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If you’re just starting out, there are things you must look out for when watching Korean television. I’ll just list a couple of my favorites and most highly recommended dramas in no particular order. They’re all great!
I highly recommend your first drama be Boys Over Flowers. This is one of my favorite Korean dramas and is a classic contemporary Cinderella story. BOF is about a girl (Geum Jan Di) who gets a scholarship to a high school full of South Korea’s most elite children. Jan Di’s classmates are rude and shallow and she challenges them, especially the F4, the four boys who are basically the kings of the school. Jan Di finds herself in a love triangle between two of the F4 boys as they mature and learn more about each other.
Reply 1994 is one of my more recent favorite dramas that I could watch over and over again. It’s about a group of friends who attend the same college during the year 1994 and live in one friend’s family boarding house. Throughout the series, the friends grow up and figure out who they are by facing a number of events that actually happened in the 90s. This show is hilarious and gives fans an ideal of what it was like in the 1990s. reply 1994 is a prequel to Reply 1997 so if you like it, maybe you should check ‘97 out too.
Secret Garden hit the Korean media by storm when the drama started airing in. Secret Garden is a cute, light, magical love story about Joo Won, a successful and wealthy owner of a luxurious department store, and his growing attraction to a feisty stunt double named Gil Ra Im. The fun part about this drama is when Joo Won and Ra Im switch bodies after drinking mysterious alcohol gifted to them while they are stranded in the middle of nowhere. Makes no sense? That’s okay, just give it a try!
These are three of my favorite dramas and they really are kind of a broad mix of what Korean dramas are like. I hope you take interest and explore some of these!
The Sexualisation of
K-Pop Stars
As K-pop stars get younger and younger, their outfits get skimpier and skimpier, and their fan base gets older and older(especially for girl groups). Just like in the American music industry, sex sells. In the 90s you could find pop groups in baggy cargo pants and oversized letterman jackets. Now, when you search for almost any group, male or female, you’ll find shirtless men with a ridiculous amount of photoshop and half dressed women who look like they’re no older than twenty. As I mentioned earlier, groups usually start of with a sweet image and then narrow them down to what sells and what they want to be known as. We can use SNSD as an example; the group first walked on stage with a sweet shy girl image, but have strutted their way to the sexy and coy group they are now.
I think the problem stems first from companies relying so much on looks to sell their artists. There has been an increase in the number of idols getting plastic surgery just to get into their companies. What’s more, the fans are supporting the company’s decision by buying into the “sex sells” mentality.
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