The Chosun Ilbo (English) lays out the “seven iron rules” for Korean soap operas.
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7 Rules of Korean Dramas
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on May 10, 2007 at 12:32 pm, filed under Asides, Korean Tabloid Crap. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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46 Comments
What about ajashi gets drunk on soju after she dumps boyfriend? Just happens to run accross him in a city of 14 million. Fight erupts where they both make spectacles of themselves.
Just do what I do when my wife is watching Korean shows - make up dialogue in English to amuse yourself or talk about how every man on the show looks gay.
It’s a fun way to waste time when Korean dramas are on.
Look it’s Bi - no I mean he’s not bi he’s gay!
They missed a few rules, such as:
fortuitous eavesdropping
breaking up in the rain
the airport near-misses
phone calls cut short by tragic accidents
amnesia
cancer
having cancer but forgetting it because of amnesia
and so on…
Don’t forget explosive diarrhea in the squat toilet and double dipping at the pojammaccha!
“They missed a few rules, such as:
fortuitous eavesdropping
breaking up in the rain
the airport near-misses
phone calls cut short by tragic accidents
amnesia
cancer
having cancer but forgetting it because of amnesia
and so on…”
Very true. Some of these - in addition to the original seven - also feature prominently in Korean music videos. The dramas also tend to include some fruity music, in case one wasn’t aware of how lame the show was to begin with…
“Just do what I do when my wife is watching Korean shows - make up dialogue in English to amuse yourself or talk about how every man on the show looks gay.
It’s a fun way to waste time when Korean dramas are on.”
I’ve tried that before and it is fun. Until you get bitched out that is! Now I just exile myself to the computer room and avoid a potential blast of ‘han’.
Yeah, I don’t do it that much any more either - thank God for the internet and downloadable TV
Every time I post a comment I end up on a page with the following error. When I back up and refresh my comment is there, but still have to deal with this error
EFL geek, would you happen to be a Mac user w/ Azureus + SafePeer running and the comment you’re posting includes a tag?
They also forgot that they only speak in two different tones of voice: loud and louder.
Seouldout,
PC running utorrent without safepeer and yes the comment had a tag
happened again and the above comment did not have a tag
Did a bit more digging. I was thinking it was first due to the IP filtering app running on my box, as I’ve recently had the same posting problem + access problems to certain public torrent trackers.
Blacklist is a list of “unsafe” IPs that is used by safepeer and peerguardian. I suspect that this list may also be used by SpamKarma. There have been reports of the same problem at several blogs that use SpamKarma.
Brian wrote, “…Having cancer but forgetting it because of amnesia…”
Touché! Well played, my good sir!
Regarding that regex error, I get it every time I post: 3 lines minimum if there’s no link in my comment; at least 6 lines if there’s one or more links. IE7 on Windows XP. Any and all filtering is through a hardware firewall. If it’s a spam issue, it could be that our ISP isn’t diligent about cracking down on it with other users. Still annoying, though.
I can’t believe the article didn’t mention the good sister-evil sister routine. It’s a classic. Good, poor girl gets adopted into rich family and acquires evil step-sister; or sisters separated at birth, the virtuous one growing up poor and the evil one growing up rich. In both cases, of course, there’s a love triangle; competition for acceptance from elders; etc.
I never watched a minute of Korean TV in 5 years there beyond news and some sports, but I can’t imagine that western soaps are examples of Masterpiece Theater themselves.
Good point. They’re worse, because at least Korean soap operas eventually end!
…I mean, come to a resolution and end.
“What about ajashi gets drunk on soju after she dumps boyfriend?”
What’s an “ajashi” - a cross between an agashi and an ajoshi? Hope I never meet up with one of those.
Andre Kim? No, he’s more of an “ajussi” (ajumma-ajeossi).
I thought I was the only one that made up my own dialogue
“Good point. They’re worse, because at least Korean soap operas eventually end!”
Funny. Another difference is that back home they are on from 11 am to 4 pm on the major broadcasters, here it’s 24/7 (which is why I got the dish (paltry selection of channels for the price, BTW)).
