A Dictionary of Kdrama Words to “Borrow”

While watching Korean dramas, I often come across words American speakers of the English language are tragically lacking. Sure, we have bon mots like kerfuffle, mooncalf, and onomatopoeia. But what about selca, CF, and skinship?

It’s clear that Korean has borrowed many words from the English language; as far as I’m concerned, it’s high time the English language returned the favor. Here’s a list of Kdrama terms and concepts essential to life in the modern world, wherever you are.

Gong Yoo unveils his chocolate, Big

Chocolate abs

Meaning: Chiseled abdominal muscles that stand out like the segmented pieces on a chocolate bar

As seen in: Big, and every single drama that includes a gratuitous shower scene (Thank you, Korea!)

American parallel: Six-pack abs

While America does have an exact equivalent for this term, it’s not nearly as wonderful. Sure, abs can look like a six-pack of beer as seen from above, but why associate something so marvelous with cold, hard, metal? The Korean conception of chocolate abs is much more appealing. Who can say no to a nibble, after all?

Yoon Eun Hye and Lee Seung Gi sure make a cute couple. 

You should get on that, Drama Overlords.

CF

Meaning: Commercial film

As seen in: Greatest Love

American parallel: Commercial

Like so many entries on this list, CF is actually a short version of an English phrase that doesn’t even exist in English-speaking countries. Why CF evolved in Korea and not on American shores isn’t clear, but I suspect it has something to do with the frequency of celebrity appearances in ads: it seems as if every big Korean star shills for a list of products approximately as large as my town’s phone book.

This abbreviation allows the arty word film to be appended to something we Americans see as slightly crass—celebrity endorsements. Somehow, this tiny addition manages to class up the concept to the point of making it sound like an art form. It’s all about positioning: a commercial is something you fast-forward through; a commercial film is a work of art that just happens to be shilling a kimchi refrigerator or foundation for men.

Maybe someday we Americans will start talking about CFs, too. After all, “serious” actors like Brad Pitt are now appearing in television ads, which seems to indicate that a change is brewing. (Who can blame him for that bizarre Chanel ad, anyway? He’s got a lot of kids to put through college.)

If Jan Di had spent more time fighting in Boys over Flowers and less time
 saying Fighting! it would have been a much better drama

Fighting!

Meaning: An expression of encouragement

As seen in: Boys over Flowers, and every other modern Kdrama romantic comedy

American parallel: You can do it!

Along with its distinctive arm gesture, Fighting! started off as a cheer used during Korea’s 2002 World Cup matches. If the (many, many, many) Kdramas I’ve watched are any indication, it caught on big time and is now an indispensable part of communication in Korea.

It’s no great surprise that Fighting doesn’t really have a direct equivalent in America. If Fighting is Korea’s cultural keyword, America’s is Cool; we rarely offer expressions of encouragement and support. (The horrible, dated expression “You go girl!” might once have worked, but nowadays it’s exclusively used for the purposes of mockery.)

Ironically, this word that the English language is sorely lacking is actually an English word in the first place. If we adopted it in its new, Korean form, it might just make us better people. All I know for sure is that I’m always encountering situations tailor-made for Fighting!, but its effectiveness is diminished by the need to explain what it means before I can say it.

I’m sorry, but I can’t write a caption for this picture. I’m too busy
 restraining myself from making naughty jokes about eating ramyun.
Suffice it to say, these are the boys from Flower Boy Ramyun Shop

Flower boy

Meaning: Pretty, pretty boys who aren’t afraid to put some effort into how they look. (Did I mention that they’re pretty?)

As seen in: Practically every Kdrama made since the 2009 airing of Boys over Flowers

American parallel: Metrosexual

Like many Western fans of Kdrama, Boys over Flowers was my first exposure to Korean television. But when I started watching it on Netflix streaming, I had literally no idea what the title meant. Boys? Flowers? In America, those two concepts rarely go together.

In Korea, though, flower boys are all the rage. Heck, there’s even a series of television shows created specifically to take advantage of their appeal: tvN’s “Oh Boy” dramas, which includes Flower Boy Ramyun Shop, Shut Up: Flower Boy Band, and the eagerly anticipated Flower Boy Next Door.

Key traits of flower boyhood are a slender body, a delicately lovely face, and fastidious personal grooming habits, sometimes even to the point of wearing makeup. Being a pretty boy is something Korean men actively aspire to, which is why in 2011 they were responsible for a quarter of worldwide sales of cosmetics made specifically for men.

