State of the Obsession Address (with Links!)

I’m prone to intemperate fits of obsession, so my reaction to Korean drama isn’t entirely without precedent. It’s the way I’m built: just as some people are good at sports or math or learning foreign languages, I’m good at loving random things far beyond sense or logic. This may seem like a bad thing, but I’ve actually come to pity the rest of the world, the middle-of-the-road-masses who don’t even know what it’s like to be utterly, irrationally swept up in something.

From bubblegum pop to food porn to the Harry Potter books to the movie Inception, I’ve spent the past decade enmeshed in one fleeting, geekish passion after another. For however brief a window, these things have shaped not only how I spent my free time, but also how I viewed the world. Kdrama is no exception: I’m in the process of reading the Insight Guide to South Korea from cover to cover. Every time I experience a negative emotion, I find myself doing the patented Kdrama sneer. No matter how bizarre a scenario may be, I can always come up with a drama-inspired platitude. (“You’re stressed about selling your house? Well, like Baek Seung Jo’s mom said in Playful Kiss, Every pot has a lid. You just need to find the right buyer.”) And whenever I go out with friends I agitate for a trip to the local Korean restaurant. (I’m a big fan of japchae, but dukboki is so spicy that one bite made me want to amputate my tongue.)

The most insane of my obsessions have always had an online component. I created my first webpage in 1997, and I’ve been involved with the Internet in one way or another ever since. First there was Hometown AOL, then my own fannish domain, then Livejournal, then fanfiction.net, and then a series of short-lived, not particularly interesting or successful blogs—like the one you’re reading right now.

Jumping into Kdrama fandom with both feet has been a pleasure; it’s a whole new world to discover, and I love reading people’s commentary about Korean drama just as much as I love watching the shows themselves. The weird thing, though, is how little commentary I’ve been able to find. The fandoms I’ve been involved with in the past have been incredibly active and thrived worldwide; any one of them has inspired much, much more commentary than you could possibly read in a lifetime, most of it in English. On the other hand, I usually devote one lunch hour a week to reading about Korean drama—and I often run out of new posts on my old standby sites long before that hour is up.

I think this is partially because I’ve missed the boat—the peak of Korean drama fanishness on the Internet seems to have lasted from about 2007 to 2009. The blogs and websites I’ve been able to dig up during the past few months have mostly been survivors from this time, and often on their last legs: they’re rarely updated and most of the new material they post feels more like habit than excitement. Sites like soompi and allkpop may be going strong, but they’re just too overwhelming for me, and their focus tends to be on kpop, not drama.

It could just be that I’m looking in all the wrong places. Back in the early days of Internet fandom no webpage was considered complete without an exhaustive list of links to other sites of interest. Today’s excellent search engines have made this less common, and most blogs I visit only link to a few other places. So could it be that Kdrama commentary Shangri-la exists out there, and I’m missing it by a Google search?

All this is not to say that I haven’t found any essential reading when it comes to Korean drama. Because I have—and here’s an alphabetical, annotated list.

(A few notes: I’ve only posted sites that update at least a few times a month. There are lots of dead blogs out there worth visiting for specific information or discussion of older shows, but I haven’t bothered with them here. Also, I’m not a great fan of straight-up show recaps, so no sites focused on them are included here.)

Couch Kimchi. Celebrity news; drama talk, pics, and videos; and helpful tips about resources for online drama watchers.

Dodo’s Bell Jar. News and commentary along with exploration of kdrama as a life changing event. (My favorite part.)

Dramabeans. The ne plus ultra of Korean drama on the web. Clearly, everyone even remotely interested in Kdrama has been here, and for good reason: it’s frequently updated with pertinent news, funny commentary, great recaps, and cultural insight. Its community of like-minded commenters gets the spotlight every Friday in a fun open thread that’s great for figuring out what other people are watching and why.

DramaTic. A graduate-level course on Kdrama production, history, and culture. Fascinating, even though the webmaster has very, very different taste in dramas than I do.

Electric Ground. A great resource for cultural information, although recent updates have been slow.

Idle Revelry. Smart and insightful analysis of characters, scenes, and dramas that will make you see even old favorites in a new light.

Kaede + Jun. A fun selection of news, drama reviews, and commentary. (The video of Park Shi Ho and kittens currently on the main page is not to be missed.)

