Hands Off: Consent and the Asian Drama Male

When I first started watching Korean drama, I spent a lot of time being preoccupied by things I don’t even notice nowadays. I would zone out for entire scenes because I was so transfixed by someone’s expert use of chopsticks, or so stunned by just how much makeup the male lead was wearing. But after two years of being the world’s most obsessed fan of Kdrama, this sort of stuff is second nature to me.

A comment on my recent review of Queen of Reversals made me realize that I’ve also become blind to something else: sexual violence. The commenter, Vivi, asked about the first kiss shared by that show’s leads. “That moment was really problematic for me,” she said. And I didn’t even remember what she was talking about, because you can only see something like this so many times before developing defense mechanisms to tune it out.

The kiss in question occurred at the very end of episode 20, with its aftermath playing out at the beginning of episode 21. In this scene, the male lead is shown as sad, upset, and a little desperate. He has just met his birth mother for the first time and discovered that she had borne and raised other children after abandoning him. It’s a snowy midwinter night and he sits on a bench surrounded by bright Christmas decorations. It’s the kind of sublimely romantic setting Kdramas are so fond of—colored lights sparkle, a scattering of snowflakes falls, and a moody rendition of “The First Noel” plays in the background.

(Spoilers and triggers ahead.)

Life in Plastic: Fantastic?

Brace yourselves: this week I’m going to write about something I probably have no business writing about. (Again.)

Jezebel, one of my favorite blogs, recently posted a reaction piece inspired by a segment from the radio show This American Life. The episode was about self improvement, and it was anchored by a brief interview with a woman who had moved to South Korea to teach English at an all-girls high school. Like any true American, she was stunned to realize that people in other parts of the world don’t necessarily think the way we do: There were full-length mirrors and scales on every floor of the school she taught at. Her students used both regularly, and dreamed of the day they would be rewarded with plastic surgery for having passed their college entrance exams.

As an American who’s spent the past year using television to be a peeping tom into Korean culture, this interview and article made me uncomfortable on a few levels. First of all, both are predicated on the assumption that America is somehow different from Korea, a place where physical appearance doesn’t matter. Anyone who truly believes that—as the interviewee obviously does—is both naive and uninformed.

Oh Boy: Gender-swap Dramas and Gender

 

I’m a total junkie when it comes to gender-bending Kdramas, so I was shocked at how negative my initial reaction was to the new drama short Ma Boy, in which a boy pretends to be a girl. 

I haven’t gotten around to watching the show yet, but something about the promotional materials really squicks me out. Is it because the male lead looks so masculine, in spite of his flowing locks and flirty schoolgirl uniform? Is it because he doesn’t look masculine enough, and instead falls into the uncanny valley between genders? Or is it just because boys pretending to be girls on screen tend to do so in the name of comedy, while girls pretending to be boys generally explore issues of identity and liberation from the established social order? It’s the difference between Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire and Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry: one is amusing, madcap slapstick, and the other is a wrenching portrait of the little boxes people are trapped in by the expectations of others.

I think this distinction is rooted in the ugliest aspect of our understanding of traditional gender roles: Men are defined by self-determination, power, and control, while women are defined by how they look and the quality of their relationships with men. When a girl pretends to be a boy, she inherits all the rights and privileges inherent to that gender, which makes great fodder for storytelling. On the other hand, when a boy pretends to be a girl, he’s taking a step down the ladder of social hierarchy, and his sphere of influence shrinks from the whole of human endeavor to the constricting circle home and hearth. The tone of gender-swapping dramas is set by the things their characters stand to gain through their deceptions: Girls pretending to be boys attain freedom, while boys pretending to be girls are gifted with mascara and impractical footwear.

And speaking of impractical footwear: femininity in Korean drama is almost always a carefully studied performance, not a physical state of being. It requires both specific props (like lipstick, designer purses, and indecently short skirts) and specific dialogue (including whimpers of “Ottokae” and “Oppa”). When a woman pretends to be man, these things are stripped away—the hair, the make-up, the frilly dresses. In its very nature, pretending to be a boy is an act of exposure, of nakedness against the world, which is why it so often leads to thoughtful, introspective dramas. But playing a girl (whatever your gender) requires the drag-queen-ish addition of female-specific items and rituals, leading to lots of jokes about underwear and the horrors of high heels.