Mainstream American culture would probably consider most flower boys too feminine to be attractive, but we in the know realize that life without flower boys is barely worth living.

Kim Ji Won, you were so cute in What’s Up that I completely
forgive you for To the Beautiful You.

Fourth dimensional/4D

Meaning: Someone odd or spacey

As seen in: Endearingly goofy Park Tae Hee from What’s Up and dreamy Yoon Ji Hoo in Boys over Flowers

American parallel: Space cadet; weirdo

Regular human beings live life in three dimensions. But some people seem to exist on a different plane, never quite thinking or acting like anyone else. They’re easily distracted, whether by pretty things or big ideas, and prone to misunderstanding what seems obvious to those around them.

I suspect that people in my life would be especially grateful if this phrase entered the English language: they’ve probably spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to describe me, after all.

You know it’s true love when a flower boy dyes his hair gray for you, as Kim Bum’s
character has done in this scene from The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry

Noona Romance

Meaning: A story focusing on an woman’s relationship with a younger man

As seen in: The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry and I Do, I Do, among many others

American parallel: Anything involving the icky, condescending word Cougar

When I first started watching Korean dramas, words like noona and oppa were stunningly exotic; as a speaker of English, I’ve spent most of my life calling everyone I know by their first name. Koreans, on the other hand, have at their disposal a complicated network of words indicating almost every kind of relationship, from your father’s older brother (keun aboji) to the youngest person in your group of friends (maknae). There’s a case to be made for either of these approaches: the American way of doing things emphasizes equality, while the Korean way emphasizes interconnection.

But lacking a similar classification system, we Americans don’t have have an easy way to describe a romantic relationship between a woman and a younger man. (Not that we have much call to do so, anyway: As long as an age difference isn’t enormous, it probably wouldn’t be mentioned at all. And if it is enormous, in the post-Demi-and-Ashton world it’s almost certainly a relationship between a older man and and a younger woman.)

On other hand, Korean dramas glory in older women dating younger men. There are a number of sensible reasons for this: It’s a good source of narrative friction in a society that values age-based hierarchy. Plus, mandatory military service in Korea means that it’s harder to pair actresses with their peers—until they’re safely in their thirties, a chunk of the male population is otherwise occupied at any given time.

As genres go, the noona romance is probably my favorite. So what happens when similar plotlines appear in Western entertainment, like the upcoming Hello, I Must Be Going? I spend a lot of time explaining to my friends that “noona” doesn’t indicate a matinee showtime, that’s what.

Lee Hyun Woo, you were so darling in To the Beautiful You that no forgiveness is necessary.

Selca

Meaning: A photo you’ve taken of yourself

As seen in: Cha Eun Kyul’s selca diaries in To the Beautiful You

American parallel: To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t one

Fifty percent of the profile pictures on the Internet are probably selcas, yet we Americans have yet to realize that it would be handy to have a word to describe them. When we finally do catch on, the Korean version will fit right into our language: it’s a mashup of the English words self and camera, after all.

I don’t think they waited for marriage in Can We Get Married, btw.

Skinship

Meaning: Affectionate touching, often involved with romantic relationships

As seen in: Most cable dramas, including the currently airing Can We Get Married? 

American parallel: Long strings of words like “physical displays of affection,” but nothing as short and catchy

There’s an urban legend that the Eskimo language doesn’t include a word for snow. Instead, the legend states, there are words for “heavy, wet snow,” “snow that’s falling slowly,” and “hard, crusty snow.” The theory is that in a world where it’s almost always winter, specific, descriptive terms for snow are more useful than the general word.

And that, my friends, is why there’s no American version of the word skinship. Physical intimacy here isn’t a big deal; we’re prone to casually touching those around us and displays of affection happen all the time. For example, consider my favorite recess game during elementary school: Kiss Tag. This is exactly what it sounds like—the person who was “it” had to kiss whomever they could catch, at which point the kissee became the new “it” and repeated the process. By the end of the first game, I had the kissing experience of the average thirty-year-old Kdrama heroine. (I was a slow runner, by fate or design. I’ll never tell which.)

Even in America, it’s hard to imagine the word Skinship not coming in handy: It’s shorter and more concise than most of our descriptions of physical intimacy, so why not use it?

The Other F Word: Feminism versus Korean Drama

Family’s Honor: “I do...give up everything about my life so I can
go on shopping sprees with your obnoxious mother and dust your living room.
Remind me again what you’re giving up for this relationship?”

