K-Drama Tropes: Love them or hate them?

By Jae-Ha Kim
Kocowa.com
August 27, 2019

I love Korean Dramas for a variety of reasons. And although I have a love-hate relationship with all the K-Drama tropes, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t waiting for them to appear every time I watch a series. Here are some of my favorites — and also some that I love to hate.

The Clenched Fist

One of the cutest elements is the balled-up fist. It expresses so much in one little clench, without the use of any words. And so many of the characters utilize it — little kids, CEOs, ajummas, everyone. The fist signifies the pent-up anger that can’t be expressed in words. It conveys frustration. And in this photo above from “Healer,” Park Min-Young has her hand clenched to deal with the fear she has of being in an elevator (after having nearly died in one not long ago).  As for the hand on the left, it belongs to Ji Chang-Wook. Viewers can tell from just this one shot that he is dying to comfort her.

The Korean Arm Grab

One of the things I really dislike is what I refer to as the Korean Arm Grab. In almost every K-Drama, a man will roughly grab a woman’s arm and drag her away. The woman might protest mildly, but generally goes along with him. More often than not, this scenario is depicted as the man showing his love and concern for her.

No. Just no.

That’s why it was such a refreshing change of pace in “Descendants of the Sun,” when Kim Ji-Won reached out for Jin Goo’s arm as he tried to walk away from her. I’m not saying it’s OK for a woman to invade a man’s physical space. What I am saying, though, is that there is a difference between someone reaching out versus yanking at their arm as if the latter is an inanimate object.

She’s Obviously a Girl!

 

Korean dramas are famous for asking viewers to believe that women — often the tiniest, daintiest actresses around — are going to be mistaken for men. But when they do it right, they do it so well. The best example I can think of is the gateway drama “Coffee Prince,” starring Gong Yoo and Yoon Eun-Hye. In K-Dramas like this, the scriptwriters do a great job of explaining why the female lead tries to pass herself off as a man. By doing so, they address gender inequality, which still favors men in so many aspects of society, no matter the era. The gender-bending plot also allows showrunners to address homosexuality. Though Gong Yoo’s character may be falling in love with someone he believes is a man, the audience knows that the love interest is really a woman. It’s a small step in talking about sexuality that not everyone wants to accept is a reality.

Sleeping in Street Clothes

 

Who amongst us hasn’t fallen asleep once or twice wearing our street clothes to bed? But in K-Dramas, it’s more the norm than not. Take this scene from “School 2013,” where Lee Jong-Suk and Kim Won-Bin play high school characters. Granted, they are teenagers pretty much left on their own, so it’s not all that surprising that they’ll do whatever they want. But it’s a scene repeated in so many serials, even where the characters are supposed to be wealthy and catered to by a staff of servants. I don’t get it.

How Do You Speak Korean So Well?

Many K-Dramas feature characters that supposedly are fluent in English, because they studied or lived overseas. But there are a string of shows where the lead character was adopted overseas and yet still somehow speaks fluent Korean. In “Her Private Life,” Kim Jae-Wook was adopted into an American family. Granted, his adoptive mother was Korean. But his adoptive father wasn’t. It’s highly unlikely they spoke Korean at home. And yet when he moved to Korea for work, he was fluent. In the So Ji-Sub series “I’m Sorry, I Love You,” he was adopted by an Australian family that treated him like dirt and threw him out on the streets. He somehow made his way back to Korea and learned to speak fluent Korean. There were a few funny moments, such as him learning to add yo/요 at the end of sentences to show respect. But his fluency level was improbable.