K-dramas: how have they changed in the streaming era?

Before the pandemic, Netflix already had a specific category of k-dramas in its catalog. His international audience had little idea of ​​what those melodramas were like. Today, this streaming service is not the only one where you will find Korean series. The first season of the South Korean police “The Next Bet” (2022) is on Star+ and will soon place a second installment on its platform, while Prime Video promotes “Can we help?” (2022) as his most recent Korean original series. Attractive, romantic and original, the k-dramas opened up to the world and now they are the delicious cherry on the cake

For social media users, Korean stories haven’t been changed by being on Netflix, Prime Video, Star+, Rakuten Viki, HBO Max, or Paramount+. His stories continue to show the classic clichés of the series that were previously broadcast only on television: sweet characters, repetitive scenes and controversial speeches. Rather, if a young couple doesn’t fall in love in a second or a rainy scene doesn’t make a situation more tragic, the series couldn’t be Korean.

The following images are a short compilation of cliché characters and scenes from k-dramas:

For the journalist specialized in k-dramasJoan MacDonald, the korean series today they have more violence and sexual scenes than before, because television was more conservative with children’s schedules. “In streamingyou can deal with topics, such as drug abuse and sex, that were once disapproved of on television stations in Korea and the United States”, says the editor of “Forbes” and former editor of the KpopStarz portal. “Certainly, I see more international investment in the genre, which creates a change in the stories, because they are being written for an audience that is not only Asian,” she adds in dialogue with Saltar Intro from “El Comercio.”

Although on Tik Tok and Instagram there are many videos talking about very cliché Korean dramas, MacDonald assures that the common points in the scripts of the k-dramas they are the idea of ​​constant struggle and idealistic destiny, the rest varies by gender. In “Love Alarm” (Netflix), the humble young man does not give up to conquer the girl who is dating his partner from another social position. In “Intensive Course in Love” (Netflix), one character offers to help another, because they think there is a past life connection that compels them to do so.

“However, one of the things I really love about the k-dramas it’s that, at some point during each episode, the characters will break what’s called the fourth wall and someone will say, ‘That would never happen in real life. Because the fantasies only happen there, it’s not to take the drama completely seriously,” says MacDonald.

K-dramas written by women

The Korean genre opens up to the world. And not necessarily because someone always has a latest model cell phone in the series. The important thing is that the writers no longer only talk about love in a honeyed and pastel-colored atmosphere, but also about family in less conservative comedies. According to data consulted by the specialist in korean dramasMacDonald, 94.6% of all k-drama writers are women.

Thus, “the female perspective” and often “feminist” leads them to create characters like the young Ko Moon-young from “It’s okay not to be okay” (2020), an independent and single writer of horror stories. Or other stories like “Las hermanas” (2022), a story inspired by the literary work “Little Women” where ambitious and self-sufficient women appear, whose character breaks with the cliché morality and the usual machismo of the majority of k-dramas classics.

The rich heir and the power

“The inevitable thing in Korean series is the chaebol character, an assigned heir in that conglomerate of rich families”says Rosa, a 27-year-old girl who belonged to the Peruvian k-pop dance group “Exo” and has been consuming dramas of the genre since she was 15 years old.

An example of “chaebol k-drama” is the south korean Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) from “Crash Landing in Your Heart” (2019). She lives a controversial romance with a soldier in the North Korean army. But, beyond the common love divided by border lines that we always see in the series, there is the personality of a woman with a lot of money and heiress to a multimillion-dollar company who only frequents restaurants with Michelin stars and has a conceited and sometimes discriminatory attitude towards people who do not belong to the same social class.

In streaming, the conceited and powerful villain has become more attractive by having that duality of being a tragic human that hides certain benefits. Something that puts the viewer between a rock and a hard place. The best example of this is the successful series “The Glory” (2022), where a woman victim of bullying wants revenge against her tormentors, but, by drawing up a perfect plan to achieve it, the character goes to a dark side where is capable of killing. All this drama is accompanied by an important reflection of the script on the attitude that she takes towards her suffering. Meanwhile, her powerful enemies, all heirs, become characters with a suffered past and present, almost victims.

catharsis endings

Most k-dramas have happy endings: the story ends in a positive way, the person falls in love, overcomes adversity, or the powerless gets it.

However, current series such as “The Squid Game” (2021) or the crime drama “Big Bet” (2022) lead to unexpected catharsis. After the premiere of the series with the highest number of views in the history of Netflix, the Korean series were less romantic, but darker and with a complex society, where everything ends with death or the resolution of an unsatisfactory conflict for the character.

“Violent series like ‘Sweet Home’, ‘Squid Game’ and ‘All of Us Are Dead’ often receive lukewarm reactions domestically (in Korea), but the incredible international reception of these series forces local viewers to reevaluate them, while inspiring the industry to create similar content,” reports the Government of Korea’s Korean magazine specializing in Korean culture.

In this way, Korean scripts also evolve, as the foreign public likes the series due to its realism and harshness in its thriller, mystery and crime versions. In addition, for the western world, the language stopped being a barrier, although many complain about the translations of the subtitles. But, in reality, the K fashion has no brakes and it seems that there is no ceiling in popularity in streaming either.

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