This week’s post could have been devoted to sane and sensible things that people might actually be interested in reading, like reviews of the new crop of Kdramas. Being a difficult human being, I instead opted to write the following diatribe about the finer points of gender relations in Kdramas. Sorry.

Feminism is a weirdly fraught topic in America, as if there’s something controversial about the notion that women are equal to men and deserve to be treated as such. I suspect that it’s even more so in Korea—as in most of Asia, Confucian-rooted patriarchy is still a major cultural force there.

I’ve always considered myself to be a feminist. This can be a difficult thing to reconcile with a love of Korean drama: As much as fun as I have watching these shows, I often find myself cringing when it comes to their depictions of relationships between men and women. Dramas that are geared toward younger audiences generally aren’t so bad, but I’m quickly learning to carefully approach series with more adult appeal, lest their depictions of gender roles leave me clutching the back of my neck in psychosomatic pain, Kdrama-style.

The two most off-putting shows I’ve seen to date when it comes to women’s rights have been A Gentleman’s Dignity and Family’s Honor, a 56-episode drama that aired in 2008. Both shows were targeted at audiences in their forties, an age group that seems more likely to have attitudes about women that are contrary to my own beliefs.

What I would consider casual sexism suffuses the plot of A Gentleman’s Dignity: Hate your older wife and cheat on her constantly but don’t want to divorce her because you need her money? Fine. Express your admiration for the woman you like by forcibly pinning her against a bathroom door against her will? No problem. Tell your friends you’re not interested in a girl because “to me, she’s not a woman, she’s a human being”? Right on! But for the kind of show it was—one trying to appeal to both older viewers and male audiences—A Gentleman’s Dignity could have been a lot worse. 

It was Family’s Honor that really broke my heart. Its portrayal of traditional family life was one of the most interesting things about this funny, sweet drama, but it also required an old-fashioned approach to women’s rights. When its characters got married, the women were expected to completely abandon their pasts and their birth families to fill a domestic role in their husbands’ households. Marriage vows in the world of Family’s Honor aren’t a pact between two people; they’re very much a pact between two families, with the daughter-in-law functioning as equal parts hostage and maid. (Seeing this made me appreciate why there’s so much Kdrama conflict about children’s spouses. Getting that perfect daughter-in-law is like hiring an employee whose responsibilities include bearing your grandchildren.)

The worst thing, though, was hearing the capable, confident female lead in Family’s Honor tell her new husband that for the duration of their marriage, he would never see her without makeup. Up to this point I had really loved her character—in spite of being a goodie-two shoes raised in a deeply traditional environment, she brought a healthy serving of snark to the table. So a tiny sliver of my soul died when she told him it was her responsibility to be up early every morning so she could look good for him when he woke up, just as her grandmother had done for her grandfather. The male lead only grinned bashfully in response, as if he couldn’t believe his good luck. This seems like no kind of intimacy to me: If you can’t allow someone to see you as you really are underneath the mask you very literally wear in the public sphere, you can’t let them love you, either.

In the youthful, girl-centric dramas I usually seek out, the patriarchal nature of Korean culture has a subtler influence. But it’s still here, sometimes in unexpected ways.

“I’ll take responsibility.”

If you’ve seen more than one or two Kdramas, you’ve almost certainly come across this sentence. Most often spoken by a dashing male lead, it’s an oblique, drama-ese proposal of marriage. A character who says these words is stepping forward as a potential husband, as someone who will be around for his significant other through good and bad, thick and thin. I definitely kvelled the first time I came across a character saying he would “take responsibility,” back when I was watching the 2006 noona romance What’s Up Fox. But then I really thought about what the words meant, and now find it a bit harder to get excited about them.

“I’ll take responsibility for you and our relationship,” the man is declaring to his object of desire, as if she’s a pet in need of an owner, not an adult woman capable of caring for herself. Ultimately, it’s not a confession of love—it’s an acknowledgment of an uneven balance of power. It’s the person in control deigning to take on the burden of a wife, begrudgingly accepting the role of being her leader, boss, and master.

Gentleman's Dignity: “Duh...Wait! I mean otokay!”

“Otokay?!?”

Many Kdrama indicators of women’s status are external, acted upon one character by another. Some, however, are internal—like the exclamation “Otokay?” (What to do?).  This rhetorical expression of uncertainty and doubt is used by characters who feel out of their league and unable to chart a course of action.

