#kww:eta

[idiosyncreant]

K-DRAMA WOMEN’S WEEK: FALL POSTSCRIPT

Day 4: Work x3 Rent’s Due

I got my wires crossed and used the Day 2 Rent’s Due prompt title to answer the Work x3 prompt, instead? So today I’ll do the one on a character navigating adulthood, where it was interesting!

I started out feeling a bit apologetic about the fact that I’m casting back into the past for dramas, but in a way, that is what I have to offer the fandom. Not being around forever (though geez it’s been like 7 years or something? OK no just 5 hold it my math is weak um yeah it’s 8.) but because I’ve ended up actually watching a decent amount of dramas dating from even earlier.... Even though right now I’m not watching much current K-drama, I’m still here!

I personally find it pretty interesting (and revealing) that the first dramas to pop into my head for this prompt are mothers re-entering the workforce. Neither of these dramas are top faves, but I was drawn to the stories of these women having to try to make their way for themselves.

Oh My Lady

This was one of the intriguing dramas that didn’t quite deliver in the end, at least for me, maybe because I wanted more romance. Then again, I think it was a little off the beaten road, and I hadn’t watched enough dramas then to see that from the start. In this story, Chae Rim’s character is an ajumma who is suddenly divorced and wants to be able to keep her child. he ends up as housekeeper to a demanding star, played by Choi Siwon*. It doesn’t have the right kind of stability, though so she’s also looking for office jobs. Deploying ajumma bargaining skills to get what she needs to land a job with a production agency was kinda great to watch.

*Who apparently was recently discharged from the military, so that’s why I thought “huh, haven’t heard from him in a while” -- he’ll be starting his next project soon, apparently!

Three Dads, One Mom

This was another drama that I watched all the way through and was slightly disappointed in the end**, perhaps again because I didn’t see the signs early enough that the romance element wasn’t going to be resolved in a neat bow. Though the premise is that a widowed pregnant woman is living with her husbands 3 best friends--any of whom MAY just be the sperm donor he usedwhen they were having fertility issues, without her knowledge (oh k-drama medical ethics) and obviously that was the main focus of the plot...some of the best moments of connection in the drama were over her returning to work, rather than over the baby. There was one impactful scene where she apologizes to the guy who’s the shabbiest friend for complaining so much about the smell of his feet--now she’s on her feet at work all day, her feet smell, too.

I mean, it doesn’t sound particularly heartwarming, but it was touching. She had gotten used to being coddled in a way, and having to go out and make a living shifted her attitude toward someone she’d judged rather quickly.

**On searching for an image, I stumbled across a Japanese drama that has to be a remake--which actually appeals to me quite a bit. I can see it fitting the drama conventions better with J-drama. The ambiguous end felt a little strange in a Korean drama, where usually the ending note is firm, but that’s kind of the J-drama comedy wheelhouse.

Honorable mention goes to What’s Up, Fox. The heroine struggles a little to keep things going at her adult magazine job, and she’s not really in a transition--which is what her story is about. At a more mature age, a lot of firsts start happening for her that are scary, and she has to negotiate them--but they’re in her emotional life, which she seems to have been stagnant in. She’s lived with fantasy instead of reality in that area, and when life hits her upside the head with an emotional entanglement, she’s equally torn between pretending it never happened and letting it change her life.

[idiosyncreant]

K-DRAMA WOMENS WEEK: FALL POST-SCRIPT

Day Three: 40 + up, women in stories you adored

I don’t watch enough of the daytime dramas. They tend to be both a little more soapy and a little more attentive to the members of the family who are not sexy-free-and-single. But I have some favorite actresses and favorite characters I’d like to bring up.

(And this is, of course, not bringing up mom in Marriage Not Dating only because I’ve written at loving length about her several times, now....)

I didn’t finish Okjakgyo Brothers (pictured at top) because it was one of those long day-dramas ... and a little soapy. But I really liked how the mom was both cute and lovable and did some very unlikeable things. The strength of this kind of show is that each character has their own story intermingling, and her story was one of both fighting for the land she’s considered her own for years AND trying to develop a really good duck-feed to get in on the meat-duck market.

She was really mean to our heroine, but while she made some choices that felt driven by drama rather than her established personality, I still could see WHY.

And then we have the Coffee Prince grandmother. While she could be seen as a plot-point, really she’s having her own story in the background while everyone else is struggling to keep their romances straight. She’s fighting illness that threatens to take her away from the business that is her passion. So often the elders who are important in business are there because of their husbands who willed them positions or something. If this is the case with Grandma, it doesn’t show. She has passion about her job, and she wants to see her grandson take over. In the end, she survives her illness AND potentially is getting a granddaughter who is even more passionate about the coffee business.

