The Birth of Korean Cool (18 page)

On a recent trip to Seoul, I met some Filipino chefs from the Center for Culinary Arts (CAA) in Manila. They were in Korea on a reconnaissance mission: they wanted to open a Korean restaurant in
Manila. I asked them why Filipinos were so crazy about Korean dramas.

“It has a little of everything: comedy, drama, action,” said Tim Abejuela, a chef instructor. He added that Filipinos relate to the plots of K-dramas: “[In the Philippines], we
have the same caste system. Koreans go through the same things as Filipinos do. Korean parents are pushy; they want to choose who you marry. Filipinos love the drama—hard-core slapping,
dragging the hair, and cat fights—they love that.” Regarding the Filipino remakes of K-dramas, Abejuela said, “They do it with our own actors, and in Tagalog, but [Filipinos]
still prefer the Korean [originals].”

K-dramas are now beloved by Asia as a whole. In Taiwan, the airtime devoted to Korean dramas was getting so out of control that in 2012, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission called
upon a Taiwanese network to reduce its primetime showings of Korean programs and increase the number of hours devoted to non-Korean shows.
³

Korean dramas also have huge audiences in Latin America—perhaps because of their emotional similarity to telenovelas. In South America, Korean dramas have become hits in Brazil, Chile, and
Argentina. In Paraguay, some Korean dramas were dubbed not only in Spanish but also in the indigenous local dialect of Guarani.

In 2013, Cubans became obsessed with the Korean drama series
Queen of House wives
, which airs four times a week on the state-run Canal Habana.
⁴
The Cuban press reported that when one of the show’s heartthrob male stars, Yoon Sang-hyun, visited Havana on a promotional tour in November, he was mobbed at the airport by a crowd of
hyped-up Cuban female fans. A Cuban national network airing a Korean soap is especially odd since Cuba and Korea have no diplomatic ties; in fact, Cuba has never screened a Korean movie. Yet for
some reason, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), a government-run trade group, has an office in Havana.

Does this smell of government involvement? Yes, and they’re not embarrassed about it. According to the Korean network MBC, the drama was dubbed in Spanish with the assistance of KOTRA.
That is, with public funds. One  can’t help wondering whether Korea is waiting for communism to topple so it can swoop in with Korean cars and mobile phones.

K-dramas are soft power in action; they subtly and overtly promote Korean values, images, and tastes to their international audience. Owing to their popularity, the Korean look espoused by
K-dramas—including pale, powdery skin and foundation for men—has become faddish in Korea. The Korean cosmetics industry has enjoyed a boom in Asia; one beauty chain alone, Face Shop,
has a thousand stores throughout Asia. Obviously, the cosmetics companies employ the most popular Korean actors and singers to promote their products.

THE DEATH OF MUST-SEE TV

The popularity of Korean dramas cannot all be ascribed to government conspiracy, however. One indication that global audiences are flocking to K-dramas of their own
initiative is the tremendous success of DramaFever, a video-on-demand Internet portal that airs primarily Korean dramas, all subtitled in English. Founded in 2009 with a little seed money, the tiny
New York–based operation has already started to generate annual revenues “in the seven figures,” according to Seung Bak, the Korean American cofounder of the company. The site
gets 6 million to 8 million unique visitors per month, but only 15 percent of those Korean American demographic viewers are from Asia. Nor are they Korean American. As Bak says, “The
demographic is too small.” In fact, the majority of DramaFever’s viewers are spread throughout the globe. Bak believes that in theory the site could flourish without any Korean
subscribers at all.

Bak is aware of the Korean government’s role in orchestrating and funding the spread of Hallyu, but he believes that the world’s television tastes have been changing for some time
and the popularity of K-dramas was almost inevitable. Seung pointed to increasing audience frustration with American prime-time television, which has become so stagnant: “There’s only a
limited [number of hours in prime time], so studios don’t want to take risks,” he said—risks such as airing non-American shows.

