Why I’m hopelessly addicted to K-dramas

With the surging popularity of Korean television dramas, we find out how the wave captivated Indian fans and why it isn't without its set of problems

A week before the Korean television series—or K-drama—Twenty Five Twenty One (2022) was to air its finale, fans were in a state of frenzied expectation. Since the first episode, the series had presented the audience with a prickly problem. The protagonist was a fencing champion named Na Hee-do and, ostensibly, her love interest was a journalist named Baek Yi-jin. However, Hee-do had a teenaged daughter, Min-chae, whose last name was not Baek, but Kim.

For 15 episodes, as Twenty Five Twenty One became one of the most-watched items on Netflix India—and occasionally ranked higher than Malaika Arora on Twitter India’s trending topics—writer Kwon Do-Eun kept the audience on tenterhooks. Episode after episode went by with viewers unable to figure out who Min-chae’s father may be, and if Yi-jin was Hee-do’s husband.

By 30 March at least one fan had lost it. On that day, for a brief window of time, the Wikipedia entry for Twenty Five Twenty One listed its genres as “coming of age” and “Finding Mr. Kim”. This was quickly fixed by Wikipedia’s editors. Another fan dug up the edit summary and found the genre had been re-edited multiple times to read “Happy Mr. Kim Ending”, “Who is Min-chae’s Dad?” and “suspense,” among other things. Over about nine hours, someone kept editing the genre each time it was fixed. Finally, the Wiki editors put up a plea: “Please stop messing with the genre.”

Welcome to K-drama fandom—a tribe of nerds, lunatics, overthinkers, overreactors and lovers of good stories.

A growing viewership

The popularity of K-dramas seems to have taken some—particularly film and TV critics in English-language media—by surprise. It’s as though they feel they were betrayed by the zeitgeist. While they’d been scouring through Western entertainment to find shows worth recommending, audiences found K-dramas on their own. They voluntarily sat down to watch wordy foreign shows with hour-long episodes and subtitles. Western entertainment encouraged binge-watching, dropping entire seasons at one go. K-dramas, on the other hand, held on to appointment viewing, dropping two episodes a week, and the audiences grew.

K-dramas may sound like the longform of popular entertainment, especially since many of the narratives are richly literary. However, this is also a genre committed to being both accessible and commercial. Product placements for everything from sandwiches to jewellery are rampant. For instance, the romantic comedy Run On (2020) spent a good five minutes of an episode advertising a contact lens brand, including a scene in which the two male leads, while putting on a lens, enact the romantic cliché of gazing deep into one another’s eyes. The whole thing feels like an in-joke between the writer and the audience.

Beyond storytelling

The bulk of K-drama writers are women—women directors, in contrast, are relatively few—and they write masterfully across genres. For instance, Beyond Evil (2021), with its male-dominated cast, is a mystery about a serial killer. It’s as manly and cerebral as can be, and it was written and directed by two women.

In well-written K-dramas, the storytelling rises above limitations such as product placement and the code of the Korea Communications Standards Commissions, which regulates what’s shown on films, television, radio and the internet.

Take, for example, Crash Landing On You (2019), one of the most popular K-dramas of all time. Written by Park Ji-Eun, the story takes the enemies-to-lovers trope quite literally by making the heroine South Korean and the hero, North Korean. If it’s the comfort of a love story you’re looking for, just focus on how gorgeous Son Ye-jin and Hyun Bin look together as Captain Ri of North Korea tries to help the lost heiress Yoon Seri cross the border without alerting North Korean authorities. The couple recently set the internet on fire when they got married in real life.

Not without its flaws

Consider Crash Landing On You more analytically, and there’s a lot for an overthinker to chew on. Look at how carefully the writer has steered clear of either jingoism or demonising North Korea; or the way she weaves in the sexism in South Korean society as a plot device rather than an excuse for sentimental or preachy tangents. Also consider the skill it takes to ensure even minor characters have their own development arcs, and that there’s a little bit of everything—from comedy to action and even a freak tornado—in the drama.

As rich as the writing may be across K-dramas, the genre isn’t without its problems, not the least of which are the terrifying beauty standards for all genders. The actors’ blemishless complexions, whitened skin and painfully thin figures that K-dramas have established as normal verge on toxic. There are other kinds of messaging that, every now and then, make fans do a furious double take, like when a character was shown in blackface in Backstreet Rookie (2020) or when a woman getting drunk and blacking out was presented as “cute” in Business Proposal (2022).

Audience reactions matter

However, if there’s enough of a public reaction in South Korea, the industry listens to its audiences. While insiders maintain audience reactions don’t influence how a K-drama is written, a belligerent enough negative response can lead to a show being taken off air. On the plus side, changing audience reactions have led to some chauvinist clichés, like the hero forcing a kiss on a protesting heroine, being retired in favour of new ones, like the heroine making the first move in a kissing scene. It’s a good reminder that there is always scope to reimagine what’s considered established.

One of the highest-rated K-dramas of this year was The Red Sleeve, based on an actual 18th-century Korean monarch, who waited to earn the consent of the woman he loved instead of exercising his royal privilege, even though she was a lowly court maid.

There are many things The Red Sleeve trains its gaze on, like, for example, lead actor Lee Jun-ho’s beautiful face and body, as well as court conspiracies that the king must navigate to remain in power. Writer Jung Hae-ri also added some contemporary flavour by imagining the maid, played by Lee Se-young, as a feisty feminist determined to hold on to her independence, limited as it may be. As she repeatedly reminds the king, she may be his maid, but her mind and thoughts are her own.

Ultimately, we stay with K-dramas because they tell good stories with sensitivity and charm, and the writing usually compensates for the flaws. The fiction holds out the hope that there can be a better, happier world. You just have to imagine it into being. And while you’re waiting for it to manifest, there’s a K-drama into which you can disappear.

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