This week’s new releases come with a side helping of controversy—in very different ways. Collaborators! Shady family histories! Queerbaiting? Let’s dig in.
First up this week is Our Sticky Love (the original Korean title, Ireon Yeot-gateun Sarang, contains a clever wordplay on the word for a traditional taffy, but sounds a little closer to ‘This sh*tty love’), a drama that sometimes cannot quite decide if it wants to be a romcom or a thriller. Ha Young (The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call) stars as Go Eun-Sae, a prosecutor who develops amnesia following a run-in with a crime boss. Jung Hae-In (most notably, the upstanding young police officer in While You Were Sleeping) stars as Jang Tae-Ha, her erstwhile first love who is now a gangster. Go Eun-Sae wakes up in the hospital a week after the incident, apparently a Jane Doe, to discover that Jang Tae-Ha, identifying himself as her boyfriend, has been visiting. The drama veers into what seems like a lighthearted village romcom, only to shift gears into a thriller as the crime syndicate subplot begins to thicken. The two leads are extremely versatile and watchable, and the addition of Kim Young-Ok as Tae-Ha’s grandmother is an absolute delight. The tonal shifts are a little jarring, to be completely truthful, but overall the drama is worthwhile viewing.
The production encountered a significant amount of controversy, however, with the revelation that Ha Young, whose birth name is Ahn Ha-Young, was possibly the great-granddaughter of a Japanese collaborator. The controversy arose following an interview in which she described her family background as four generations of doctors, and her great-grandfather as having been a physician who treated Emperor Gojong. This was true, but subsequently questions were raised about whether her great-grandfather had deliberately collaborated with the Japanese occupation government. Regrettably, the controversy arose around the time of the nation’s annual Liberation Day holiday. Ms. Ahn issued an apology in which she stated she was unaware of the entirety of her great-grandfather’s history, and in the resulting public backlash, she stepped down from future seasons of The Trauma Code. Netflix withheld promotional videos for Our Sticky Love, and the federal government’s Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property is set to be reestablished in December to investigate whether assets connected to colonial-era collaborators qualify for state recovery.
A controversy of a very different sort has developed around another recent release, the currently ongoing Four Hands, Two Sonatas. The story stars Song Kang (My Demon, Forecasting Love and Weather) as former child piano prodigy Kang Pi-Oh, and Lee Jun-Young (When Life Gives You Tangerines) as Choi Jeong-Yo, a brilliant pianist who was inspired to return to music by his admiration of Kang Pi-Oh. The drama begins as a classic story about the rivalry between two artists. Thus far, we have been introduced to the intense, blossoming friendship between the two students, their complex family dynamics, and the way in which their very different childhoods shaped their lives and art. There is also the potential for a love triangle involving the characters’ mutual friend, Hong Jae-In (Jang Gyu-Ri, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay), a viola player and likewise a student at Korea Arts High School. The main story is playing out with all the sturm und drang of brilliant adolescents. Beautifully staged and produced by Studio Dragon, it is shaping up into a very watchable coming-of-age story.
The controversy arises from the production’s choice of marketing. Boy’s Love, or BL, dramas are an emerging genre in the K-dramaverse, having historically been more easily available in Thai or Japanese productions; it is also true that depictions of LGBTQ+ characters in specifically Korean dramas have lagged behind those in many other television markets. This is due to a number of factors, both cultural and political, but the end effect is that BL dramas, while popular with viewers, are not generally found as major Netflix releases or in primetime viewing on Korean network television. In general, BL dramas are more readily available on dedicated streaming services. So this production’s choices in marketing, emphasizing imagery more usually found in BL dramas, like the emotional scenes between the two male leads, heads resting on shoulders, and the like, have raised some questions with viewers. Namely, is Netflix and/or Studio Dragon teasing these clips out of context to attract viewers, when in fact the drama is not a BL drama?
So it would seem. Promotional materials released by Studio Dragon have highlighted Four Hands as a coming-of-age youth drama, and not as a BL drama. While LGBTQ+ individuals are slowly gaining more acceptance in Korean society, and younger generations are generally more accepting, true equality remains elusive. So it is an interesting, and potentially problematic, choice for Studio Dragon to frame the promotional teasers in this way. What would be a spectacular win would be for this highly watchable series to evolve into a mature relationship tale between the two leads, focusing on their talent, brilliance, and framing any romantic arc between the male leads just any other romantic K-drama. I think it unlikely, but stay tuned.
-Elizabeth Gariepy
