Her approach is a bit unusual. She offers two very distinct lenses on K-dramas. First, she frames it as a study in media with historical, social, and cultural references that reverberate through the Korean television reflecting a specific media and cultural history of Korea. Second, she uses a very personal perspective on her own Complex PTSD and history of trauma to unpack some elements of trauma that dramas deal in. Sometimes she weaves in the trauma of her parents as well.
So while she dons a playful tone in the book ("Imagine me more as the hippie art teacher at an alternative school who doesn't give out grades, smokes weed, and goes by her first name") it is also juxtaposed against this heavier stuff. Her recollections can be intensely personal and disturbing at times. For those who find sexual assault and domestic violence triggering, I want to note that it will be discussed.
I was eager to read Jung’s book because I’ve really struggled to find critical voices on K-dramas. I was glad to find Jae-ha Kim’s reviews early on in my Korean TV watching journey. Occasionally, if a show gets more mainstream attention, you might see it covered in New York Magazine/Vulture. But as a critic, I was craving a smart perspective on dramas to help me understand the landscape of Korean media better. Jung delivers on that.
I started blogging about dramas as a pandemic diary of sorts. Now some 150 shows later I understand the rhythm and style of them, writ through my personal experience (white lady, advanced beginner Korean language skills), but I do not have anywhere near a complete cultural picture. We need culturally competent authors like Jung writing about Korean media and I’m glad to see publishers seeing the value in this kind of conversation.
Jung happily addresses a lot of longtime questions I have had about K-dramas—looking at how queerness is represented, the prevalence of product placement, the popularity of zombies in dramas, and the lack of protections for crews with non-union labor in Korean media.
She weaves in the history of the country and the influences by outside oppressors (Japan and the United States) as well as the development of a media under the dictatorships in Korea and what television was reacting to in Korea at the time (IMF crisis, KCC censorship).
She brings up tropes I had not seen before (the prevalence of orphans with leukemia storylines and the connections to Korean bloodlines) or issues I knew nothing about (Korea’s Misogynistic Coffee History!).
Jung has written a 240-page book so she cannot possibly go deeply into every topic and I am reticent to complain, though I thought she might touch on BL dramas in her chapter on queerness or some of the more troubling racist caricatures within K-dramas when she was discussing issues with racism within Korean culture. But there is only so much space.
I came to dramas like many people, late in the Hallyu Wave, and during the pandemic. They were my comfort in response to that immediate trauma. But they also fed me more deeply with my own history of trauma. So, I was appreciative of Jung’s POV because the stories in K-dramas I’m drawn to are about recognizing and validating trauma. She quotes The Body Keeps Score, noting “Trauma stories lessen the isolation of trauma….” That’s not necessarily something I have felt from American media.
In K-drama romances, you have traumatized people trying to heal from something often unspeakable—abuse, violence, tragic accidents, parental neglect, or abandonment. They then discover someone else who likely shares some element of their suffering. Perhaps together these two wounded people can find their way out of the pain and then eventually to love. The hope that maybe they will find healing after the violence or wounds they have received is such a different scale than say a Hallmark romance.
The people of Korea have borne a tremendous amount of trauma. Americans may be aware of the Korean War and perhaps some elements of its aftermath. But there are a lot of other national incidents that dramas can often speak to.
Reading this book I started to think about, Rain or Shine (aka Just Between Lovers) a bit differently thanks to Jung's writing. That 2017 drama involves two teenagers who were inside the mall when it collapsed and ended up trapped in the rubble. Both lost family members in the tragedy. The event destroyed their families as they knew them. Now the two of them (both with PTSD from being trapped for so long underground) end up working on a project to rebuild at the site of the collapse and collaborate to figure out how best to memorialize what happened for the victims and their families.
You don’t have to stretch far to see how this drama can also be a look at real Korean history. There was a famous Korean mall collapse in 1995 due to shoddy construction (and a focus on profits over safety). But also, it can act as a metaphor for the many buried bodies in Korea (a subject Jung delves into quite a bit) which includes victims of political persecution and sweeping massacres during the lead up to the Korean War and after, and the families who have never healed from those losses. It can also be a reflection on incidents where the cover-up and/or refusal to take responsibility have caused the families suffering additional pain (one can point to the Sewol Ferry accident in 2014 and more recently the 2022 Itaewon Halloween tragedy).
I saw a post on the Korean Travel Reddit recently about someone asking what would be appropriate to wear to a family funeral in Korea. The person asking said that media and local dignitaries would be in attendance there so they wanted to be dressed correctly. When asked more about it, they mentioned their family member had been found in a mass grave. And this was in 2023. The wounds of Korean trauma are fresh. Recovery takes a long time. There is something to the speedy K-drama formula of a 16-episode arc of some kind of healing that allows for these kinds of moment of catharsis.
I think it is critical to hold these truths about Korean history (and America’s role in some of the most violent of incidents) in one hand while being conscious in consuming Korean media. This art is not created in a vacuum. Jung’s book in fact links them inextricably.
While I was very appreciative of the historical-cultural framing, and even much of how she weaves her personal experiences into the book (though I think the personal memoir elements get more personal and less drama related as time goes on), it took me by surprise that late in the book she takes some lazy shots at critics and criticism.
She starts off the book suggesting it be used as a “resource for answering some of your questions and a launching pad for asking more.” Hers is an act of analysis and she invites discussion and interpretations. She is concerned about “Western-centric” or “US-exceptionalist bias” when talking about Korean media. I’ve been wondering since I started watching dramas what queer-coding I was seeing was me projecting my American gaze on dramas versus how this media is “read” within queer communities in Korea.
But then she goes on a tear against criticism, saying “Criticism is easy, while finding ways to praise, compliment, and worship an object or subject require careful observation, attentive listening, complex feeling, and thought.”
So, of course, I take issue with this reductive slagging off of criticism. I’m not sure what she is reacting to exactly, but, as my therapist would say, it seems to be her baggage. I think it is so important to talk about art (as Jung herself has done for 240 pages) and whether you call it analysis or criticism, it takes time, energy, thought, and listening, even to write a pan.
She herself makes critiques (she doesn’t love every drama). She is critical of the way Hollywood has swooped in to lightly invest in Korean media but without much funding in comparison to other projects. Naturally Netflix sees money to be made in an industry with high production values and no union protections, which she rightly points out.
She brings attention to the problem with hetero cis-female sex tourism to Korea (maybe too briefly mentioned and without much context). She says, “South Korea as a nation is currently treated like a host bar for non-Korean hetero cis-women from around the world who fetishize pretty boys in K-pop groups and K-dramas.” It’s always fascinating to me that these women watching K-dramas don’t see all the patriarchal, abusive red flags in K-dramas and somehow only see these fantasy men.
Jung’s book makes the strong argument that there’s a lot to extract from the texts of K-dramas both culturally and personally. Jung gives readers a chance to look a little harder at the shows they have watched and maybe discover a new facet to them thanks to her analysis. She covers some well-known examples from the past 20 years and recent shows that even a late bloomer like me has watched (DP, My Liberation Notes, Something in the Rain, Search WWW).
She invites everyone to have their own experience of her book and, disagree with her if you want. She acknowledges, much like performance artist Taylor Mac’s famous mantra, everything you are feeling is valid.
With that, I found good things to wrestle with in her book and it validated why I’ve found spending time with K-dramas a rewarding emotional and textual experience.
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