Mad Dino Asylum. Lots of recaps, but I come here for the short, to-the-point drama reviews that include helpful lists of similar shows.

Silky Jade. Thoughtful, in-depth discussion and reviews of selected shows.

  

So that’s what I’ve found in the course of my Kdrama obsession. Any other sites or blogs I should be visiting?

WTF, drama?

Dear Kdrama Overlords,

Normally we get along just fine, you and me; you’re fun to be around and we have a good time together. What can I say? I like your style. But sometimes you really make me crazy with your fourth-dimensional tendencies and poor decision-making skills. Below are a few specific issues I’d like you to consider before our next meeting.

Autumn in My Heart

During the winter months I get at least two bloody noses a week, yet am neither overworked nor dying. Find a new plot device already!

Did your lead couple just have a cake-and-champagne celebration while sitting on the floor in a barn full of cows? Really? Have you ever seen a cow? Or, more importantly, smelled one? Unless Korean cows are traditionally diapered (and maybe even then), this scene was poorly conceived.

Autumn in My Heart: Love sans cows > Love with cows

Can You Hear My Heart?

Why did you hire Lee Hye Young, the single most beautiful ajumma in all of Korea, if you were just going to give her a tragic perm? She still looks like Grace Kelly’s Asian incarnation, no matter how you try to frump her up.

Coffee Prince

Can we please retire the phrase “charnel house,” at least in subs intended for an American audience? Outside of a certain class of horror movie, this is not a concept we Yankees are comfortable with.

Flower Boy Ramen Shop

Are people in Korea really smart enough to know off the top of their heads the cyclical years of the Chinese zodiac? I feel incredibly stupid, if so. I need a calculator to figure out how old I am these days.

Did that teacher just ask a student out to dinner? American teachers are discouraged from being alone with students, while Korean (drama) teachers are hitting on their students left and right. (See also the squeamish teacher/student relationship in Heartstrings.) Let’s try not to encourage icky abuses of power and influence, okay?

Lovers

Is Korea really such a wild place that a gang war can happen in hospital’s lobby without anyone doing anything about it? Scary.

Also, Korean gangsters should really investigate the many and wondrous uses of guns. All this trying to stab people gets old.

Misc.

Based on the vast majority of your dramas, a salmon has a better chance of survival after becoming a parent than the average Korean does. Do you not care that you’re probably driving an entire nation’s life insurance rates through the roof? Is it really all that difficult to write a character with living parents?


My Lovely Sam Soon
I guess this is my American prejudice showing through, but it seems to me that getting your bare feet all over your sheets is an excellent reason to wash them—not how you should wash them. And I'm convinced no American has hand washed jeans since the days of Billy the Kid. Are there no laundromats in Korea?



My Sweet Seoul
I've heard that people in Asian cultures are more into saving money than Westerners, but could it really be possible that two this show’s single-girls-in-the-city are able to casually quit their jobs without batting an eyelash about how they'll pay the rent next month? Sad but true: I had to wait for my income tax return just to fit a used copy of Coffee Prince in the old budget.

Secret Garden

Kim Joo Won’s super-modern house has no paved driveway, which means he’s always driving and parking on green grass. Yet none of that grass ever seems to die. How? And more importantly—Why, if not specifically to annoy me? (Ultimately the mystery of the long-lived lawn is probably the most compelling thing about this show. So I guess it's a point in your column after all.)

No ruts in Secret Garden! (Other than the ones in the plot, anyway.)

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

Remind me again how Kim Yoon Hee handles visits from Aunt Flow while pretending to be a boy, sharing a room with two guys, and wearing a snow-white jumpsuit? I know this is a fusion sageuk and all, but at least show her furtively palming some Joseon-brand tampons.

No matter how clever you are, I know why you didn’t use the book’s original ending: If Yoon Hee was going to work in the King’s library as a man for the rest of her life, your drama couldn’t have a sexy ending. Getting knocked up would blow her cover pretty quickly. (I’ll forgive you this time, though, because I also approve of sexy endings.)

 ***

In light of these serious transgressions against good sense, I have this to say: Just because you’re practically perfect in every way is no excuse for slacking off. You’re Overlords, for the love of God—get your head in the game!