Bak is certain that the world’s interest in non-American programming is not limited to K-dramas. For example, he is betting on a Spanish television drama series called
Isabel
, a
costume drama about Queen Isabella I of Castile, perhaps best known for funding Christopher Columbus’s journey to the New World. Bak said that
Isabel
was Spain’s number
one–rated show in 2012, but—he points out emphatically and with disbelief in his voice—
“Not one single U.S. distributor picked up Isabel.”
Guess who did pick
it up? DramaFever.

Bak feels that American television is losing the future because it has done almost nothing to accommodate to global tastes. Meanwhile, says Bak, “The world loves K-dramas.” One
reason? “Unlike shows from some other countries, including telenovelas, where characters have sex in the first two minutes, a Korean drama can get to episode eight before the couple has even
a slight kiss. The dramas focus a lot on story and courtship, and women all over the world especially want that. In Iran, women schedule their dinners so they don’t interfere with their
Korean shows. And Africa loves this stuff.” Also, Bak notes, third-world countries are accustomed to watching shows with subtitles. They don’t really become automatically addicted to
any given show just because it’s American. Part of Bak’s job is to study audience analytics, and he says one trend is undeniable: the United States’ monopoly on world television
is going out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

WINTER SONATA: HOW A DRAMA CONVINCED JAPAN THAT KOREAN MEN MAKE GREAT BOYFRIENDS

For years, the unspoken brass ring of Korea’s pop culture export strategy was winning over the Japanese audience. If Koreans could melt the hearts of the
Japanese—who up until that point had been the dominant pop culture influence in Asia—anything was possible.

Korea’s cultural Waterloo was the psychotically popular 2002 dramatic series
Winter Sonata.
This show was the first hard evidence that Korean pop culture could break barriers.
Winter Sonata
became a hit in countries as far-flung as Iraq, Russia, Egypt, and Uzbekistan. But more crucially, it won over Korea’s former nemesis from time immemorial, Japan.

When two writers, Yoon Eun-kyung and Kim Eun-hee, first set about writing
Winter Sonata
, they were given two guidelines: the storyline had to have amnesia in it, and it had to take
place in winter. Other than that, they had carte blanche.

Laugh all you want; that was all the information they needed to invent one of the most perfect male protagonists in TV history, the amnesiac architect Kang Jun-sang. As a mean girl crushing on
Kang in the series rhapsodizes, he has the whole package: “strength, intelligence, and compassion.”

The lead actor, the soft-featured Korean actor Bae Yong-joon, became the It boy among Japanese women, and the object of one of the greatest national crushes of all time. Japanese middle-aged
women became rabid for both the character and the actor.

The twenty-episode drama aired in Japan in 2003. The obsession grew so large that
The New York Times
took note, covering Bae-mania in a 2004 article tellingly entitled
“What’s Korean for ‘Real Man’? Ask a Japanese Woman.”
⁵
According to the article,
Winter Sonata
—but really,
Bae—has been credited with the $2.3 billion rise in new business ventures—across multiple industries, both hard and soft—between Japan and South Korea between 2003 and 2004.
Tourism from Japan to Korea increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2004, the same article reported, including trips to the dinky little island where the show is set.

In August 2004, then–prime minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi said during elections for the upper house of Parliament, “I will make great efforts so that I will be as popular as
Yon-sama” (Bae’s honorific nickname in Japan).

How did this Bae frenzy get so out of control? For some reason, Japanese women read enormous cultural stereotyping in the physical appearance of one actor. The writers Yoon and Kim were
initially bewildered at the success of their show in Japan, though they did offer a few theories as to how it occurred. Kim said, “Japanese women think that Korean men are warm, that you can
count on them.” Yoon added, “They think Korean men are romantic and protect their women. Bae has a face that does not exist in Japan: manly, yet soft.”

Winter Sonata
is the archetypal Korean drama: it centers around the sanctity of memory, both in the literal sense (as in, someone has amnesia) and the nostalgic sense. It is a world in
which the past is somehow more important than the future—not a very New World notion. The plots revolve around childhood innocence, family drama, and a lot of extremely loud crying. Crying,
by both men and women, is a big fixture in K-dramas, tapping into Koreans’
han
and their need to fixate on suffering.
Winter Sonata
is less
han
-filled than some
Korean dramas, but there are harsh lessons about the uncontrollability of fate and the fixedness of human nature.

