K-Drama, from soap to drama series

Between the 1960s and the beginning of the 21st century, K-Drama went through many evolutions, from soap to drama series.

Generally, K-Dramas depict love stories but without sex, with a typical scene: the umbrella scene. It is these alternative representations of love that attract and make these series so unique.

What does the basic Korean soap opera have to do with Squid Games ? What is the influence of this K-Drama phenomenon on the rest of global series production? Has the center of gravity of creation shifted to the East?

For our guest, Sylvie Octobre, K-Dramas take pride of place “friendship, love, family and professional ties, allow one to flourish, to face inequalities and discrimination and to overcome challenges”which would be one more explanation for their growing success. She co-wrote with Vincenzo Cicchelli, K-Dramas, these feel-good series published by PUF.

When was K-Drama born?

This “Korean drama” dates back to the 1960s, and it will develop thanks to 3 channels, KBS, TBC and MBC. Starting in 1962, KBS revolutionized Korean TV with a series of programs called “Friday Broadcast Theater”. Then it will then be called “Théâtre du Dimanche”, when it will be broadcast on Sundays. These theaters were in fact short series which took place over two or four episodes. This K-drama will first be available in daily series.

The turning point, we would place it at the beginning of the 90s − in 1991, to be precise, date of broadcast of What is Lovea series whose story follows two families with very opposing values, one conservative and patriarchal, the other modern and liberal. In 2002, the series Winter Sonata serves as the standard bearer of hallyu throughout the world. This is the word used to refer to the spread of Korean culture internationally. Between the 1960s and the beginning of the 21st century, K-Drama went through many evolutions, from soap to drama series.

The specificities of Korean series

There is a centrality of romance but we don't just talk about that. There is also the fact of being a society together. For Sylvie Octobre, these are undeniably very good quality series, meeting international standards. And then, they have a narration of the social bond that occurs at a given moment. The question of social bonds and how we create society together is something that affects our societies very deeply. And they have a proposal to make which is not quite the individualist proposal to which we are accustomed. The guest also explains what the Jeong in Korea, it is the way in which they conceive of the inter-individual bond which is made of delicacy, of attention to others, in the greatest discretion – there is nothing heroic about it.

What are the differences between Korean series and American series? Korean series have a different way of constructing the series. There is always a very slow start. It takes quite a long time to set up but when it starts, it can go into a tailspin quite quickly, with systems of extremely frequent plot twists. For Sylvie Octobre, we no longer get bored at all and that's why we become addicted. Another specificity is that there are “much fewer very explicit scenes, which means that there is less sex but there is much more eroticism for example. There is less direct violence but there is “There is a lot of psychological and symbolic violence, which is very addictive and which resonates much more with our daily lives.” For her, the third difference is the way of filming the men: “The actors are extraordinarily beautiful and filmed as we would film women in the West, that is to say paying attention to their bodies, to their expressions.”

Moreover, she explains that masculinity is constructed differently in Korea. She does not use the word androgynous to describe these men, because that would assume that there is a model of masculinity from which men would move away. “This model of masculinity that some say is soft means that men have the right to wear shimmering colors, to wear jewelry, to dye their hair, without anyone thinking that they are homosexual. It's hyper virile in them.”

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