Sincerely,

Amanda

Drama Review: The Fatally Flawed

Can You Hear My Heart?: D (if you watch everything) / B- (if you skip the country-mouse scenes)

Lovers: D

Me Too, Flower: C

I’ll put up with a lot when it comes to television shows. Give me compelling characters and actors and something resembling a coherent plot, and I’m happy. Take the universally reviled 2006 drama One Fine Day, for example. It was clearly created when someone dropped the scripts from about 50 previously-aired dramas into a blender and hit the "frappe" button. Yet I loved watching every cheesy, derivative moment and resolved that I would drop everything and marry Gong Yoo if the opportunity ever arose.

On the other hand, some dramas just don’t do it for me, however good everyone else may think they are. For every amazingly wonderful show I've seen during my 6-month Kdrama obsession, I've probably watched three so-so dramas—and one that was fatally flawed. The flaw isn’t always something big or important, but it inevitably makes it impossible for me to suspend disbelief long enough to get wrapped up in the story.

At 30 episodes, Can You Hear My Heart? is the longest drama I’ve seen. It’s also the first true family melodrama I’ve watched, and I suspect it will be one of the last. This is ultimately because I’m just not cut out for shows with grandma subplots, but in this case the drama’s length is also an issue: after a promising start with some cute child actors, the next 15 or so episodes did little to move the plot forward and were overstuffed with peripheral, largely pointless characters.

The drama itself is praiseworthy in a number of ways—its central plot is a compellingly soapy struggle for the future of a family company. It’s stuffed to the gills with swoony bromance. It allows not one but two disabled characters to be seen as more than just their disabilities. But one of its characters still falls victim to a great, unspoken disability in Korean dramas: the brainless female lead. I’m sure that the actress playing Bong Uri, said female lead, is supposed to come off as guileless and pure, but her big, blank stare and cartoony over-acting left me wondering just what the difference was between her character and the show’s developmentally disabled dad.

“I’m simple and stupid. I don’t understand complicated people like you,” Bong Uri says in episode 23. Clearly, the writers of Can You Hear My Heart? wanted this line to be her big emotional declaration of independence. With it, she’s accepting her adopted father’s “slowness” and rejecting her brother’s quest to discard the people who raised him. It served those purposes, all right, but it also summed up exactly what’s wrong with the character of Bong Uri: she’s a one-note, capering woman-child, just as her father is a one-note, capering man-child.

In the past few years any number of smart, capable female characters have been featured in Kdramas—pretty much every girl in Protect the Boss, The Princess’ Man, and Dream High is nuanced, perceptive, and has personal agency. On the other hand, Korean television has a long tradition of Bong Uris—dim-witted but cheerful girls who are limply swept along in other people’s stories instead of making stories of their own. They are fatal flaws, one and all. (I'm talking about you, Gil Ra Im from Secret Garden.)

Can You Hear My Heart? isn’t the first time a female lead has destroyed any enjoyment I might have had watching a show. The 2006 drama Lovers is known far and wide for the chemistry between its leads, but I was too busy wanting to slap some sense into the airheaded Yoon Mi Jo to appreciate it. Idiot point the first: She’s a doctor, but decides to specialize in plastic surgery because she doesn’t want to be involved in life or death cases. As Kanye West can tell you, just because you’re fixing someone’s boobs doesn’t mean they can’t die as a result of your actions. Idiot point the second: When you want to sell your father’s orphanage to open your own plastic surgery practice, you should spend a bit more time thinking about your priorities as a human being. Idiot point the third: When gangsters are fighting in a dark, secluded parking garage, you should probably make yourself scarce rather than lurking nearby to eavesdrop.

Appropriately enough, the actress who played Yoon Mi Jo suffered from another fatal Kdrama flaw: too much plastic surgery. Her crazy doe eyes are so clearly not of nature that I spent most of this series wondering why she’d do such a thing to herself, rather than watching her act. The entertainment industry may be full of people who have had work done, but some of them respect the fine line between a subtle touch up and turning yourself into a Pixar character. 

Me Too, Flower also featured a lead actor who’s had a few too many visits to the plastic surgeon. Phasers were clearly set to "bland" during Lee Ji Ah’s operations—they polished away any hint of distinctiveness or personality her face may once have had. And as far as acting goes, she proves that it’s almost impossible to use manmade facial features to express natural emotion. 


