Thursday, February 10, 2011

Clichés in Korean Dramas

Today is my rant day.  And today's victim is Korean dramas. So...

Must someone always throw themselves into a river to escape capture in every action/historical drama? And must royal babies always disappear only to reappear 20 years later?

Must the heel of a girl's shoe always break off at an important function in every modern romance?

Must each episode of a court drama act like a murder mystery?

Must a divorce couple always reconcile?

Must every ajumma with an adulterous husband become some kind of celebrity? (In My Rosy Life, the ajumma dies from cancer, which is just the other side of the coin since death by cancer turns an ajumma into a saint.)

Must Ryu Tae-Jun lose the girl every time? (He's totally hot. How can he lose the girl even once? OK. In Hwang Jin Yi he was a little evil, but...he's hot...and in period costume!)

Must Dong Chul get beaten up at the end of every episode of East of Eden? By episode 25, the guy should be suffering from some degenerative brain disease from all that trauma.

Must implausible coincidences always drive the plot?

Why are we always at the airport at the beginning of every last episode of a modern-day series?

And what's with the endings on these dramas? How come they suck so much? The only decent ending I can think of was in Couple or Trouble. Stars Falling From the Skies, too. Now that was a cute drama with a great beginning, middle and end. Of course there was that coincidence thing...

4 comments:

Chris said...

This seems to be a problem in Vietnamese TV and movies, too. Maybe that's why Korean film is so popular among Vietnamese; I'd venture to say that at least half of evening programming is actually Korean. A lot of it is so silly, but fun.

J.A. Pak said...

Thanks for your comment, Chris! I agree it is fun. I suppose it's like all genres and audiences expect formulas. There certainly is enough on US TV too.

Cafe Pasadena said...

I luv Korean TV! Dramas & comedies. There just is somet strange & familiar infusion. Just mentioning this to a Korean chef friend here recently: "A lot of people like them!"

J.A. Pak said...

They're pretty popular, especially in Asia where they're part of the Korean Wave.