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?

Drama Review: What's Up and Shut Up! Flower Boy Band

(Warning: Light spoilers for recent shows ahoy!)

What’s Up: B-

Shut Up! Flower Boy Band: A

As a sucker for coming-of-age dramas, musicians, and (especially) cute boys, it was almost inevitable that I would like both What’s Up and Shut Up! Flower Boy Band. Lame (and oddly similar) titles aside, both take a grittier-than-average approach and focus on a stable of youthful characters hoping for success in the Korean entertainment industry.

Of the two, What’s Up is more traditional in tone and plot, complete with an ending ripped right out of the Big Book of Korean Drama Clichés. It manages to feel different, though, at least partially because it’s set at a residential college: Instead of coming home to mom every night, the What’s Up kids are learning to be independent and make their own way in the world. The true focal point of the show is their education, both as students in the musical theater department and as human beings. They ask the questions everyone asks at that age—Who am I? What will I be?—and answer them in a variety of ways, some noble, some foolish, but all genuine.

On a small-scale level, this show is full of idiosyncratic pleasures—fun musical numbers, interesting characters brought to compelling life by a cast of likeable actors, and a random ghost for good measure (and occasional purposes of exposition). It’s on the large-scale that things go horribly wrong: after carefully setting up a number of conflicts during the first 18 or so episodes, almost all of them are abandoned in favor of a cheesy (and largely unearned) Dead-Poet’s-Society-meets-Autumn-in-My-Heart finale that’s so totally unsatisfying I wish I’d stopped watching at episode 19. It’s possible that a second season was originally intended to address the many, many strings left hanging, but we won’t be seeing that now: What’s Up sat on a shelf for more than a year between the completion of its filming and its eventual air date. The cast is off to bigger and better—or, in the case of my charming Im Joo Hwan, two years of mandatory military service.

For me anyway, What’s Up’s ending-fail retroactively ruined what had been a fun show to watch. Shut Up, in contrast, suffered from a shaky start but grew into an irresistible delight. Its first two episodes may have seemed fragmentary—a bunch of fights and concerts strung together with no true center—but by the beginning of episode 3, it was clear that the writers had very good reason for allowing this: They were expertly setting viewers up for a major emotional wallop and what ultimately amounted to a shift in male leads.

I started watching SUFBB with low expectations. As the second drama in tvN’s Oh! Boy series, it seemed likely to follow in the shallow, soulless footsteps of its predecessor, Flower Boy Ramyun Shop. A straight-up comedy, FBRS featured limp storytelling and good-looking, one-dimensional characters; nothing about it rang emotionally true. But it turns out that Shut Up could not possibly be more different. Devoid of the glittery trappings of a fairytale chaebol love story, it features believable, working-class characters that clearly inhabit planet Earth, not planet Drama.

SUFBB transcends its gimmicky premise (pretty boys! In a band!) to become a genuinely affecting, well-made drama about the power of friendship and the pain of growing up. Although lacking the nihilist bite of true “punk rock,” it has an indie, alternative feel, complete with a harsh-light-of-day color palate and grainy, documentary-style filming techniques. But beneath this gratifyingly edgy exterior is a pleasantly soft and cuddly show about a group of underdogs from the wrong side of the tracks and the unbreakable ties that bind them together.

Although made from the same building blocks as most Korean shows, Shut Up turns everything on its ear with one subtle premise shift: It isn’t a love story between a man and a woman. It’s a love story between the members of a band. Sure, the show includes well-executed romance subplots, but they’re secondary to the story’s real center of gravity. The six boys in Eye Candy are more than friends; they’re family. Largely failed by the adults in their lives, they’re the most important people in each others’ worlds, and together they struggle and suffer and slack off and work hard, all in hopes of becoming a successful rock band. 

The death of Eye Candy’s charismatic front man, Byung Hee, is a good example of how Shut Up differs from FBRS. Someone died in FBRS, too, but the death of the female lead’s dad was nothing more than a throw-away plot trick. It maneuvered characters to where they needed to be for the rest of the story, but had no lasting emotional repercussions. Byung Hee, on the other hand, continues to be one of the most important characters in Shut Up long after he’s dead. He’s in every scene, really: in Ji Hyuk’s heartbroken loneliness, in Hyun Soo’s hatred of the classmates involved in his death, in the way the boys idealized the female lead. Byung Hee’s relationship with the other band members—part worshiped hero, part beloved brother—and the dreams of music superstardom he inspired in them inform every moment of the show’s sixteen episodes. 

By the end of episode two, Byung Hee has delivered a strange piece of wisdom that shapes the second half of the drama. While sharing a daydream about playing for a screaming crowd of adoring fans at UK’s Glastonbury Festival, he wraps up by saying, matter-of-factly, “that day we’ll die.” In response to Ji Hyuk’s question about this strange ending for a good dream, he explains: “I want to die at my happiest moment.” The thing about happiest moments, Byung Hee seems to realize, is that they’re momentary. And following in their wake are always a slew of other moments that aren’t so happy, as Eye Candy will learn the hard way once they’ve finally been signed to a talent agency. Later in the show, archrival Seung Hoon will echo this sentiment: “You’re still unhappy, even though you got everything you wanted.”

And that’s Shut Up’s true message: What we think we want and what we truly need to be happy are sometimes two very different things. An essential part of growing up is growing apart, stepping away from the family that has always sheltered you to be your own person, however hard and scary and painful it may be. It’s Ji Hyuk, having taken over as leader of Eye Candy, who comes to realize this first. And his realization leads to one of the most bittersweet but genuinely truthful drama finales I’ve ever seen. The boys realize they will always be a family, but as they become their adult selves that family won’t be the centerpiece of their lives the way it was when they were young.

Shut Up is never in stasis. It doesn’t hinge around one lead couple finally getting together—it’s made of characters who will instantly take up residence in your heart, and structured as one high-tension set piece after another, with the show growing and changing just as its characters do. 

From the halls of high school to the halls of a talent agency dorm, Shut Up somehow manages to travel a lot of miles in not a lot of time. And I’m so glad I got to go along for the ride.

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.