Actually, the rules seem to work well with a lot of American TV dramas, as well as some movies. Ordinary girl falls in love with business big shot? (Working Girl). All Doc’s are surgeons (OK, Frazier Crane isn’t, but House? Plus, all Docs know everything.) Taxi rule: OK, slightly different. If it’s a NYC centered film, we have the “tried to get a taxi but someone stole it just as I tried to get in” rule.)
I wonder how many Korean soaps and films are knock-offs of something they’ve seen on US soaps or films? Of course, “we” never steal our ideas from anyone (except the French, but they deserve it).
KBS is going to be filming a big chunk of one of their latest at my house in a couple weeks. Theme is illiterate housemaid gets handled by son of factory owner. The want my house because it’s a fairly unadulterated exemplar of the early ’70s first generation of an upscale truly Western-style houses in Korea; (of course, given the standards of Korean construction (then?), nearly all the house systems now are well-passed their useful life - we are slowly and systematically replacing them - and many of the flash architectural treatments (e.g., mitred windows) and 35 year old novelties (double-glazed windows) are fairly tired and/or worn - trying to look out some of the windows is like looking through a glass of skim milk.)
This is our second go round. The house previously was featured as the home of the Yoo Ji Tae character in Hong Sang-Soo’s Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda (2004). Unfortunately, the twenty minutes of sex that was performed on my living room rug ended up on the cutting room floor, but the exterior and garden made it into the film as did my dog, who had a speaking part and even got named in the credits.
I don’t know about knock-off films, but dramas… I came across my parents watching a medical drama and thought “hmm.. this looks very familiar…” I soon realized it was Grey’s Anatomy - Sex + 7 Rules… which was really strange since (as far as I know) Korean TV stations were airing Grey’s Anatomy… (The show I’m talking about is, of course, 외과의사 봉달희)
*Ahem* I hope they cleaned Sperwer’s rug when they were done…
They’re not soap operas.
Sperwer, some photos (of the rug), please.
Corpy:
Rug was cleaned by the film company, and I wasn’t allowed to take snaps during the action, so unless you’ve got some sort of sci fi device for getting the images outta my brain, sorry, you’re outta luck.
P.S. It’s a very nice genuine antique Tabriz - about 150 years old; the cost of the cleaning was astronomical - but really wasn’t necessitated by the slipping and sliding of the cast members involved; it just seemed like a good pretext for getting someone else to pay the freight.
“Good point. They’re worse, because at least Korean soap operas eventually come to a resolution and end.”
The most successful TV programs do not come to a resolution and end.
I guess I’ll just have to download the movie and use my imagination then…
if you look at that deiner board in chicago, you’ll see a clear pattern in that most of the people there are interested korea’s historical dramas and not those sappy love stories. i think there is some quality tv in korea, but almost all of them are sa guk. why not watch one of them and see for yourself?
Except that they learn their history from the “historical dramas.” PS: Shall we pass the hat and buy Pawi some caps?
“Except that they learn their history from the “historical dramas.””
Watching one of those is like watching a Cold War era American war movie.
‘Except that they learn their history from the “historical dramas.” PS: Shall we pass the hat and buy Pawi some caps?’
yeah, i’m sure they learn columbus discovered america. or that pocohantes was a grown woman. or that jefferson wasn’t a man having sex with a little girl. yeah, they learn some crazy things form their dramas, don’t they? oh, and you can keep your caps. how’s your korean family?
“i think there is some quality tv in korea, but almost all of them are sa guk. why not watch one of them and see for yourself?”
I have watched a number of saguk, mostly ones made during the 1990s. I would not call the ones I watched “quality TV.” The acting and camera work was so-so. A favorite technique for communicating that a character is restraining anger was to zoom in on a clenching fist. How subtle is that?
