Korea Drama Kingdom

by Hyejin Kim

Korean dramas have been popular outside Korea. There has been a term to refer to this popularity, Hallyu (Korean wave). Pretty girls and neat boys, and their pure love or triangular love relations…. They would be characters to represent Korean dramas. The popularity of Korean dramas has become one of the important businesses through exporting to other countries.

One result of hallyu is aggressive competition between channels over dramas in Korea, and the budget to make a drama is increasing tremendously. The program rating decides the length of dramas and the content of the drama story. The Internet has become a significant means to sense how the audience reacts each time. Opinions the fans leave on the drama website are more powerful than scenario writers or producers.

Leave pharmacists to do their work… Leave doctors to do their work… Leave scenarists to do their work to make stories…

Most of all… even though the scenario writers don’t want to change the stories and the audience gives the pressure on and on, the scenarists are also humans and could be confused… therefore, I’m really afraid that the conclusion of this drama will go in a different direction as well. A line in the drama says, “Audience? Their level is not that high~” It might be the answer. Of course there are people who long for more various and better stories. But they are the minority. Most of them want the story to talk about love between the main characters and to end the way they want. The trend has not changed yet compared to five or ten years ago. And they get the satisfaction through the stories indirectly. But if it is triangular relations, conflicts between fans of the two of the same sex get serious. When the story ends with one side, the fans of this other side got hurt[…]

Please stop monotonous love stories~

It seems that many people who watch this drama could be aggressive if the drama doesn’t show conventional love stories. Honestly speaking, as the person who watches this drama and finds it interesting… I want the conclusion that is not looking for love, but that shows that the major characters find their own identities with their jobs and discover camaraderie. That should be the conclusion as the producers had clarified as the original intention…