I have become immersed into korean pop culture haha. Korean BBQ's have become one of my favorite places to eat and I have become brainwashed by the pop music and variety shows! I am happy that my first drama, Coffee Prince, opened up my eyes to this amazing culture. I hope one day I can visit South Korean and enjoy the spas and soju! (And maybe ogle at a few guys while I'm there too ^-^)

Congrats to the winners!
Thank you Dramabeans for these giveaways.

I have become a blogger and am trying to learn Korean. I became a blogger because I want to write my thoughts about Korean drama and also to sharpen my writing. I have been trying to learn Korean for awhile. Hopefully, I can become fluent soon!

Watching korean dramas has made me a fan of Pastel Music, travel to Korea for an extended 2-week holiday, try to (re)create kimchi, naengmyeon, and bulgogi at home, blog on korean celebrity fashion and k-dramas, AND....

Stalk Dramabeans obsessively. Well, at least 4 times a day, for the scheduled posts.

In fact, I have started eating kimchi since I began watching dramas. And bibimbap and Korean bbq. I even learned how to make a few things myself. I also tried to learn a little Korean, that did not go far. And I'm considering applying for a tefl job in Korea. I'm slightly afraid actually going to Korea would squash all my rosy daydreams about it though.

I've definitely learned a few Korean words (before watching kdramas I had absolutely no knowledge of Korean) and it's made me want to try Korean BBQ. I'm going for my b'day this week!

Also it's really pulled me into kpop which has in turn fueled my drama obsession. It's like a vicious cycle of Korean entertainment, but I love it.

Kdramas led me to kpop. Through Boys Over Flowers, I started listening to Kim Hyung Joon and through Dream High I started listening to 2pm. Don't even get me started on TOP from BigBang. I could create a huge flow chart of my kpop evolution through dramas, but that might take a while. However, because I am a kdrama addict, I started to learn Korean and Korean customs. I find to kinda cool to explore another culture and immerse yourself in how they live. Eventually I would like to visit or move to South Korea but now that is more of an aspiration. The more I watch food dramas like Kimchi Family, Pasta etc, the more I want to try Korean food. I'll add that to my list, next.
Thanks for the opportunity for the giveaways. Not a day goes by without me checking out dramabeans to see what's new.

Omo... where do I begin? How did watching K-Drama's change my life?

First... I've convinced my daughter to teach English in Korea after she graduates next year! Yea! I got a place to stay when I visit Korea. :)

Second... I've started learning to speak, read and write Hangul on my own because our local university doesn't offer it. Consequently it's made me a STALKER... every time I hear someone speaking Korean I'm compelled to follow them and eavesdrop on their conversation. :(

Third and most importantly... I've purchased my first pair of stainless steel Korean chopsticks. Do you know how hard it is to eat ramen with those slippery suckers? But I am getting good at slurping those noodles... something I'd never ever do before K-Dramas

msilva@gmail.com

It's more like, what haven't I done in the name of K-drama. haha! I've pulled all nighters to finish a drama, am currently learning Korean through Rosetta Stone, eat copious amounts of kim chee, all the bookmarks on my laptop and phone are k-drama websites, dress my nephews like kdrama stars, and even teach them korean words!

Congratulations to the winners and a great big Thank You to the staff of dramabeans!

Most of my friends think I don't listen to Korean music, but they're wrong. A majority of my iTunes library is filled with OST music from Korean dramas. I may be behind on recent pop songs, but I've pretty much got every OST song (from dramas I've watched) on my iPod.

I not only started eating kimichi, I learned how to make it and turned my kitchen into a korean barbecue place. If I had more cash, I would totally buy that fridge Lee Sueng Gi likes to hand out.

Learning the language! lol and using it with the expression I see in the drama. like.. "andwaeeeeeeeee"! I also started to bow and bow to the people I meet! Started liking k-pop. Yes, kdrama made me love kpop! Is using emoticons also included??? loool! and oh! started eating in a shabu shabu!

*I’m not a resident of US/Canada.

