I regret to inform you that I have been exiled from Dramaville to the real world, and must now fight my way back…
If you live on the surface of the earth, you may have noticed it: a collective, spreading, occasionally obsessive, global affinity for Korean entertainment, food, music, and culture. The Hallyu juggernaut encompasses food at your local market, music on the local airwaves, and probably an H-Mart near you, open now. Even BTS’s special collab with Oreo is available at any CVS you walk into. They’re pretty good. They’re supposed to taste like heotteok, sweet stuffed pancakes. They don’t, okay, but the fact that I can even make that comparison, and confidently so?
Yeah.
So you might ask yourself: why? Why Korean music and dramas? How did a country with a population around 20% bigger than that of California, but occupying an area about the size of Indiana, become a global entertainment powerhouse?
According to the South Korean government’s Global Hallyu Status Report, K-Dramas are viewed in over 130 countries worldwide. Korean-made dramas regularly score major Disney and Netflix production deals. Crossover idols, pop stars who also act, regularly crisscross America on stadium tours. How did that happen? Viewers start out watching Squid Game because someone at work says their mom liked it. A couple years later, they find themselves binge-watching 16 straight episodes about rogue mythical foxes, going without sleep on multiple weeknights because the protagonist has just survived the White Truck of Death and there’s a lingering stare beneath an umbrella in a driving rain any. moment. now. Will they or won’t they? Who cares?
I do.
Maybe it’s because K-Dramas are, by design, fleeting. American television series happen in multiple seasons spread over years, a system which has its pros and cons. Sometimes they build whole communities that last for decades; sometimes they last long enough that every shark gets thoroughly jumped. K-Dramas, on the other hand, cram high-concept—and occasionally ludicrous—premises into a few weeks’ worth of hourlong episodes, where the emotional stakes are as high as the production values, and the scenery is as hauntingly lovely as the leads themselves tend to be.
The baseline requirement for a successful K-Drama is its willingness to commit to the plot, absolutely, 10,000%, no matter what. Sometimes it feels like the production team spun the Wheel of Preposterousness when scripting their next hit.
The literal personification of Doom carrying out the final wishes of a web novel editor dying of glioblastoma who wants to destroy the world? Sure.
The now-King of a parallel universe’s Corean monarchy who has found a portal to South Korea in this universe, activated by a magic flute in a creepy bamboo forest, which he exploits to hunt down his father’s murderer? Yes, please.
K-Dramas frame their stories around a distinct beginning, a dramatic and conflict-ridden middle, and a concrete ending, and then are done and over. Any subsequent sequel is just that, a discrete story featuring the same characters, rather than a continuation, sometimes produced years later. What’s left behind is a series of emotional moments, rooted in grandiose romance, deep villainy, family camaraderie, and more. Against this backdrop, every moment, every shopping mall for killers that exists in the basement of the family home, matters intensely. Hope is real. Good triumphs in the end. Yes, Vincenzo killed all those people, but was he really all that terrible? (He was.)
Culture matters. K-Drama viewers may occasionally butt up against puzzling differences in the depiction of gender roles, and perplexing plotlines that seem to both pass and completely blow the Bechdel test. But in the end, the stories themselves are archetypical. Ultimately, these are stories about human relationships, whether between characters, between workers and employers, or between human desire and the constraints of society. This is a universal language that needs no subtitles.
Maybe you are only K-Curious. Or maybe you have slightly too many streaming subscriptions and bloated watchlists, because you can only see IU’s new drama on Disney BUT her classic Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo has finally been subbed in English elsewhere. Doesn’t matter. Welcome to your new home away from home. Together, let’s recap new releases, talk about the classics, and find the next story that keeps us up and bleary for five worknights in a row, no regrets.
Welcome to Exile from Dramaville.