Drama characters of both genders have been known to say it, but Otokay is a predominantly a female exclamation. In particular, it’s perhaps the most essential vocabulary word for rom-com leads. Of late, the character Yi Soo in A Gentleman’s Dignity has been driving me especially crazy with it—in every single episode, she’s had at least one spazz fit where she dances around, impotently moaning otakay in the face of whatever small-scale, childish embarrassment the show’s male lead has inflicted on her.

To me, otokay is an uncomfortable admission of helplessness and self-doubt that actually functions as an apology for the personal agency of female characters. Sure, they eventually make the decisions the plot requires of them, but not before the writers take time to stress just how hard it is for their women to think independently and solve their own problems.

One of the things that I love most about Korean drama is that it values any technique that allows the viewer to fully experience a character’s emotional life. And this is a key factor why otokay plays such an important role in so many dramas: it’s an opportunity to depict on screen what’s going on in someone’s head. I just wish that it didn’t preclude showing Kdrama girls in a self-confident, take-charge light.

Heartstrings: If a girl won’t do what you want, make her.
 It’s the Kdrama way.

The wrist grab.

I watched a number of dramas before it even occurred to me that the wrist grab existed—if you’re not paying close attention, it doesn’t look so different from holding hands, after all. But the distinction between the two is still worth considering: Holding hands is a mutual act of connection in which both sides are equal; if you don’t want to hold someone’s hand, you let go. In contrast, grabbing someone’s wrist is a one-sided assumption of power, with the grabber in complete control; as a physical gesture, it’s much more difficult to reject.

And guess who’s always the grabber and who’s always the grabbee? That’s right—men grab women to drag them off for lengthy, one-sided conversations; to prevent them from leaving the room; or to steer them in crowds. In all my many, many hours of watching Korean television, I can’t think of a single instance of a woman taking a man’s wrist. The only parallel thing Kdrama women are allowed is to grip the edge of a man’s jacket, something they generally do in fear or to ensure that they’re not separated from him on the street. Yet it’s always clear that grabbing a wrist is an assertion of power and a denial of the other person’s free will, while grabbing a jacket is an admission of weakness.

The ultimate wrist grab, I think, comes toward the end of Boys over Flowers. While standing in a huddle of irate characters, Joon Pyo took what he thought was Jan Di’s wrist and dragged her for blocks. What he didn’t realize until far too late was that the wrist he grabbed belonged not to Jan Di, but to her rival for his affections. This was played for comedy, but it’s actually just a reminder what a one-sided, impersonal act of aggression the wrist grab actually is: He dragged that girl so far she had to ask for cab fare to get back to where they started, without ever realizing who it was.

“No” means “Whatever you say, Sir.”

Wrist grabbing is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to domineering physical contact in Kdramas. Again and again, we see men who force women to do things against their will. Whether it’s Ra Im’s struggles against Joo Won’s “romantic” kisses in Secret Garden or Jan Di’s eternal ambivalence to Joon Pyo’s obsession with her in Boys over Flowers, what female characters want isn’t of the utmost importance even in Kdramas geared toward women.

Seemingly progressive shows like I Need Romance 2012 aren’t immune, either: This series didn’t even make it past its third episode before a female character was physically restrained and carried into her bedroom for her first sexual encounter with her boyfriend, in spite of her longstanding protests that she wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship with him. It’s true that the show painted said boyfriend as a creep, but not because he was a date rapist—because he was a jerk who didn’t please her once he got her into bed, and then had the nerve to criticize her sexual skills in public.

When it comes to desire and physical relationships in Kdramas, women are doubly cursed. Only in the rarest of circumstances are they allowed to want to touch a man, but when that man wants to touch them they’re almost always expected to let him do so. Episode 5 of A Gentleman’s Dignity included a particularly skin-crawl-y example: Do Jin, the male lead, had been pursuing the female lead, Yi Soo, for a number of episodes. She had yet to give in, though, and regularly told him to get lost. One night she was in desperate need a ride and called him for help; he took Yi Soo to her house and invited himself in. While eventually excusing himself, Do Jin gazed leeringly at Yi Soo and said “I’d better leave, or I’ll do something bad.” The line was delivered as if it were scampish and charming, much in the tone I’d use to fret about being alone with a quart of Ben & Jerry’s. But this isn’t ice cream he’s talking about—it’s a person with an agenda and motivations fully independent of his own, and someone who is clearly disinclined to accept his sexual advances. I might be helpless against the impulse to devour that tub of Chunky Monkey. But what “bad” thing is he threatening to do here, when alone with this woman he professes to have a crush on? I wonder. And would it matter what Yi Soo had to say about it?

