypocrisy and inequality. It's a hard watch at times - our intrepid duo go through hellfire for their beliefs, but they never let go of each other and they earn their endings (which aren't entirely happy). Sadly, despite a certain amount of probably intentional ho yay between our protagonists, there's no romance in this series.

By the way, running for Mayor of Seoul is said to be a huge deal in this drama (as in others) because it's said to be a major stepping stone to running for President. This isn't actually particularly true - only one Mayor of Seoul has ever become President and he was already so well-connected, corrupt, and stupid that he was a shoo-in for right-wing candidacy anyway. Of course, plenty of ex-Mayors have become ministers, assemblymen, and party leaders.

 

[GreyLord]

I've never watched a K-Drama. You said they started to be readily available in the UK around 15 years ago?

Do you find them on netflix, or where do you find them?

 

[jian]

I've never watched a K-Drama. You said they started to be readily available in the UK around 15 years ago?

Do you find them on netflix, or where do you find them?

They’re very available on Netflix (as noted under specific dramas above) - Netflix has commissioned a fair few. Most other streamers have at least a couple - No Gain No Love and Marry My Husband on Amazon, Golden Spoon and One Dollar Lawyer on Disney Plus, and so on. The biggest selection is probably on Rakuten Viki.

Before the streaming revolution or whatever we call it, we could only watch them on DVDs imported from Korea - the last one we watched like that was probably The King 2 Hearts in 2013.

 

[jian]

On to the next one!

Celebrity (Netflix, 2023)

Celebrity is another short and tightly-plotted series (12 episodes) with primarily female major characters. It's not quite as good as Queenmaker, in my opinion - at times it feels a little bit like an older person's guide to how social media influencers work - but it is pretty good about social media and influencers in Korea, as well as a good story in and of itself.

Our protagonist (there's only one this time) is Seo Ah-Ri, a poor door-to-door cosmetics salesperson who almost accidentally becomes a fashion influencer, becoming very popular for her excellent taste in vintage clothes and personal style. She therefore runs foul of the Gabin Society, a group of established influencers which is led by her childhood rival. Ah-Ri negotiates a tangled web of alliances, betrayals, and intrigue (at least one Gabin member is sympathetic to her) to survive and become successful, opposed by the ladies of Gabin at every turn - and she dies for it.

That isn't a spoiler, we more or less know that from the beginning. And we know that a few months after Ah-Ri's death, someone who claims to be her is back on livestream from a hidden location, narrating the events that led to Ah-Ri's rise and fall, exposing all the Gabin Society's secrets as she goes. That's the framing device for the series.

Like most Korean dramas, Celebrity has very little sex and violence (there's one drug taking scene, which is very scandalous in Korea) and so you may consider this series as a good introduction to Korean dramas for younger (as in, young teen) viewers who probably know more about social media and influencers than you do and think Korean culture, fashion, and beauty are interesting.

 

[Tonguez]

I've never watched a K-Drama. You said they started to be readily available in the UK around 15 years ago?

Do you find them on netflix, or where do you find them?

They are so available on Netflix that you can stream K-Dramas 24 hours a day for 12 months and still not see all of whats on offer

 

[jian]

Time for a drama with supernatural content. And it’s a great example.

Mystic Pop Up Bar (Netflix, 2020)

This is another drama with an understandably mistranslated title. The original is Ssang-gap Pocha, which means something like Twin Souls Bar, but a pocha (short for pojangmacha) isn't really a bar, it's more like a temporary tent or marquee where people sell alcohol and bar food (anju, Korean food that's good with alcohol such as tteokbokki (spicy rice cake), various pancakes such as bindaetteok (mung bean flour pancakes), barbecued meats, dumplings, and various noodle dishes). So pop-up bar isn't a bad translation. However, I can see Twin Souls Bar is a bit of a confusing name, so this translation is perfectly adequate.