Winter Sonata
starts with the principal characters in high school, when Jun-sang first meets his childhood sweetheart, Yu-jin. Jun-sang has the social awkwardness of Mr. Darcy from
Pride and Prejudice
, avoiding friendships and being brusque with everyone except for one other male student, whom he secretly knows to be his half-brother.

Jun-sang has great hair. He is also a math prodigy. Just as Jun-sang and Yu-jin are about to have a New Year’s Eve rendezvous, Jun-sang’s mother announces that they are moving to the
United States. As in, immediately. As in, that second. On the way to the airport, Jun-sang is hit by a car. The next day at school, it is announced he is dead.

Obviously, Jun-sang is not really dead or there would be no more episodes. The accident gave him amnesia. In the last five minutes, Jun-sang gets emergency brain surgery, goes blind, and
remembers who his high school sweetheart was. They reunite. In the entirety of the series, the main couple only kisses twice, mouths closed.

CHUNG TAEWON: INVENTOR OF THE KOREAN SPY DRAMA

Given that Koreans live under the constant threat of invasion and nuclear annihilation from the north, it’s surprising that Korean television did not have its own
spy drama until the popular series
Iris
(2009), about a fictitious Korean black-ops agency that takes on an equally secret terrorist organization named IRIS. The show became a runaway hit
all over Asia (apparently, even in North Korea, via bootleg).

Chung Taewon, head of the eponymous Taewon Entertainment, is the creator of
Iris
. He is so exacting in his work that a member of his own staff described Chung’s sets as a
graveyard of sacked actors. Chung’s nickname is “Kim Il-sung”—after the late North Korean dictator. When I met him, though, in April 2013, I was reminded more of Augustus
Caesar. And that’s what he is—august. He has a round, pensive face full of gravitas and droopy eyes—though the latter feature was surely because he had not slept or eaten properly
for months. His walk was stately and regal; even his floor-length down coat draped over him like an imperial cape.

We met at a golf club in the city of Gwacheon, near Seoul, where Chung was in the middle of filming episode 19 of
Iris 2
, a sequel to the first series, which was based on the format of
the U.S. series
24
, a cat-and-mouse chase occurring in real time, stretched across the entire season.

Of course,
Iris
has a realistic edge that can’t be found elsewhere in the world. After all, South Korea shares a border with the most volatile nation on earth.

“Koreans see [
Iris
] as realistic,” Chung said, “and even for foreigners, North Korea is a real threat. We never know what’s going to happen tomorrow. The North
Koreans are gangsters. They keep threatening the world, not just once in a while but on a weekly basis. Where
Iris 2
starts, South Korea decides it can’t respond to North Korean
threats. Instead, South Korea wants nuclear weapons so they can be the north’s equal.”

Whereas the United States and the UK can get away with straight police procedurals in their television shows, the most famous example being
Law and Order
, South Korean audiences want to
see a focus on the characters’ personal lives. “Korean TV series have to have a love story,” said Chung, his mouth pursing in mild disgust. “It has to have a strong, sad,
and anxious ending. That’s really tough because on the one hand I’m talking about spies, hostages, and fighting, and on the other hand I have to carry on the love story line. That gets
tiring for me to write. The Korean television audience is mostly
ajoomas
[middle-aged housewives]. They make the decisions with the remote control. So if I can’t get their attention,
it’s very tough to bring the ratings up.”

Despite the success of Korean shows domestically and abroad, Chung feels that there are still a lot of shackles that prevent TV show creators in Korea from exercising full creativity. In a
sixty-two-minute show, the network by law can play up to a maximum of thirty-two commercials. Each commercial is fifteen seconds long. The commercials are not interspersed evenly throughout the
episode in U.S. fashion, but rather clustered in long stretches of back-to-back ads, which leads to high audience attrition over the course of any given show’s airtime.

Furthermore, the network keeps all receipts from advertising and only partially finances programming. For
Iris 2
, for example, the network provided $3 million; the remaining $12 million
had to come from outside sources. This meant that Chung had to succumb to the ultimate humiliation: product placements.