Saturday, October 28, 2017

Celebrating Korean Dramas


Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

This week I'm celebrating Korean dramas.


Earlier this year I read the fabulous and funny book, I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maureen Goo. The main character decides to get a boyfriend, but she uses kdramas to plan it all out. She researches relationships by watching hours and hours of kdramas to come up with a strategy. I have several friends who watch Korean dramas and was finally curious enough to give them a try. There's a list of shows at the end of the book to pick from. My first choice was You're Beautiful. It was ridiculous, hilarious and super fun even though it actually made me cry a couple of times. I hadn't laughed so much in a long, long time. My youngest child had watched a few dramas back in middle school and recommended another one called Heartstrings, because it has two of the actors from my first kdrama and it involves music. I enjoyed it too, but not quite as much as the first. I will probably never forget You're Beautiful because it was the first one I experienced. 

On Twitter I thanked Maurene Goo for inspiring me to watch a few dramas and she shared some that she has enjoyed. The next drama I watched was Strong Woman Do Bong Soon because it was one she liked. The first two had been romantic comedies, but Strong Woman ventured into mystery/thriller along with romance. It was also fabulously hilarious aside from some not so funny jokes about being gay. I loved Do Bong Soon. She was a fun superhero and wanted to be a video game designer. It was cool that she was unimpressed by her very wealthy boss who fell hard for her.

Next, I started to listen to the soundtracks to these shows. I had one of the songs playing at school and a couple of students recognized it as Korean music. We chatted about K-dramas and they recommended Boys Over Flowers so that's what I watched next. It was incredibly frustrating at times because I didn't like the pairing at least not for a very long time. There were other reasons it was annoying, but I was determined to stick it out and it was still quite funny. That's my favorite part about these shows. They make me laugh over and over again even though they make me cry too. 

Most recently, my husband asked to join me in this venture. I picked Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (Goblin), because Maureen Goo had also mentioned that one and it looked a little more grown up than the previous ones. It's my favorite so far. 

I rarely watch television, but these shows are allowing for some laughter in my life and with our current political climate, that is very welcome. 

4 comments:

  1. I can identify with the need to find laughter. This is a totally unknown genre for me. I may have to check it out.

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  2. An interesting adventure. I didn't even know Korean drama was a specific genre.

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  3. You learn something new every day! I didn't know there was a whole genre of Korean drama either -- but now that I say that, I wonder why wouldn't there be -- and what other genres am I missing??? :-) Glad you are finding laughter!

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  4. Crystal, when I go to my manicurist, sometimes the ladies watch their Korean soap operas. Even though everything is in Korean, it is easy to get the gist. Thanks for sharing some. I just posted at http://beyondliteracylink.blogspot.com/2017/10/weeklong-celebrations.html,

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