I wanted to love this show from the writer of the fabulous My Lovely Sam Soon and What’s Up Fox, but between Cha Bong Sun’s animatronic good looks, a largely unlikeable cast of characters, and the drama’s listless, disjointed plot, it was hard to get involved. Me Too, Flower’s only saving graces are the character of Seo Jae Hee and the actor who plays him, Yoon Shi Yoon. Jae Hee has a makjang history littered with dead parents and a tragic accident, but Yoon Shi Yoon creates from this standard-issue backstory a character of touching emotional vulnerability and charm.

Weirdly, the male lead of Can You Hear My Heart? was originally scheduled to star in Me Too, Flower, but backed out after an injury. I’m glad he did, and not just because Yoon Shi Yoon did such a good job with the role. The other characters in Can You Hear My Heart? spent a lot of time marveling at Cha Dong Joo’s “milky” skin tone, but I think modern science may have had an uncomfortable hand here, too—the actor’s improbable whiteness is so extreme that he looks more like one of the ghoulish cave-dwellers from the British horror movie The Descent than a person. Put him together with the actress who played Me Too, Flower’s lead, and you might as well just animate the thing. Computer-generated characters are bound to look more lifelike than those two.

A lot can be overlooked for the sake of compelling, relatable characters and actors. But whatever their merits, these three dramas dropped the ball and never recovered from their fatal flaws.

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.

Drama Review: I Need Romance

I Need Romance: A

One of the hardest things to get used to in watching Korean drama is the way the shows—to the American eye, anyway—almost always shy away from any sort of physical intimacy or sex. After decades of Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and True Blood, we Americans barely bat an eyelash at sex on screen, however explicit or acrobatic it may be.

Based on the shows I’ve seen so far, this isn’t the case in Korea: I regularly kiss my cat with more passion than is mustered up in the standard Kdrama. But these shows bring something else to the mix: sweet sentimentality and courtly love of a sort that hasn’t been seen in American entertainment in a long, long, time—if it ever was.

I thought these two extremes would never meet … but then I saw I Need Romance, which aired this summer on the cable network tvN. From the very beginning, it’s clear this show is a new breed: after opening with a jaunty, Sex and the City-inspired credit montage, it launches right into a steamy make-out session. Throughout, it takes a candid, no-holds-barred approach to modern urban love, featuring characters that do the unthinkable: they not only have sex with no intention of getting married, they openly discuss said sex.

As if this wasn’t staggering enough, the sex is often on screen. It's amusing how carefully most Korean dramas dance around what little action its characters may get. As far as I’m concerned, the best example is Goong: The will-they-or-won't-they consummation of the lead couple’s marriage is a major plot point in the show's early episodes, but the closest thing to resolution of this storyline is the eventual revelation of the female lead’s pregnancy. The only hint when consummation may have happened? The camera pans away from a kissing scene to focus on two teddy bears covering their eyes with their paws. (This—I guess—must be some strange Korean code for coitus?) On the other hand, I quickly came to realize that watching I Need Romance in my mechanic’s waiting room wasn’t a good idea—the guy sitting next to me couldn’t stop rubbernecking my iPad, presumably because he thought I was watching porn. Who would have thought a Korean drama would get that kind of response?

But whatever continent you’re on, great kissing scenes don’t make a great show. What makes I Need Romance really special is its thoughtful storytelling, which mixes weighty-but-realistic relationship angst, light comedy, and heavy petting, all flavored with a uniquely Korean earnestness. It focuses on a trio of female best friends—one a longterm girlfriend, one a nervous virgin, and one an experienced and adventurous free agent. In spite of a bevy of delicious male characters, when it comes right down to it, their friendship is show’s most important relationship.

As in America, I Need Romance’s home on a cable channel seems to allow it leeway unimagined by the regular networks. Having watched MBC’s similarly themed The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry, it’s easy to see the distinction. Woman skews toward the traditional and the safe—just like the title says, marriage is the plot’s main motivator, not love. The script ambiguously nods to the virginity of all its lead characters, even though one of them dated the same man for ten years and another has a reputation as a man-izer. And as far as Woman concerned, the height of liberated womanhood is going to a man’s hotel room without a chaperone and playing peek-a-boo. (As peek-a-boo goes, it’s pretty kinky, but still.) It’s nice to see a drama that revolves around savvy, urban career girls, but you’ll never actually believe these girls live on planet earth.