Take the heroine of Coffee Prince, my favorite of the gender-swap Kdramas. Although Eun Chan never sets out to live as a boy, at their first meeting the show’s male lead assumes that she must be a guy. She doesn’t “perform” femininity like the other women he knows: she has a low-maintenance haircut and wears clothes designed to be practical, not girlie. From Han Gyul’s perspective, how could Eun Chan be a girl, when she isn’t defined by her chic wardrobe and willingness to bat her eyelashes to ensnare a man? As their relationship grows, skin-deep markers of womanhood aren’t what he comes to appreciate about Eun Chan. Instead he sees her as an equal, an ally, and finds in her in her all the noble traits traditionally associated with masculinity: she’s strong and capable and brave. Throughout Coffee Prince, Eun Chan is too busy being herself to be a Kdrama drag queen—which is exactly why Han Gyul and I love her so much.

It’s true that not all girls pretending to be boys are the focus of thoughtful dramas that explore the meaning of gender and identity in the modern world. The Beautifuls come to mind here, in particular—as fun as they are, the female leads of You’re Beautiful and To the Beautiful You gain very little from their gender-bending. Sure, they get behind-the-velvet rope admission into the clubby world of men, but what do they do with it? Jae Hee, To the Beautiful You’s female lead, seems to spend most of her time doing laundry, making snacks, and standing behind her man—she’s acting more like a mom than a boy. Still, their shows don’t exist solely to mock them. The same can’t be said for most men pretending to be women.

I Do, I Do: “But I see real girls doing this all the time!”

Two of this year’s urban rom-coms included unexpected moments of male cross-dressing, both inspired very specifically by the male characters’ need to create products for women. I Do, I Do’s apprentice shoe-designer thinks his skills will be improved by knowing what it’s like to wear high heels; 12 Men in a Year’s famous novelist wants to gain insight into his female characters. Although both characters are well-meaning, their distaff experiments are played for laughs, and their costumes—big, cartoony women’s clothing and Ringling-Brothers-ready makeup jobs—fool no one.

That men would pretend to be women is a logical extension of the Kdrama tradition of gender-bending. As far as entertainment value goes, I’m not crazy about this fad, but just the fact that it exists indicates that people are really thinking about what gender means in our lives and our world. And that’s a good thing.

REPORT CARD: 
Cross-dressing Kdrama Girls

Painter of the Wind, Moon Geun Young as Shin Yoon Bok

There were times in the course of this show when I forgot its main character was a girl. This is at least partially because it was the first drama I’d seen Moon Geun Young in, but beyond my lack of familiarity with the actress her overall demeanor and utter lack of girlie embellishment totally worked as a boy. And while she’s a compelling screen presence and has an interesting look, Moon Geun Young isn’t really a beauty—which actually comes in handy when you’re playing a girl pretending to be a boy while wearing unforgiving sageuk headgear. Grade A

Coffee Prince, Yoon Eun Hye as Go Eun Chan

Having starred as an ultra-feminine princess in the drama Goong the year before Coffee Prince aired, Eun Yoon Hye had some serious challenges to overcome with her portrayal of Go Eun Chan. And overcome them she did, turning in a charmingly loose-limbed, open-hearted performance utterly devoid of any form of vanity. Her physical presence as Go Eun Chan was a revelation—gangly and slouching, she really seemed to be a different person, who might actually pass as a boy. Grade A

To the Beautiful You, Choi Seol Ri as Goo Jae Hee

This show’s greatest gift to lead actress Choi Seol Ri is that it’s set in high school—a time before testosterone really kicks in and when a lot of actual boys look pretty girlish. With an appropriately masculine (but still cute) haircut and wardrobe, her baby-faced prettiness is not so far beyond the realm of possibility for a 15-year-old boy. As an added bonus, the script gamely hands her specific opportunities to convey boyishness, most notably when she dressed as a girl in episode 4 and nearly flashed half of Seoul before she remembered that skirts require their wearers to sit with their legs closed. The jury is still out on this one, but let’s give it an optimistic Grade C+

Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Park Min Young as Kim Yoon Hee

When most of the male characters in your drama wear what amount to flowing, hot-pink dresses, masculinity can be safely judged on a sliding scale. Park Min Young lowered her voice a pitch or two and brought to the role of Kim Yoon Hee a prickly energy and puffed-out chest. But while her cute-as-a-button face is the stuff of Pixar’s wet dreams, it ensures that she’ll never play a believable boy. (All that lip gloss didn’t help, either.) Grade C

You’re Beautiful: Park Shin Hye as Go Mi Nam

How do you know Park Shin Hye’s character is only pretending to be a boy in this show? She uses slightly less hair gel and wears slightly less make-up than her male counterparts. When you’re a post-Bowie rock star, gender-bending tendencies almost go without saying. But with a ladylike wardrobe and script that offered nothing more than vapid airheadedness (no matter what gender she was playing), Park Shin Hye was out of luck. Grade D

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

The Girlie Show?

Is Korean drama more girl-oriented than American television?