Our point-of-view protagonist is Han Kang-Bae, a nice chap who's never been able to get close to anyone, because everyone he touches immediately wants to tell him about their problems. This is a weird magical curse to have but terribly convenient for our other two protagonists, Weol-Ju and Chef Gwi, who run the eponymous pocha and who have a spiritual mission to help 10 000 people with their problems.

The reason for this is revealed in the first scene and after - Weol-Ju originally lived and died in the 16th century. A fortuneteller's daughter who fell in love with a prince, Weol-Ju hanged herself on a sacred tree when everything in her life went wrong, and in doing so cursed the tree and blighted 10 000 lives. So if she doesn't atone by helping 10 000 people in 500 years, she's hellfire toast.

There's a lot of fun stuff about Korean folklore and the afterlife in the series, modernised and used cleverly. There are several characters such as Samsin (the triple goddess of childbirth and Weol-Ju's best friend) and Yeomradaewang* (the goddess of death and Weol-Ju's boss). It seems likely that these names are titles or jobs rather than personal names - they aren't the first people to hold them - which might explain why Yeomra (AKA Yama) is a woman rather than male as is traditional.

*This literally means "Great King Yeomra", as in Yama, King of the Underworld.

A fun reference to watch out for is when our three protagonists are discussing revising for exams and Chef Gwi acts like Coach Kim from Sky Castle while We All Lie plays in the background. The actor who plays Gwi (Choi Won-Young) played Dr Hwang in Sky Castle, you see. He and the actor who plays Kang-Bae (Yook Sung-Jae) then go on to play father and son (of a sort) in Golden Spoon, which is sort of appropriate since they develop a father-son relationship in this series.

(Another Sky Castle alumnus who appears is Song Geon-Hee, who plays the prince in flashbacks and played Young-Jae, the boy who kicks the plot off in Sky Castle.)

(If you watch a lot of dramas you'll spot several recurring actors. An obvious example is Kim Sun-Young, who plays minor but quite memorable parts in Crash Course in Romance, Crash Landing on You, Because This is My First Life, and Queenmaker.)

 

[jian]

Let’s do something a little different, a sprawling makjang drama from Netflix.

Little Women (Netflix, 2022)

Little Women is somewhat based on the Louisa May Alcott novel of the same name, mainly in the three main characters. But honestly, not really, they're just inspired by those characters and their themes and then go somewhere else fast.

Our three protagonists are the titular three sisters - In-Joo (the eldest and most restrained, works in an office, based on Meg March), In-Kyung (middle sister, enthusiastic investigative reporter, based on Jo), and In-Hye (youngest, high school student and gifted artist, based on Amy). They've all grown up quite poor, partly because their parents are feckless and awful, and the series starts when their mother runs off with the money In-Joo and In-Kyung saved for an art course for In-Hye to join their father in Thailand. And here's a running theme in the series: Adults Are Useless.

The three sisters are then drawn into a complex and insidious conspiracy that seeks to consume them, and I think it's fair to say that the conspiracy is thematically representative of Korean society as a whole.

Remember when I said CLOY was a generation X drama? In that case, Vincenzo was a millennial drama - inequality sucks, chaebols suck, working as a corporate drone sucks, everyone is living precariously, stealing from rich idiots is totally fine, and found family matters at least as much as blood family. And here then, finally, is the generation Z drama - adults are useless, gen Xers built a society which profits them but consumes younger generations, the only hope you can find is in each other, burn it all down.

Our three heroines come through it all with mutual support and love, and with a lot of gumption. Little Women is what they call a very makjang drama - lots of melodramatic highs and lows, cliffhangers and plots out of nowhere. I love it nonetheless.

 

[MNblockhead]

A-ma! How did you find EN World!?

Sorry, whenever my mother-in-law visits my Amazon Video algorithm gets retrained and I have to scroll through pages of dumb Korean and Chinese soap operas until I can find my dumb fantasy and sci fi shows.