By Jae-Ha Kim
Kocowa.com
January 13, 2020
With the new decade already in full swing, it seemed like the perfect time to reflect on some K-Dramas that had inspirational messages.
At first glance, this K-Drama is a light-hearted series set in a prestigious high school that’s filled with cute boys and gorgeous girls. When the female lead (“SKY Castle” actress Kim Hye-yoon) realizes that she and all of her classmates actually are characters in a manhwa (Korean cartoon), she is stunned. But she’s also pleased to see that she is the lead female, engaged to a brooding popular boy (Lee Jae-Wook from “Memories of the Alhambra”). But there’s a plot twist! She actually is a secondary character whose sole purpose is to help the real female lead get together with the male lead. With help from her trusted friends and a new love interest (portrayed by SF9‘s Rowoon), she changes her role in the manhwa and creates her own destiny. The series isn’t asking viewers to believe that we’re all fictional characters. But it seems to me that the scriptwriters are saying that in real life, we have a much larger role in shaping our own future and that we shouldn’t sit around doing solely what is expected of us.
Park Seo-Joon and Kim Ji-Won portray childhood best friends who grew up having a sister/brother type of relationship. He was a high school taekwondo champion poised for an Olympic gold medal. She was a confident teenager who dreamed about becoming a famous announcer on television. Their dreams didn’t come true. And like many adults, their lives are filled with a case of what ifs? Slowly, each tackles their fears about how their professional lives have turned out. And they address the repressed romantic feelings they have for each other, even though they feel they shouldn’t go there. These characters are willing to take a leap of faith, even though they realize they may ruin what they already have. So many of us are afraid of the unknown that we are willing to take what seems the easiest route to happiness. This series shows that taking a chance may be frightening, but it also can lead to the type of liberating happiness knowing that you gave it your all.
The late Dr. Jack Kevorkian was famous for his quote, “Dying is not a crime.” He was a polarizing figure in the medical community, because he believed that the terminally ill had a right to die via physician-assisted suicide. This may seem counter intuitive to the doctor’s credo of “do no harm,” but proponents argued that patients also had a right to choose to end their lives with dignity. Like Kevorkian, the fictional doctor played by Ji Sung believes that keeping a patient alive solely by artificial means is cruel and unusual punishment. Whatever your views are about euthanasia, Ji Sung’s character is inspirational in that he is willing to suffer the consequences for what he believes is a greater good. As he pointed out when asked why he allowed a patient to die, he said he had previously kept dying patients alive in the name of pain management, because he feared that doing anything else would end in his imprisonment. In other words, he protected himself more than the wishes of his patients.
In the past few months, there have been some tragic deaths by suicide by some young, Korean entertainers. One of the reasons why I think “It’s Okay, That’s Love” is such an important K-Drama is how it handles mental health issues in a straight-forward way. It shows viewers that there are treatments that can help alleviate some of the mental torment that can make living difficult. Childhood traumas certainly aren’t something to be glossed over, but with diligent help from psychiatrists and therapists, patients can work through them and heal. This prejudice against mental health issues has to stop. No one thinks it’s a sign of weakness when a person goes to get treated for a broken leg or diabetes. “It’s Okay, That’s Love” shows that treating mental trauma is not only okay, but a sign of self love. And we all deserve that.
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