Among my eollection of DVDs is The Last Empress with Lee Mi-yeon. The first episode contains a scene in which Queen Min is dining with a middle-aged foreign missionary woman whose name escapes me (Alice Appenzeller, perhaps?). The white actress’ pronunciation of Korean was decent, so I believe she might have been a long-term missionary resident of Korea. While the Queen and the missionary are talking in Korean, the white woman fumbles trying to pick up food with chopsticks. The queen looks on in contempt as the missionary utters in shame, “I’m sorry for being so clumsy.” Hmmm. The foreign woman speaks fluent Korean yet cannot eat with chopsticks. After watching that display of absurdly inaccurate stereotyping, I nearly shut off the DVD player.
I did like the Gwanghae-gun story with Lee Young-ae as the influential courtlady and Hur June, although I watched only a few episodes.
“yeah, i’m sure they learn columbus discovered america. or that pocohantes was a grown woman. or that jefferson wasn’t a man having sex with a little girl. yeah, they learn some crazy things form their dramas, don’t they?”
I agree with you for once. I almost gag every time I hear the story of Washington and the cherry tree.
US school history lessons have come a long way since we were kids. No stories about cherry trees. Recently, I accompanied our school’s fourth graders on a trip to Jamestown. The museum includes extensive exhibits on pre-colonial Native American cultures and shows very powerfully how the English settlers were claim a large portion of coastal land within fifty years at the barrel of a musket. There are also displays on the slave trade and the African cultures from which the slaves came.
I doubt that US school children learn that “Jefferson had sex with a little girl” but do Korean school children learn that yangban men could rape their minor female slaves at will? I didn’t think so. How old were some of the court maidens that Korean kings helped themselves to?
Posted May 11, 2007 at 7:00 am | Permalink
“What about ajashi gets drunk on soju after she dumps boyfriend?”
What’s an “ajashi” - a cross between an agashi and an ajoshi? Hope I never meet up with one of those.
Harri su, or perhaps Andre Kim?
you should watch the more recent ones, sonagi. the improved quality is only recent.
about the last empress: if it’s the one i’m thinking of, it didn’t even have synchronized dubbing though it was the 90s. korean saguk has come a long way, s.
Not so strange after all! I speak Korean relatively fluently, although I would not call myself “fluent”, and yet cannot eat with chopsticks.
Mr. Carr, I am impressed. I had no idea that you could speak Korean. I am like a deaf person, if her pants are tight enough, I can read lips.
Really, Brendon? Well, that’s a first! I’ve known plenty of foreigners who could barely order from the menu, yet once the food arrived, they expertly picked the dishes clean. I’d never encountered a foreigner like you, who could speak well but not eat well. Maybe the writer for The Last Empress saw you eating at a nearby table and got the inspiration for the scene.
“about the last empress: if it’s the one i’m thinking of, it didn’t even have synchronized dubbing though it was the 90s.”
It was definitely the foreign woman herself speaking, not dubbing. Her pronunciation was decent but still authentically non-native. Besides pronunciation of distinct sounds and sentence intonation, there is something I call “voice quality.” The woman’s voice was not a Korean voice.
Yes, I speak Korean. I’m proud of it, too, since I’ve had little formal instruction (just enough Yonsei to recognize it to be worthless) and my Korean wife refuses to speak Korean with me. I’ve also been cursed with colleagues who speak English well (my partner Doil Son basically needs nothing in the way of help from me, although the associates usually need a lot of help). Self-study all the way. Now I can understand 90-95% of what is said in business meetings and phone calls with Korean clients, be a Korean-English interpreter (but not yet satisfied with myself as an English-Korean interpreter, and maybe never), and read statutes and case precedents. It makes work possible — for the life of me, I don’t understand how some foreign lawyers think they can get by without the language.
My chopstick problem comes from the fact that I’m not an adventurous eater. As a St. Louisan who fears seafood, fat & gristle, lawnmower chicken, insane level of spice, and sesame oil, that doesn’t leave a lot from the domestic menu here in Korea. Indian restaurants, American chains (this is why I am in franchise practice), and trips home are my salvation. But now I hear that Chili’s is closing!
B.C. You should be proud.