From South Korea, with love, screen dramas big and small …
From historical dramas and thrillers to romances, K-dramas are all the rage and movie stars are gods in modern South Korea.
There’s a special connection when two obsessive viewers of South Korean TV dramas first meet. Kindred spirits!
Korean dramas – or K-dramas – have been gaining popularity, with Netflix offering hundreds (including the phenomenon Squid Game, which is not your average K-drama).
Disney+ and Amazon Prime are catching on, too, and you can visit streaming services such as Viki and Kocowa+, once you’ve exhausted the others.
I speak from first-hand experience because I am a K-drama addict, err, fan. I’ve been to the country twice, and like a lot of other fans of South Korean popular culture, have even taken up Korean language classes.
Of course, in recent years there has been some brilliant cinema, including Oscar favourites Parasite and Minari. (Last week, The New York Times’s Top 100 ranked Parasite as the No.1 movie of the 21st century.)
Train to Busan is a famous zombie movie that I haven’t seen because I’m a scaredy cat, but I know that the express train from Seoul to Busan is an enjoyable ride when it’s not being invaded by the undead.
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But it’s the TV shows that really have a devoted following, and South Korea has a prodigious output. When avid viewers travel there, they can get up close with many of the locations. In the past, I’ve visited Yongin Dae Jang Geum Park, about 1.5 hours out of Seoul, where there’s a huge purpose-built set. Here, many of the historical dramas (“saeguk”) are filmed.
You can walk around an early-Joseon Dynasty palace (about 1400AD) complete with bridges over picturesque ponds, stately courtyards, a gloomy prison and a peasant village. Then when you return home and watch shows such as The King’s Affection and Moon Embracing the Sun, you can point to the screen and go, “Ooh! I recognise that!”.
It’s not just the historical dramas that inspire the fascination of ardent fans. Shows and films set in contemporary Korea, like 2021’s Vincenzo, starring Song Joong-ki, often set in the bustling metropolis of Seoul, depict a thriving modern culture (with occasional shamans, demons or ghosts thrown in), and enjoy much appeal more broadly.
The film and TV industries are part of the wider Korean wave – known as the ‘hallyu wave’ – where all things ‘K’ have infiltrated worldwide
The Han River has 13 attractive bridges, many of which appear in dramas, and there are numerous scenes featuring the seasonal cherry blossoms as couples romantically stroll hand in hand. Walking around, you can run into random signs, such as on the Namsan Trail leading up to the N Seoul Tower, where you learn that the area was used in popular drama Itaewon Class.
A couple of hours from Seoul is the skyscraper-filled, oceanside Busan, seen in many series (The King: Eternal Monarch, Fight For My Way), while a short flight away from there is Jeju Island, a sleepier place with fish markets that are often the centre of TV action. The traditional female seafood free divers (Haenyeos, meaning sea women), can be seen here and often feature as characters in shows such as Welcome to Samdal-ri and the acclaimed heart-wrenching drama, When Life Gives You Tangerines.
The film and TV industries are part of the wider Korean wave – known as the “hallyu wave” – where all things “K” have infiltrated worldwide.
Of course, there’s K-pop – the generic term for Korean pop music. When I was there in June, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing superstars BTS (Bangtan Boys) on billboards and buses to celebrate them completing their mandatory military service.
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There’s also K-beauty, with South Korean skincare considered the best in the world by many, and trendy K-fashion, which you can buy so you can look like your favourite impeccably dressed K-drama or K-pop star (perhaps only in your dreams, but still).
Okay, it would be disingenuous to omit that the throngs of female fans of K-dramas find the lead male actors very attractive. And many of the actors embrace their idol-like status.
It’s almost like a throwback to the glamorous old Hollywood, with the swoonworthy including Park Seo-Jun (What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?), Cha Eun-Woo (Rookie Historian: Goo Hae-Ryung), Ji Chang-Wook (Welcome to Samdal-ri) and Song Joong-Ki (Vincenzo).
Many of these actors do “fan-meets” when they’re on stage to be interviewed, maybe sing a few songs and generally just give their fans an exciting in-person experience.
Let’s not forget the female actors who are also idolised – Bae Suzy, Park Min-Young, Han So-Hee and Jo Bo-Ah, to name just a few. (Koreans put the family name first followed by the given name).
If you start watching K-dramas or have already dipped your toe in, there are social media pages (eg Australian KDrama Fans on Facebook) where you can share the love and get recommendations.
These groups sometimes take tours to filming locations – a pilgrimage that elicits nods of approval and sounds of envy from other enthusiasts. A tour can include going to South Korea’s leading broadcaster, MBC’s Drama Studio, which lets you sit in on a rehearsal on certain days. Companies such as Klook also offer tours of locations, which individuals can join.
Oh, and please watch K-dramas with subtitles rather than dubbing. It’s so much better to hear the actors speak in the music of their own language. Anyway, reading subtitles keeps your eyes from straying so it helps to keep up with the often very convoluted plots in K-dramas!