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

Drama Review: I Need Romance 2012 (2012)

Grade: B

Category: Modern romantic comedy

What it’s about

The trials and tribulations of Yool Mae and Suk Hyun, long-time best friends and sometime lovers, and their group of thirty-something friends. In spite of the shared name and tone, this drama is only tangentially related to the original I Need Romance (2011).

First impression

What a breath of fresh air—a youthful and contemporary rom-com featuring romantic relationships approximating the ones we have in the real world. As of episode 2, I’m still struggling to get past my intense love for the original and enjoy the new one on its own merits—the sequel seems a little more plastic and less realistic, and the characters and actors aren’t as appealing as they were the first time around. Maybe a little more deviation from the original would have been good here; it would have made it harder to compare the two seasons and find the second one lacking. Also, I sorely, sorely miss Kim Jung Hoon, who’s so likeable that he automatically makes me root for his character, no matter how much of a tool he’s being.

Final verdict

My favorite drama of the year to date (Sorry, Shut Up! Flower Boy Band: You’ve been bumped to second place). 

Compared with the first “season,” I Need Romance 2012 is a darker, less comedic exploration of the things that keep us apart and bring us together. While the three C’s of the 2012 edition—cast, characters, and chemistry—aren’t quite on par with the wonderful original, all is forgiven in light of INR 2012’s better-plotted script and tendency toward dialog that’s equal parts painfully funny and painfully truthful. 

This time around, the show comes off as less of a cartoon caricature of Sex in the City. There’s some naughty talk and at its heart is still a strong female friendship, but INR 2012 lets the thoughtful earnestness inherent in Kdrama take the driver’s seat, rather than going out of its way to shock. Sure, its leads fit into the sacred female archetypes of aspirational modern romances—the Carrie, the Samantha, and the Charlotte (as recently pointed out in this discussion of the original drama)—but their roles aren’t so set in stone. The innocent girl can barely keep track of the number of men she’s kissed, after all, and the Samantha never once has a sex scene in the course of the show’s 16 episodes.

And even if it’s more traditional than the original (there are a lot more pat happy endings and a lot fewer hot make-out sessions), INR 2012 still manages to flout Kdrama conventions. It’s all here—Sex for the sake of sex! Friends with benefits! Cohabiting singles with nary a responsible adult in sight! Characters who are upwardly mobile, independent-minded, and free to live their own lives and make their own decisions! Scandalously, the female lead also steps outside the norm to be a successful career woman who isn’t defined by her job—she loves it and is good at it, but prioritizes it as part of her life, not her whole reason for being.

As part of their iconoclastic approach to the drama canon, each of the I Need Romances re-imagines a standard-issue cliché: the first turns a chaebol/poor girl love story on its ear, and the second finds a new way to explore the terminal disease plotline so beloved of Kdramas. While I whole-heartedly approved of the original’s controversial ending, I was less enthusiastic about the way the sequel came to a close—although the time jump helped, the final decision felt like a pity pick. I wish the show had either gone for the love triangle’s other angle, or found a more convincing way to take the heroine where it wanted her to go. 

It’s the little details that sold me on this series, though, like the silent conversations the characters carry on using only facial expressions. (They’re helpfully translated in voiceover for the viewers.) When you’re close to someone it really does feel just like this, as if you could say all you need to say in a glance without the trouble of words. The freeze-frame still photos inserted into the action in this season are another example of an unusual technique that’s totally successful. Instead being jarring interruptions like they were in the original, they now feel like another storytelling tool—a way to make the characters’ internal lives external within the flow of the narrative.

In spite of being a bit less homey and appealingly naturalistic than the original, I Need Romance 2012 is still a charming, smoothly plotted exploration of love and friendship. 

Random thoughts

• Did I mention that I’m obsessed with the theme song, Lasse Lindh’s “I Could Give You Love”?

• The dramas in this series have really managed to make the technique of voiceover their own. One of the few gripes I had about Dal Ja’s Spring was how hokey and dated the earnest voiceovers felt, but somehow INR manages to make them seem fresh. It’s partially that the voiceover tends to be inserted over edgy-looking freeze-frame stills instead of run over exterior shots, and partially that the delivery is crisp, not moony. 

• Episode 1. Good gravy—I just understood an entire conversation in Korean! (So what if it consisted entirely of the words “Okay” and “Go”?)

• Episode 2. Oh, Korea. Can’t you save the date rape for episode 3, at least? And of course nobody is discussing it as such—the slogan “Obvious befuddlement and/or resistance means no” apparently never caught on in Asia.

• Episode 3. What the hell just happened with the person in the bear suit? And can it please happen in every episode for the rest of the drama? (And maybe all dramas, ever?) It’s like the Tragic Clown in The Sims, only in reverse. Traumatic scene? Hold on, Hugs the Bear will appear and comfort your favorite character! Random, and randomly wonderful.

• Episode 4. So it seems that the real common thread between these two dramas is actually a female lead who sabotages her own relationship. In the first season, she lets paranoia and suspicion take over her entire being when she suspects that her boyfriend cheated, blaming him long before he did anything to deserve it. In the second season, male characters keep asking what the girls want, but the female leads are to afraid to actually make their feelings clear. If I’ve learned anything in my time on this planet, it’s that the fastest way not to get what you want is not to ask for it.

Episode 7. Dear show: I think it’s love. Will you marry me? Sincerely, Amanda

—So, Mr. Second Lead. You work at Coffee “King,” do you? You’re no Choi Han Gyul, but I’ll give you points for trying.

—I bet this episode would have been a lot more amusing if I understood any of the references to Korean movies. Couldn’t the screenwriter just have made some jokes about Secret Garden, instead?

• Episode 8. Item 7 million on the list of things this show does just right? Dialogue. Not the cheesy Kdrama lovey kind, but the crisp and funny and smart kind. (Not that there’s anything wrong with cheese, or that INR 2012 doesn’t also bring its fair share of it to the table. It just has more to offer.) My favorite line from any Korean drama ever was is in this episode. The male lead said, mid-argument, “Your mind is there to hide things you don’t want to say out loud.” If only I were a little better at remembering that myself.

• Episode 14. I want a Korean Monopoly board! (Even if it’s called Blue Marble.) Also, what’s up with golden retrievers in Kdrama? Must they always come in luxuriantly furred pairs? Is this the same set that appeared in My Princess?

• Episode 15. Epic timing fail! I just finished episode 15…but episode 16 isn’t subbed anywhere yet. How can you leave me hanging like this, cruel world?!?

• Episode 16. I found it 97% subbed at Viki. (I’m so glad that half of that missing translation is in the final monologue. Really.) Why do I feel like the heart has been ripped from my chest, torn into itty-bitty pieces, and stomped on for 45 minutes? Oh right. Because it has.

Watch it

Dramafever

Viki

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Playing Favorites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learned from the list:

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

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

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

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

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

Drama 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.