Last, this is a pretty obvious choice, but the mom in the Reply series is always fantastic. I particularly love her story in Reply 1994, though. This mom is warm and welcoming to a passel of kids, mothering them cheerfully with mounds of food--but she also is living her own life. She lets them cook for themselves at times because she needs to go away. (Bold!) She’s also suffered sorrow that will always be with her. It doesn’t intrude into daily life, because it’s an old wound, but it’s allowed as a quiet presence in the narrative. And when she has a change-of-life baby, it’s this completely sweet joy for her. I love, too, that she and Dad are in love.

[idiosyncreant]

K-DRAMA WOMENS WEEK: FALL POST-SCRIPT

Day 2: Rent’s Due edited: Work x3

This prompt is great because I think actually a lot of the typical hard-working characters I cannot relate to with their series of part-time jobs. I get it theoretically, (especially culturally it seems similar to the Japanese construction) and it’s probably more an urban phenomena, but I just can’t envision it as reality. It always seems a symbol of “this character needs Fate to step in and get them a salaried position” more than anything.

(I know there are people who have to deal with multiple part-time jobs, it’s more the way it’s portrayed in dramas.)

So, though in many ways I’m not at all like Go Dok-Mi, I actually really related to her lifestyle. When I first started working at 20 I actually got dropped off by my brother and picked up, because I didn’t drive. I didn’t get out much, either. So I actually used to be a little more like her than I am...

Go Dok-Mi works from home not because she isn’t a hard worker. It seems like, despite the fact that as a contractor she’s struggling a little, she is a reliable and trustworthy copyeditor. 

Come to think of it, the show revolved around three contractor-type work from home creatives. Enrique happens to be the celebrity variant, while Oh Jin Rak is the more middle-ground “facing the brink of starvation or glory, not sure yet which” webtoon writer. I mean, of course, because how else would they meet Go Dok-Mi...

Anyway. She blogs in her free time, and I REALLY relate to being a writer, but having to do grind work, and while people might feel like you’d have enough of words, feeling like there’s always more to be said.

Yeah, come to think of it, there were more reasons I really enjoyed her story than I consciously thought about at the time.

[idiosyncreant]

KDRAMA WOMENS WEEK - FALL POSTSCRIPT

Day Five: Femininity + Her

A character who dealt with being a woman in a way that interested you. Either in the way she behaved, or the way she dealt with the way she was percieved or the way she dealt with her existence ‘as a woman’.

One of the stellar qualities of the writing of the Reply dramas (tho I haven’t gotten to 88 yet) is that the character are allowed to breathe. They have unflattering moments, and unexpected goodness. Go Ara really committed to this range with the character Na Jung.

Because she’s a brash girl, there’s very little image maintenance with her closest friends and potential boyfriends. She is loud and aggressive--but she’s also got very girlish feelings and desires. That means we get to see her go through the kinds of changes that anyone goes through as their self-perception and relationship status changes.

Being considered attractive by someone causes her to do a little bit to dress up, after starting out essentially just lounging around the family home. When she’s in a steady relationship, though she doesn’t go overboard, there’s still this general care for her appearance that morphs to become more cute. When she gets a job after graduating, she neatens her appearance. When she goes abroad (and breaks up with her boyfriend) again she changes a little--both more womanly and more 

But there’s never any sense that she’s gone overboard or changed who she was by changing her hairstyle. I love that her sense of femininity very naturally reflects her state of mind--that’s a lot more relatable and familiar than watching a (certainly wish-fulfilling) makeover transformation that fixes the character’s lack of confidence forever.

Another drama on the stack of “rewatch, soon?” Though maybe 1988 will come first...

[idiosyncreant]

I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT (in this previous post)

Biscuit Teacher, Star Candy i.e. Hello My Teacher

where Gong Yoo was, incredibly, playing a high school kid to her teacher (the only age gap in reality is that he’s a year older) and hello this drama was probably also one I couldn’t watch now (though I’d try my best, no doubt)

But this is the one where she’s a former jjang trying to make good at the school that kicked her out, and the only way they take her in is if she keeps the current ultimate troublemaker under control.

Also, this thing where she appeared at his fanmeeting is ADORABLE

She also was in a drama with Rain back in the day, which sounds like a barrel of laughs

/getofftheinternetBethany