Although its characters are also in their early thirties, the younger, edgier I Need Romance presents a totally different vision of their lives: they can be happy on their own, and they can be happy with a boyfriend when the right man comes along. They even sleep with these boyfriends—just as any sensible earthling would. Marriage comes up, but it’s never a dangling carrot motivating the show’s entire plot. Instead, I Need Romance revolves around the decisions people make while trying to find happiness—some unaccountably wonderful, others some unspeakably stupid. 

One of these unspeakably stupid decisions is at the heart of the main couple’s love story, one of my favorites in all of Kdrama. Kim Sung Soo’s bad behavior seems unforgivable at first, but as the show journeys through his ten-year relationship with Sun Woo In Young, he becomes a layered, nuanced character that you can’t help rooting for.

Of course it doesn’t hurt that Sung Soo is played by Goong sexbomb Kim Jung Hoon, clearly an expert at making the dastardly seem perfectly reasonable. Complete with a secret chaebol, a toothsome hotel resident, and a dreamy ping-pong player, it doesn’t get much better than I Need Romance’s male cast.

The drama itself, however, might have been slightly better. What starts off as a reasoned, realistic plot heads toward the inexplicable in the last few episodes, dashing through the resolution of the lead couple’s storyline and leaving a number of plot threads hanging.

I Need Romance isn’t perfect, but it is a breath of fresh air. With any luck, it's also where Korean drama is headed.

Drama Review: Painter of the Wind

 

Painter of the Wind: A-

I sometimes revisit Coffee Prince’s online reviews just to vicariously relive the wonder of seeing this Kdrama for the first time. They tend to full of fawning adoration, but I recently found something unexpected: homophobia. “A fine romantic comedy,” the reviewer wrote, “with a backhanded endorsement of homosexual love.”

I think it’s safe to say that most Americans of my generation or younger don’t think that gayness is a big deal, the general consensus being that as long as consenting adults are involved, it’s not society’s business whom I—or anyone else—chooses to love. It seems that Korea’s views on homosexuality are more traditional, though, and that in Korea the show Coffee Prince really is notable for its approach to same-sex relationships.

As far as I’m concerned, Coffee Prince is not a show about homosexuality. It’s a show that references homosexuality, sure, and uses it as a convenient obstacle to draw out the romantic tension between its two leads. There isn’t one minute, however, when the viewer believes they’re watching two people of the same gender fall in love. We see Eun Chan as a girl from the very beginning, even if Han Gyul doesn’t.

It’s a whole different story in The Painter of the Wind, a similarly themed drama that aired in 2008. Sungkyunkwan Scandal’s less candy-coated and candy-colored cousin, it revolves around the misadventures of Shin Yoon Bok, a Joseon-era girl pretending to be a boy in order to attend the royal painting institute. Naturally, she falls in love with her dashing, nonconformist (male) teacher and the two work together to solve the mystery of her father’s murder.

Thoughtful, girl-centered sageuks are hard to find, but Painter of the Wind is both. Its speedy plotting and fully drawn characters are a pleasure to watch, making it hard to stop at just one (or five) episodes at a sitting. And, unexpectedly, its painting scenes are every bit as visceral and exhilarating as the most well-executed action sequences you can imagine.

What I find most noteworthy here isn’t the show's main relationship, though. The low-key, courtly love Yoon Bok shares with her mentor is sweet and touching, if unremarkable and vaguely incestuous (he’s much older and was close friends with her real father). It's Painter of the Wind's secondary couple that really caught my attention: Yoon Bok and Jeong Hyang, the gayageum-playing gisaeng. (Try saying that five times fast. Or once, even.) While disguised as a boy, Yoon Bok allows her powerful friendship with this girl to veer into love. Their relationship is so intense, in fact, that even after the big reveal of Yoon Bok's gender, the couple continues to call each other "beautiful beloved."

Yoon Bok’s family are the only ones who know that she’s a woman, and as that family begins to shatter she is left almost totally without a support system. The show stresses that in Jeong Hyang, Yoon Bok sees both herself—a young artist forced into servitude, her life not her own—and what Yoon Bok believes she could never be again, a mannerly, feminine woman.

As Jeong Hyang becomes Yoon Bok’s muse and their relationship deepens, they share a number of tender, loving scenes and enjoy some degree of physical intimacy. We’re not talking Boys Don’t Cry here, but at one point Jeong Hyang is clearly ready to go all the way with her dear painter, and Yoon Bok is just as clearly reluctant to stop the proceedings. 

