K-DRAMA NEWS - SEPT 2024
K-DRAMA NEWS
BY SHARON STERN
This month’s new dramas feature a really wide variety of genres. We have a pretty serious teen drama, a goofy cop comedy, a demon who takes over a judge, a woman juggling two personalities, a dog who communicates with a has-been actor, a family laundry that is laundering money and a second season of a drama that should have never been made in the first place. There is never a dull moment in dramaland and this month is no exception!
Fragile – 프래자일
(Kocowa – starring a large ensemble of new, young actors)
This is a teen drama, but with a fresh format. It is described as hyper-realistic, exploring the challenges of the coming-of-age years. It features a very large, ensemble cast of newbie actors, each with their time in the spotlight, as opposed to a couple of lead characters and more minor characters surrounding the leads. This drama doesn’t focus on positive relationships and outstanding moments of young adulthood with some negatives thrown in – it takes the opposite tack, focusing on risky sexual behaviors, drinking, smoking, school pressures, depression and loneliness with some positives thrown in. Bold and unfiltered is one of the descriptions I read. The narrative of each episode comes from a single character’s perspective. The episodes are short – 20-30 minutes each.
Seoul Busters – 강매강 (강력하진 않지만 매력적인 강력반)
(Disney+ – starring Kim Dong-wook, Park Ji-hwan, Seo Hyun-woo, Park Se-wan and Lee Seung-woo)
This drama is called a crime comedy and centers around the lowest-ranked squad of investigators who have been relegated to an old school building as an office, and their new squad leader, who is an elite violent crime investigator. Together they face a series of silly and ridiculous situations, but actually are able to catch the criminals! This drama looks quite silly but funny.
The Judge From Hell – 지옥에서 온 판사
(Disney+ - starring Park Shin-hye and Kim Jae-young)
This series focuses on the coexistence of good and evil. It is categorized as fantasy, action and legal drama. The plot centers around a demon that comes straight from hell to occupy the body of a female judge who is tasked with sending those who have committed great and unrepentant evil directly to hell by killing them. When she comes face-to-face with Detective Da-on, a kind and intelligent guy, her mission gets more complicated.
Dear Hyeri (also known as To My Hyeri) - 나의 해리에게
(Viki - Starring Shin Hye-sun and Lee Jin-wook)
This drama is classified as a rom-dram and features Shin Hye-sun as a woman with DID (dissociative identity disorder – formerly known as multiple personality disorder) who lives two very distinct lives: one as a TV announcer and the other as a student and parking attendant. Her first personality has an ex-boyfriend who is a successful TV announcer at the same station with his own buried trauma and, of course, a new announcer who falls in love with her at first sight. She has to dig into the childhood trauma that pushed her into DID and see if she can figure out how to bring her two realities together. Shin Hye-sun sort of played with multiple personalities in See You In My 19th Life, so I’m sure she can pull this off well. I have a feeling there will be some pretty intense scenes in this one.
Dog Knows Everything – 개소리
(Viki – starring Lee Soon-jae and Kim Yong-gun, Ye Soo-jung, Bae Jung-nam)
This com-dram shows an aging actor, famous for his excellence to draw out emotions on screen and for his ability to make people uncomfortable off screen. He is shocked when he is forced off of a drama he is shooting and receives public scrutiny in the process. He escapes to his house on Geoje-do, where he encounters Sophie the dog. Sophie was a police dog, retired when she was injured. He is able to communicate with Sophie and Sophie starts bringing him clues about things happening around the village. The two of them collaborate with other seniors around town to solve mysteries. This drama features quite the cast of excellent older actors and for that reason alone, it should be fun to watch.
Iron Family - 다리미 패밀리
(Not streaming in the US yet - starring Kim Jung-hyun, Keum Sae-rok, Choi Tae-joon, and Yang Hye-ji)
This dark comedy, family, romance, tells the story of a 3rd generation family laundry, where clothes are not the only thing being laundered and there is a sudden, unexpected windfall. There is a love triangle between a chaebol son, the youngest daughter at the laundry shop, who is visually impaired and a worker at the laundry and . There are money laundering antics. There are multi-generational conflicts. There is romance. It could be a lot of fun!
Gyeongseong Creature 2
(Netflix – starring Park Seo-joon, Han So-hee, Claudia Kim)
I didn’t watch the first season of Gyeongseong Creature. Not because it is a horror/suspense/thriller drama, which, admittedly, is not my favorite genre. No, I didn’t watch it because of the basic premise. It takes place in Korea, under Japanese occupation in 1945. That is a grim enough setting. But it deals with a creature created from human experimentation during the war. It directly references Japan’s Unit 731. Unit 731 was a “hospital” that existed in occupied Manchuria, now part of China. Human experimentation was the focus of the “hospital”, but no creatures lived to talk about it. Everyone (at least 14,000 people, including Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians) at Unit 731 was murdered, all in torturous, heinous ways – many vivisected to death. It is the most horrendous part of WWII history that no one talks about. The idea that some partially human, partially transformed creature from such experimentation terrorizes a city and makes a good ghost story is, frankly, offensive. The creature, if there is one, is the true history of the human beings that so disregarded human life that they didn’t care how people suffered and died and they just killed anyone still half-living at the end of the war to make sure there were no witnesses. A made-up monster cannot and should not compete with reality, in this setting. The story is supposed to be an analogy of the war’s effect on Koreans. The true story does not need to be turned into an analogy – it speaks for itself. This shouldn’t be the subject of a K-drama. It should be a documentary and it should be required learning.
On top of this misguided foundation, the reviews praise the well-done historic sets and costumes, but give a thumbs down to character development (or lack thereof), misplaced and empty romance, badly placed foreshadowing that takes the impact out of horror and thrill scenes and a general lack of flow or rhythm
Now we turn the page and are offered Season 2. I’m not a super big fan of sequels to begin with. We flip from 1945 to 2024, with the same characters and the creature still at large. Basically, it appears that the story has just become another monster horror show. What is the point? They could have just made a monster drama in modern day Seoul.
