After binging obsessively on Netflix, TV Editor Euan Franklin ranks his top five best romantic K-dramas available now and discusses the genre with editor-in-chief Eleonore Dresch.
Since 2020 – when we were locked in our homes and unable to travel beyond the supermarket – TV audiences have been investigating beyond their borders. As well as a new international excitement for French series, K-dramas stormed the West and housed themselves on streaming services (predominantly Netflix) for everyone to enjoy.
It comes from a nearly 30-year cultural history, following South Korea’s release from military rule. The Korean New Wave, or 'Hallyu', spread to trends in TV, film and music. After winning a Golden Globe for Parasite in 2020, director Bong Joon-ho famously described the importance of surmounting the ‘one-inch barrier’ of subtitles to unlock the global wealth of great storytelling.
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’s TV/cinema editor Euan Franklin dove into Netflix’s selection of K-dramas, deliberately avoiding darker series like Squid Game to have a rounder view. Talking with the editor-in-chief Eleonore Dresch, Euan discusses his top five romantic K-dramas on Netflix.
Eleonore (editor-in-chief): 'I got familiar with Korea for family reasons and I was very intrigued about the renaissance of K-dramas. I was a little bit hooked. It’s a bit like romcoms – you start to learn how it all works out and how it’s structured, and then you become a bit picky. I find that when directors start being a little more creative and break through with a certain type of K-drama, they become extremely interesting. The truth is, obviously: K-dramas are very, very long. It’s like you’re getting into a whole world.'
Euan (TV/cinema editor): 'That’s why I quite enjoy them. I’m getting into the 16-episode series, which is like reading a novel. They have all these layers to them. And I think some of the best K-dramas, or the best romantic K-dramas, are those that spiral into different directions. You don’t really get that a lot in British romcoms or American romcoms, where there’s so much nuance and story and character.'
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Eleonore: 'I’m struck by the different pace. Action can be slow, [and it] repeats itself. Sometimes it has a flashback to something you’ve seen three times before, and you’re like, yes, I got that! But then you get used to it. There are different patterns that I find really interesting. Like, for example, many K-dramas are directed by women. The characters are particularly good-looking. The male characters are usually very sensitive, quite fragile.'
Euan: 'I think in Western films and TV, there’s an emphasis on the extrovert. There’s an idea in masculinity about having to be the loudest voice, whereas K-dramas are very nice in that they focus on these introverted men, and women too. I think that’s a relief, in a way. It’s quite refreshing to see these kinds of representations. In fact, there’s quite an interesting study I read about online [examining] how a lot of Western women have deliberately made voyages to South Korea in order to find the kind of men that are portrayed in K-dramas.'
Eleonore: 'Paradoxically, [South Korea is] known for being quite a paternalist country. It’s quite unfair to women. And that doesn’t always translate in K-dramas, but occasionally it does and you’re like what is this!? Do you watch them in English or do you watch them in Korean?'
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Euan: 'I watch them in Korean [with English subtitles] because I think when you watch international series or films, you need to watch them in the original language to really grasp the feel and atmosphere of the country you’re stepping into. I’ve talked to people who still watch [these shows] dubbed in English and, unless you're blind or visually impaired, I don’t really understand why you’d want to do that. It seems almost sacrilegious to me because this is born out of their country and now you have the chance to experience their culture in a way that you probably are unable to when you’re even there.'
Euan: 'I agree there is a certain amount of trash in K-dramas, but I don’t think of it as gratuitous. I think it’s just a part of the entertainment value. And when you get to certain episodes, which are so poignant, there’s a certain value in that. And if you’re able to have fun with it as well, I think that’s valuable. I don’t think I’d call it trash, but I’d call it as it is: pure enjoyable, escapist entertainment.'
Euan: 'It has done. It’s my birthday soon, and I’ve managed to book for me and my family a table at a Korean restaurant in London called Kimchee. Purely because, in all the K-dramas I’ve watched, they take so much pride in their food.'
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Eleonore: 'You’re right. [In K-dramas] they eat all the time. You wonder how they manage that, and they obviously drink a lot.'
Euan: 'Yeah, and it’s made me really want to try some of the delicacies. I’m hoping after I go to this Korean restaurant that it’ll open my eyes and my palate a bit.'
Eleonore: 'Do you think the K-drama will become mainstream in years to come? At the moment it feels a bit niche, but I was interested about how quickly hooked you were.'
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Euan: 'I think it’ll continue to grow. K-dramas grew in the 90s and 00s. They spread through Japan and China, and then spread to Middle Eastern countries. And then they went into Latin America. And then from Latin America they spread to [the US] via Korean supermarkets on VHS tapes. And then, eventually, 10 years down the line, streaming services got hold of various Korean dramas. And then, in 2020, when lockdown happened, Netflix suddenly got the rights to so many Korean dramas. I think we’ll see [them] rise and rise to the point where people who don’t usually watch any international series or films will actually give them a chance. It’s one of Netflix’s most valuable assets at the moment. There are so many to choose from. After you’ve finished one, it’s hard to choose the next one.'
Eleonore: 'Yes, and it’s hard to stop watching them as well. It’s almost like a sort of side life that you go into.'
My Liberation Notes follows a working-class family living in the countryside. The grown-up kids, struggling to make ends meet, commute to Seoul every day for work and dream of escaping their current situation. The main character Yeom Mi-jung (Kim Ji-won), an awkward outsider at her place of work, forms a strange relationship with her father's alcoholic assistant Mr Gu (Son Suk-ku).
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Euan: '[This] is one that you recommended to me. I thought it was slightly let down by the end, [but] I really enjoyed that the main character was this anxious, introverted woman who had these really depressing thoughts. I slightly fell in love with her because she’d come out of nowhere with just the most existential speech. And watching that family…'
Euan: 'Yeah. It’s a family of working-class people, and the kids are trying to move out of their countryside residence in order to move to Seoul and make their lives good. They really struggle to do it because they’re working temp jobs and part-time jobs.'
Eleonore: 'Looks terrifying. These characters, to me, feel very real and they’re tackling issues that real people are dealing with on a daily basis. And yet, at the same time, it’s very poetic. And the actress [Kim Ji-won, playing] the main character is a very well-known K-drama actress and she feels so close, so relatable. It was quite extraordinary.'
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It's Okay to Not Be Okay is largely set in a psychiatric facility, where the busy nurse Moon Gang-tae (Kim Soo-hyun) works. He looks after his autistic brother Moon Sang-tae (Oh Jung-se), who also works, draws and loves dinosaurs. Their lives are thrown off balance by the arrival of Ko Moon-young (Seo Ye-Ji), a beautiful children's author with a fierce antisocial personality disorder.
Euan: 'It’s quite an out-there K-drama. It is one of those ones where you have to watch a few K-dramas before in order to understand the format. Another classic trope in K-dramas is Enemies-to-Lovers, and [this] is a really fun way to do that. It’s a kooky series, in that it opens with a Tim Burton-esque animation. It’s mainly about trying to humanise [Ko Moon-young] because she starts off being a really mean and horrible woman with slightly empathetic factors. [Moon Gang-tae], who has his own traumas and issues, understands what kind of psychological condition she has and so he’s able to communicate with her properly. The brother has autism, and it’s about how [Gang-tae] grew up caring for his brother day by day, night by night. At the same time, [Moon Sang-tae] works several jobs and he’s a really talented illustrator. So, it’s not a case of oh, look how miserable this family is or this disabled person is – it’s a very touching story.'
Eleonore: 'I agree. I watched it a long time ago. It was the first time, I think, I saw a K-drama that was portraying disability and I think it was done extremely well.'
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