Korean Dramas Make It in the US
I guess given my previous post on Korean dramas, I’m supposed to comment on this news story, which describes how Korean dramas are selling well in the US, even amongst the general non-Korean populace.
The article gives a variety of reasons for the popularity of these dramas, their better taste, when compared to North American daytime soaps, being one of them. Actually, “Korean dramas” are midway between some of those very family oriented prime-time shows like Judging Amy, and the regular daytime soaps. Since my first post, I’ve seen quite a few more different Korean dramas with my wife, and would have to say that a distinguishing characteristic of almost all of them is the love triangle. The mother-in-law who ruins the romantic life of her adult son is a ubiquitous feature, too. Frankly, it would be nice to see a drama without a love triangle once in a while. In any case, Korean dramas are certainly superior to North America daytime soaps. But I admit to watching far fewer dramas these days; the novelty has worn off in many ways, and the best series I have seen here have all finished, except for one historical drama which is entering its third coup d’etat on the same king. It gets a bit tiresome, but then again, if we compare it to North America, where, according to the news article, a soap can run for literally half a century, it’s certainly an improvement.
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Monday, March 27th, 2006 @ 7:34 am
I always find that if you wade through the crap of a lot of the Korean dramas you can find some really good ones. Much the same as the US I guess. I really enjoyed 부활, do you know it?
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 @ 11:13 am
San Nakji, I don’t know the drama you mentioned by name. Is it still on?
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 @ 12:05 pm
No it’s finished now. Until recently we only got KBS. Noww we have MBC, which we had always dreamed of, but I think we still love KBS dramas more!
There is always at least one drama going that piques our interest. I don’t think you have as much time for TV watching as I do though! In fact, no one in this world does!
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 @ 8:09 am
We saw 부활, too. It was quite good (as those sorts of things go), as I recall. Its star was the one who took her own life last year. Quite sad, and she was a rather good actress.
No doubt, Nathan, you’ve come across another very common motif: rich daughter versus poor daughter, or some variation on that theme. The rich daughter is preferred by the family and invariably evil. The poor daughter is pure of heart, can do no wrong, and in the end gets the guy they are both competing over. (Whoops, sorry: I guess this is just a love triangle sub-motif!) Often, one of them is adopted—the rich/preferred/evil one into the poor/neglected/virtuous one’s family, or vice versa. Or they are twins separated at birth and don’t realize they’re related, or blah blah blah, or yada yada yada.