When she’s near her male mentor Yoon Bok is nervous and jumpy, afraid to touch him and more than willing to stay in the role of subservient, malleable student. With Jeong Hyang, however, she isn’t a bit shy and thoughtlessly takes the lead, right down to convincing the gisaeng to pose half-naked for a painting.

The script doesn’t seem to take a stand on what these differences mean—maybe Yoon Bok’s easy comfort around Jeong Hyang is meant to show that Yoon Bok doesn’t view her in a romantic light. Or maybe the parallel relationships exist to show Yoon Bok’s duality. She has been living as a man for her whole adolescence, forced into the role by an adoptive father hungry for her skill as a painter, and has almost completely lost her female self. Half male, she takes the lead. Half female, she is led.


If you squint just right, it's even possible to find a happy ending for Yoon Bok and Jeong Hyang. As foreshadowed in the drama's first episode, the main couple don't end up together. But the show says goodbye to both girls in the same way—they're shown separately boarding what appears to be the very same ship, headed off into the very same horizon. 

In terms of OTP, Painter of the Wind has left me no choice: Yoon Bok’s mentor may be a father to her, but Jeong Hyang is her heart.

Drama Review: Mad for Makjang

Winter Sonata: A-
Will It Snow at Christmas: B+
The Snow Queen: B+


I spent a good portion of my youth reading books by the notoriously trashy American author V.C. Andrews and watching As the World Turns. This means I understood makjang as a concept long before I realized such a handy word existed for the laughably over-the-top storylines these entertainments offered—often populated by evil amnesiac identical twins suffering from terminal diseases.

Most people talk about makjang as if it’s a bad thing. (For an actual definition of the word, see the ever-helpful Electric Ground.) But while burning through fifteen years worth of Korean dramas online, it has become clear that my background in the absurd has tainted me—the crazier and more makjangy a plotline is, the more I love it. Faux-cest? Spontaneous blindness? Vicious stepmothers and false friends who secretly work against the lead characters every chance they get? Bring it on! Well-executed moments of nutty impossibility can make a melodrama all the more fun, as far as I’m concerned.

The apparent granddaddy of makjang is Winter Sonata, a show so influential that it’s still being mocked (and copied) a decade after it first aired in Korea. Even a total Kdrama newbie like me understood the reference when the central love triangle of My Girlfriend is a Gumiho found themselves at the alter of a fancy church exclaiming, “But we’re all siblings?”

Many older Korean dramas don’t stand up to viewing today—their low budgets, questionable acting, and deeply traditional gender roles make them feel even older than they are. Winter Sonata isn’t totally without this sort of problem: a microphone is visible hanging above the actors’ heads at least once in every one of its twenty episodes. The male lead’s wardrobe seems to consist entirely of cast-offs from the set of Golden Girls. And the female lead allows herself to be dragged around by all and sundry, so passive she barely puts up a fight when the guy who tried to rape her three episodes earlier drags her away from her boyfriend and into his car. But to my eye the show’s swoony love story, beautiful scenery, and did-that-actually-just-happen? plotting more than make up for these shortcomings and its slower, old-school pacing.

Weirdly, when it comes to drama titles any reference to winter themes seems to be code for makjang madness. Witness The Snow Queen and Will It Snow at Christmas, two of the most wonderfully loony Kdramas I’ve had the pleasure of viewing.

The Snow Queen is a lovely, quiet drama focusing on the tortured Hyun Bin as he comes to terms with his (supposed) culpability for his best friend's suicide, while tastefully putting the moves on said best friend’s little sister—who, wouldn’t you know it, is terminally ill. It’s a combo platter heaped with one unlikely misery after another, and I happily ate every bite.

Will It Snow at Christmas takes things a step further: its breaks its 16-episode run into three distinct storylines featuring the same characters over the course of a decade, with each storyline more insane than the last. By the time the final segment roles around you practically need a scorecard to keep track of the characters' histories, full as they are with near-miss marriages, impersonation of tragically dead brothers, and brief episodes of intense rivalry that magically disappear from one storyline to the next.

America loves makjang, too—after all, what was the critically lauded show Lost but the world’s single most sprawling, out-of-control makjang drama? And yet, we haven’t adopted this handy term. More’s the pity, I say.