Secret Garden: “Her hands might be saying no, but I’ll make her mouth say yes.”

“How will she run the household?”

I love Coffee Prince like other people love air, at least partially because it’s a shining bastion of girl power. Both its female leads live the lives they want, in spite of the world’s expectations of them. But even Coffee Prince doesn’t completely escape the patriarchal nature of Korean society.

Undercurrents throughout the show hint at just what the tomboy Eun Chan should be, but isn’t. When faced with the possibility of acquiring such an unorthodox daughter-in-law, the male lead’s mother was flummoxed at the thought of how the household would be run under her supervision. Because, of course, when a woman becomes a wife in Kdrama it’s usually expected that she also becomes a professional housekeeper—either for the male lead, or, as in this case, his entire family.

And then there’s the male lead himself. Unspeakably charming and supportive as he is, even Choi Han Gyul doesn’t exist outside of the patriarchy. “What kind of man do you think I am? Of course you can keep working after we get married,” he says to Eun Chan after she’s confessed she’s unwilling to marry him immediately. The stickler here is that it actually matters what kind of man Han Gyul is when it comes to Eun Chan’s ability to remain active in the world outside his home. It’s understood by every character in the drama that once they’re officially together, everything about her life becomes his prerogative.




It’s not that I think these characters (or the writers who created them) have to-do lists including the item “be culpable in the oppression of women.” It’s just that as an outsider seeing Korean culture for the first time, I’m not desensitized to these things the way someone who grew up there would be. Just like in America, some things are so embedded in the native worldview that their actual meaning has been all but forgotten. Although a man might say “I’ll take responsibility,” I suspect it’s the equivalent of someone like me buying Uncle Ben’s rice at the grocery store. If I really stop and think about the history of racism and slavery in America as represented by this product’s name and marketing, it’s damn upsetting. But in my day-to-day life, it’s just another box on the shelf. And in his day-to-day life, it’s just what you say when you want to marry someone. 

And while my own values and those shown in Korean dramas are sometimes in conflict, Kdrama does have a lot to offer women viewers. Koreans are not afraid to tell stories from a female point of view, even if they’re meant for general audiences (Girl K, Miss Ripley). Kdrama girls who work hard and believe in themselves always, always win in the end (Shining Inheritance, Sungkyunkwan Scandal). In Korean drama, women are rarely sexualized (Boy over Flowers, which never showed a single Korean girl in a bikini, in spite of ample opportunities). I would also like to add, with no small degree of irony, that to the best of my knowledge Park Shi Hoo has never yet made a drama without at least one shirtless scene.

• • •

Fascinating things discovered while procrastinating about this post:

Why Everybody Should Watch Korean Drama

on Homegrown Social Critique

Korean Dramas, Domineering Men, and the Worries of a Chick-Flick Loving Feminist

on Not Another Wave

Coffee Prince: Anatomy of a Scene

on Idle Revelry

Master List of Feminism x Kdrama Blog Posts
on Malariamonsters

Playing Favorites

Coming up with their very own top-ten list seems to be a major rite of passage for every fan of Korean television. Now that I’ve been watching Kdrama for almost a year, I guess my time has come. I’ve seen seen an awful lot of dramas: some that I’ve loved, some that I’ve loathed, and some that weren’t good enough to merit either emotion.

The shows listed here may not be the finest dramas Korea has ever made, but they are my favorites—the ones that stuck with me long after I watched their final episodes.

1. Coffee Prince (2007). A delight on every level, Coffee Prince is rooted in what could have been just another Kdrama cliché: a hardworking, tomboyish girl pretends to be a boy to make money to support her family. Over the course of 17 episodes, though, it manages to subvert almost every drama trope as it grows into a genuine, heartfelt story of best friends falling in love. The perfect mix of comedy and melodrama, it’s peopled by a huge cast of incredibly compelling characters and graced with sky-high production values. This drama may not have much to say about homosexuality, but if you listen closely it does have something to say about what it means to be a woman, a state of being that, contrary to popular Kdrama opinion, doesn’t require a two-inch skirt, white pancake makeup, or teetery high-heels. With its heart in the real, everyday world, Coffee Prince is a Kdrama romance unlike any other: It’s not a show about finding ways to keep people apart. It’s a show about bringing them together. So wonderful, even a year after watching it for the first time just the thought of Coffee Prince can make me smile until my face hurts.

2. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010). Only the hardest of hearts won’t be charmed by this candy-colored, deeply principled fusion sageuk that values learning, loyalty, and friendship above all else. Yet another story about a girl pretending to be a boy so she can support her family, Sungkyunkwan Scandal features one of Kdrama’s greatest quartets, perfectly embodied by a group of young actors with unforgettably flirty chemistry. This show’s most wonderful conflict isn’t to be found in its archery contests, classroom competitions, or royal intrigues. Instead, it’s the constant battle of worldviews waged by the jaded female lead and the idealistic young Confucian scholar she comes to love. Fun, swoony, and sometimes silly, Sungkyunkwan Scandal’s dreamy brand of revisionist history is the perfect introduction to historical Kdramas.

3. Boys over Flowers (2009). This story of Cinderella meeting Prince-not-so-charming isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination—but if you’re susceptible to its particular brand of cheese, it’s nonetheless irresistible. With characters so flatly iconic they’re approaching Hero of a Thousand Faces territory, it focuses on a poor every-girl and the dashing, mega-rich (and mega-flawed) young man who inexplicably wants to whisk her away into his life of privilege. Boys over Flowers has it all: wish-fulfillment shopping sprees, lavish tropical vacations, a nail-biting love-triangle, and more handsome knights in shining armor than it knows what to do with. The impact of this sweetly chaste, odds-defying love story is still reverberating throughout Asia—and the world. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I cannot tell a lie: I loved almost every minute I spent watching this train wreck. 

4. Que Sera, Sera (2007). A sordid Kdrama for grownups, this is a dark gem full of complex characters, edge-of-your-seat storytelling, and deeply felt emotions. There’s no cartoony Kdrama villain to be found here; instead, human nature in all its greedy, jealous, and cruel guises takes on the role of bad guy. And just when you think Que Sera, Sera’s imperfect characters are completely beyond redemption, they find a way out of the cycle of hurt and regret that propels most of this drama’s action and emerge as people who might just be better for their heartbreaking pasts. Compulsively watchable and with a surprisingly satisfying ending, this dark horse drama isn’t to be missed.

5. Painter of the Wind (2008). The rarest of birds: A thoughtful, girl-centered sageuk that beautifully explores the creation of real-life works of art by two historical figures. At the heart of the story is the imagined relationship between the artists, part professional mentorship, part friendship, and part love. (Did I mention that the younger artist happens to be a girl pretending to be boy so she can attend the royal painting academy?) The most sincere of the Korean gender-bending dramas, it explores the repercussions that would probably be felt by someone who actually spent most of her life hiding her gender. For my money, the most compelling relationship in this show isn’t the one between the two leads, though—it’s the one between the young artist and the courtesan she romances while searching for her true self. Tragic, exciting, and gorgeously filmed.

6. Goong (2006). Still the gold standard when it comes to dramas featuring modern-day Korean royalty, Goong is a goofy take on the standard love triangle. Instead of chaebols, though, the every-girl female lead gets to choose between two handsome princes—one distant and prickly, the other sweet and clingy with a creepy mother from hell. Its clever conceit, able script, and almost painfully winsome cast elevate Goong above its rom-com competition. A perfect vehicle for Yoon Eun Hye, this drama is charming, sweet, funny, and so wonderfully unafraid of being cute and cuddly that every episode ends with a teddy-bear diorama. (I love you, Korea.)

7. I Need Romance (2011). This show is the one thing I never expected from a Korean drama: racy. The only Kdrama romance I’ve seen that honestly depicts adult relationships, sex and all, I Need Romance is built around the friendship between three women in their early 30s. It explores the perils and pleasures of love from each of their perspectives—one a goddess of lust, one a long-term girlfriend, and one a virgin. Although the making, breaking, and remaking of an established relationship is at the heart of this show, no member of its likeable cast is wasted. Sex in the City, if Sex in the City were less sex-mad and more sweet-hearted (and Korean).

8. Padam Padam (2012). Being no stranger to the gutter makes the heights reached by this supernatural romance all the more powerful. Having spent most of his adult life in prison after being convicted for the murder of his best friend, Padam Padam’s male lead is understandably dour and jaded. But when the stakes are highest, God or fate or the universe steps in to give him a chance at happiness, rewinding time and allowing him to right the wrongs he’s committed. The real miracle of this drama is that it never loses sight of telling a good story about compelling characters, even when faced with the distractions of heartrending possible angels, supernatural plot twists, and truly breathtaking cinematography. Even a fairly lame final plot twist and an uninteresting female lead aren’t enough to ruin this lovely, reflective show.