I’ve been mulling over this question for a while. Initially, it seemed clear to me that Kdrama really does appeal to female viewers in a way American TV never would, but then I had a realization: I’m a newbie who almost exclusively seeks out dramas intended for female audiences. This makes me the television-watching equivalent of those blind men in the elephant story—I only understand what’s directly in front of me because the whole of the beast is just too unfathomable.

Having said that, there is a way for me to answer this question even with my limited knowledge and understanding: Korean drama is capable of being more girl-oriented than American television, and in the pink-wallpapered ghetto in which I prefer to dwell, it actually is.

The funnest piece of evidence I have to support this argument? That would be the F4 effect. Although American television demands that its women fit society’s ideal—they’re almost all pretty, thin, and well-dressed—it completely lets men off the hook. For every devastatingly beautiful woman on TV, you’ll find a chunky, sloppy, not-particularly-hot man. But in Korea? Conspicuously attractive men are all the rage, with their faces more beautiful than flowers and their wardrobes more amazing than a September issue of Vogue. Heck, there’s even an entire series of dramas built around the premise that women like to see good-looking men: the Oh! Boy shows, including Flower Boy Ramen Shop and Shut Up: Flower Boy Band. (You had me at flower, quite frankly.) 

There are also weightier, more fundamental reasons why Korean drama is uniquely equipped to appeal to women. I don’t really buy that we all like the same things because of our biology, but it seems to me that as girls we do tend to gravitate toward particular interests. And relationships are one of these interests, whether they’re romantic or not. We like to see people relate to others, to understand their emotions, and to chart their connections over time. This, as it turns out, is just what Korean drama excels at.

To me, anyway, the structure of the 16-episode Korean weekday drama is perfect for bringing relationships to the center stage. It’s a finite window allowing for a definitive beginning, middle, and end. It’s long enough for depth and nuance, but it’s not so long to require excessive amounts of filler or treading water. Characters and their relationships begin in episode one, and then proceed to grow and change for fifteen more episodes.

American television shows, on the other hand, are engineered to last all but forever, for hundreds of episodes over multiple programming seasons and calendar years. Take The Simpsons: This animated show about a working class, middle-American family started airing in 1989, when I was in sixth grade. Fast-forward 23 seasons and nearly 500 episodes, and you’ll find that in that time I’ve grown into middle-aged, mid-career professional. But Bart Simpson is still in fourth grade, just as he was in the show’s first episode. A stunning number of wacky things have happened to Bart and his family in the meanwhile but as characters they—and their relationships—have remained in absolute stasis.

A few rare shows have managed to thrive in spite of the longterm, amorphous commitment of American television production, including the perennially wonderful Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy survived by developing two narrative arcs—one revolving around season-long “Big Bad” characters that gave immediate payoff and moved the plot forward, and another focusing on the show’s overall mythology and the continued development of its characters.

In response to the never-ending runs of its shows, American television has also evolved Law-and-Order-ism, another big killer of focused relationship development and growth. At any given moment over the past decade, most of our scripted offerings have been procedurals—shows that have a central core of characters that interact with an ever-changing cadre of weekly plotlines and characters. These shows don’t focus on the relationships or activities of their central characters, and inevitably these characters are about as one-dimensional as the animated Bart Simpson. Instead of driving the action with their own plotlines, the core cast links freestanding episodes under the show’s “brand.” Korean television has flirted with this narrative structure—as in the much-lauded-but-underwhelming Hello, My Teacher, which used the lens of a teacher to focus on the episode-long struggles of her students—but its lasting impact seems minimal.

While we Americans have been suffering through the scourge of uncertain, open-ended television shows that far outlast their usefulness, Seoul has been pumping out bite-sized delights that, in spite of their shortcomings, function as complete, stand-alone television “novels,” each full of characters that grow and change and overarching plotlines that resolve.

Beyond a tightened focus that allows for more meaningful character development, it’s also true that shorter-run Korean television shows can glory in a small detail that American monoliths can’t—romance. I hesitate to link being a girl with a disproportionate interest in love, but as a television watcher there's no hiding that love is just what I want to see. Every season love story after love story airs on Korean TV networks, while even American cable channels specifically devoted to women can’t manage to air a single series that focuses on love over being a policewoman or a lawyer or a vampire groupie.

I still haven’t reached a conclusion about whether Kdrama is inherently more girl-friendly than American TV. But in my mind, all signs point to Yes: Women are regularly lead characters in the most mainstream of dramas. Relationships, not gimmicks, are at the heart of their plots. And are those Korean actors ever handsome.

What it all boils down to is that Korean television, consciously or subconsciously, is built around and for women. The bulk of American television, on the other hand, sees female viewers as a niche audience not to be offended—but not necessarily to be served. 

We may hold the purse strings but Jack Bauer holds the remote.