9. Time between Dog and Wolf (2007). An action thriller with a heart, Time between Dog and Wolf is a high-tension exploration of the relationships between fathers and sons, whether they’re related by blood or not. This is the drama City Hunter should have been but wasn’t: a beautifully shot, thoughtfully written story of a young man’s quest for revenge against his mother’s murderer, and all the many things that get in the way—including his love for the murderer’s daughter (this is a Korean drama, after all).

10. Shut Up! Flower Boy Band (2012). SUFBB’s screenwriters could have phoned it in—nobody expects a gimmicky drama intended for teenage girls to actually be good. Instead, they created a gritty, acutely observed coming-of-age story that just happens to focus on good-looking bad boys in a rock band, and be set in the cutthroat world of Kpop. This drama is most memorable for its brisk pacing, strong characterizations, and poignant adolescent friendships that are closer to family ties. Also, the cute boys. (Duh.)

Learned from the list:

• I love it when girls pretend to be boys. Sadly, I suspect this is because it’s one of the few times Kdrama rom-com girls get to be smart and capable instead of airheaded and bumbling. (Note, of course, that Go Mi Nyeo from You’re Beautiful is the exception that proves this rule. She’s airheaded and bumbling as either gender.) Also wonderful is that gender-bending romantic leads tend to spend more time together—they’re not separated by the Great Wall of Boy versus Girl.

• My absolute favorite dramas are some of the first few I watched—of course, they’re also most everyone’s favorites, which makes them popular and easy to find. I think it was also easier to love without reservation back in the early days of my obsession, when I was too blinded by the fantastically exotic sparkle of Kdrama to watch with a critical eye. (This, I like to think, explains my undying love for Boys over Flowers. It was the second Kdrama I ever saw—of course I imprinted on it like a baby duck.) It’s certainly harder to please me nowadays, but I also think that I’m running out of classics. My first year down the Kdrama rabbit hole was spent watching the greatest hits that are widely beloved and still under discussion, while today I’m branching out into lesser-known shows, which can be hit or miss.

• I love youthful coming-of-age romances, and wish there were more of them out there in dramaland. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m a failure at adulthood, but somehow I find 15 infinitely more interesting than 35.

• I’m incapable of writing about Korean drama without using the word heart a lot. Whether that says something about me or Kdrama, I’m not sure. On the bright side, I’d still rather jump off something extremely high than discuss a character’s (or person’s) dream, whatever it may be.

• When I started putting this list together, I was only sure of my top two or three dramas. As I got going, though, I realized all the shows that were coming to mind were ones I had devoted an entire blog post to (or most of one, anyway). The rest of the shows I’ve written about in detail here? They would go on this list’s counterpart—my ten least favorite Kdramas.

Drama Throwdown: Boys before Flowers vs. Flower Boy Ramen Shop

  

Most Korean dramas seem to be made Frankenstein-style: they’re patched together from bits and pieces of other shows, recycling character traits, plot twists, and central conflicts with wild abandon. And although this magpie approach to drama creation can get old, it also has a lot to offer—after all, there’s nothing cozier than putting on your favorite sweater, however ratty and ancient it may be. 

Sometimes, though, all the borrowing can get a bit egregious—which brings me to the topic at hand: Boys before Flowers versus Flower Boy Ramen Shop. These two shows were both drawn from the Cinderella-meets-chaebol filing cabinet at Drama Overlord Central, but their similarities don’t end there.

Boys before Flowers (2007) is a coming-of-age love story saddled with mediocre production, writing, and acting. And yet, its pleasures are undeniable and the show is widely believed to be more addictive than any other substance known to man.

Flower Boy Ramen Shop (2011) is a bighearted comedy it’s hard not to love, but it’s also a drama composed almost entirely of pieces of other shows—it’s part Hello, My Teacher and part Boys before Flowers, with a healthy dose of food-porny shows like Coffee Prince thrown in for good measure.

The Throwdown

The common raw materials used to build Boys before Flowers and Flower Boy Ramen Shop are especially evident, even if the resulting shows are not created equal.

1. Female lead

—an athlete (BbF = swimmer/FBRS = volleyball player)

—the new girl at school, struggling to fit in (student/student teacher)

—a little ashamed of her blue-collar, working-class dad (dad is a dry cleaner/dad owns a run-down snack bar)

Winner: Flower Boy Ramen Shop by a mile. You know there’s trouble when a drama’s female lead aspires to the Olympics, yet nearly drowns every time a body of water larger than a teaspoon appears on screen. Jan Di has her finer points, but the wish fulfillment factor of continually being rescued by dreamy, filthy rich babes can only carry a show so far. This is why Eun Bi—gangster that she may be—is such a breath of fresh air. She doesn’t let anyone push her around and, plunger in hand, saves the day not only for herself but also for her boyfriend.

2. Male lead

* a chaebol (grandson of Shin Hwa/son of Cha Sung)

* bratty (demands shoe-licking/tricks a woman into taking him home and sheltering him)

Winner: Boys before Flowers. Jun Pyo may start off as a mean, bullying butthead, but he ends up a responsible, loving, and supportive captain of industry. Chi Soo is handsome and all, but it’s unclear what he has to offer the female lead, or how his character has improved throughout the course of the show—even in the military he’s still dodging hard work and haircuts, so what was the point of the past 16 episodes?

 

3. Second male lead

* falls asleep in random places (outdoor staircase/everywhere)

Winner: Tie. Either would have been a better choice than the male lead—each loves the female lead like I love cake, and would have been an excellent life partner for her, to boot.

4. Supporting cast

* Three flowery boys (Ji Hoo, Yi Jung, Woo Bin/Kang Hyuk, Hyun Woo, Ba Wool)

* A female best friend (Ga Eul/Dong Joo)

Winner: Boys before Flowers (even in spite of the magnificent "Crazy Chicken"). BbF’s length allowed everyone involved a lot more screen time, but the show also gets bonus points for tidiness by developing a secondary romance between the female lead’s best friend and a member of the F4. RBFS doesn’t bother, instead creating a separate, entirely sidelined romance for the best friend that feels both unresolved and unrelated to the show’s main narrative.

5. Plot

* boy woos unwilling girl using his family's power and money (laser leg hair removal [!!!]/unwelcome grief money)
* an uncanny but suspect prediction (“She’ll give you a family”/you’ll hear bells ringing when you kiss the one you’re meant to be with)
* a parent tries to break up the main couple with a bribe; when that fails, he/she renovates real estate (Madam Kang/President Cha)

Winner: Boys before Flowers. This truly epic love story trumps FBRS's cute romance in every way.

A fire-alarm-enabled shopping spree and an all-expenses-paid trip to New Caledonia (wherever the heck that is)? Does it get better than that? Certainly not in Flower Boy Ramen Shop, where a fancy restaurant is the best a girl can hope for, no matter how rich her boyfriend may be.


Plus I literally got goose bumps when the monk made his prediction to Ji Hoo, and the show should get extra points for its clever(ish) twisting of the ambiguous prophecy. Jan Di gave him a family, all right, it was just of the grandfather variety rather than the pitter-patter-of-little-feet variety.

And then there’s Madam Kang—one of the greatest characters I've met in Kdrama. She’s a disinterested tiger mom who ultimately wants what she thinks is best for her son, but goes about getting it in exactly the wrong way. (I was disappointed in her finale, though. It’s as if the writers felt it was necessary to punish her for being a strong, independent woman so they saddled her with an invalid husband to put her in her place—the kitchen, not the boardroom.) President Cha’s hot tub and manboob combination was certainly one for the ages, but never carried the same weight as the ever-looming villainy of Madam Kang.

6. Resolution

*female lead studies (to be a doctor/to be a teacher)

Winner: Boys before Flowers. Both shows feature open-ended resolutions, perhaps intended to lay the ground for a second season. This category would have been a tie, if not for Kang Hyuk’s complete non-ending: He disappears to become an itinerant ramen chef? Really? Boys before Flowers may have dropped a lot of balls toward the end of its run, but at least it provided some degree of closure for its main characters. 

The Victor

To paraphrase another Korean drama, if I had met you first, Flower Boy Ramen Shop, I might have loved you. If for no reason other than showcasing a heroine capable of rescuing herself (and her man!), you are a worthy and valuable addition to the world. On the other hand, your Cliffs Notes-style, good-bits-only plotting downplays depth, texture, and character development (i.e., all the best bits of Kdrama, as far as I’m concerned).

And Boys over Flowers? You will always be my cracktastic love (of dubious objective quality). Nobody does delicious, over-the-top, smile-until-it-hurts like you do.