Ever since I started watching Korean dramas, I have become a Korean food junkie! When I was in elementary school, my parents would take me to eat dinner with their friends at a Korean BBQ restaurant every Friday. But I used to hate eating Korean food because I thought everything was too spicy. However, during my college years, when I started watching dramas, I decided to give Korean food one more try. And I guess my taste buds matured and I realized I loved it. Now I eat Korean food all the time!

Also, Korean dramas got me interested in Jeju Island (after watching All In, My Girl, etc...), so I finally took a trip there a couple of years ago. I bought an All In Music Box to commemorate the trip.

Whipping out my limited Korean every now and then when I'm at a restaurant. Ahjumma! Ahjussi! Soju jusaeyo. :D That and feasting on Korean goodies - dukbokki, jajangmyun (Fantasy Couple!), bibimbap (Full House, MNIKSS), kimc hi (1N2D)… and once my friends and I are drunk, we might pull out a few 'love shots' to end the night! Hahaha.

*Not a resident of US/Canada

I started eating kimchi and Korean food! kimchi used to scare the heck out of me, thought it would taste weird and super spicy, thanks to a childhood trauma but now I love it! And through dramas, I learned to appreciate k pop too... And discovered bb creams!

Korean dramas changed the way I view life in general. It helped me appreciate the things that I take for granted. It also allowed me to see another side of things that I usually missed. It offered me the realism that I missed in animes. Dramas aren't perfect but there are tidbits that just hit and inspire me. I'm trying to collect those and try to write something worthwhile. Hahaha, it would be cool if I published it in the internet and it was turned into a movie like Temptation of the Wolves.

*Not a US/Canada resident

Oooh, nice question.

There are a lot of things I have done in response to my love for K drama: started listening to KPop - check, learned the Hangul characters to try reading what's being shown onscreen - check, self-educated self on basic Korean words - check and went to Korea to explore and visit places where scenes from the series I liked were shot - CHECK. (and i'm planning to go back again!!! wooohooo!

(Not a US/Canada resident)

I am no differant it seems. I too now eat kimchi with my rice.
I find myself shopping at the asian market and trying new things.
Using chopsticks even for cooking.
I eat a lot of ramen.

I find alot of my conversations are around what asian dramas i am watching or have watched. My poor husband just rolls his eyes.
Is there anything else worth talking about.

My longest playlist for music on you tube use to be country. Now I have separate playlist for general asian, korean, japan, tawian artists and korean OST.
THE LONGEST NOW IS KOREAN POP.
I never liked rap but because korean pop incorparate it in there song I find that I really like it that way ( if it is all rap I still don't like it)
Thank you dramabeans for these wonderful years!!!

Thanks to Korean dramas, one my social life became much less prominent (that that it was in the first place lol) I'm starting to learn Korean (I decided this yesterday), I found love in Korea BBQ and I'm going to study abroad in Korean one day. I just need money. :)

woot! lol

Oh! I also cooked jajangmyun (did I spell that right? ><) :D

K.Dramas inspired me to learn Korean, eat Korean food, listen to Korean music & OST's including classical pianist Yiruma :) and even plan a trip to Korea in the future. I learned all the different kinds of Korean foods and traditions, this website has also been a good learning space for me. I'm African so this fascinates a lot of people. I love your blog and follow it religiously. Thanks

I started learning how to cook Korean food like bibimbap due to kdramas.

There were so many things that i started doing after becoming a kdrama addict, learning korean is just one of those. Now i could watch drama with no sub and understand quite a lot and then just need to find recap to fill in the gap. Also, after drama, my other korean entertainment crack is the variety shows, ever since the 1st subbed episode of 1N2D was aired on KBSWorld, i became a loyal viewer and got addicted to the variety show world as well. So many external hard drives have been filled with drama and show, not to mention the loyal MU membership as well, the result was so many sleepless night trying to marathon watch a drama,even the daily one(Sons of Sol Pharmacy, oh dear, i finish that one in around 4days, for the miniseries, i think i lost count of examples). Guess that why a big part of my social life has gone down to stick to the screen every night and react emotionally to every single scene (i swear reality doesn't seem this insane, my sanity is still here with me..i hope...) However I did spread my influence to lots of my friends as well so now instead of being the only one rambling about the latest episode of the airing drama, me and my friends all got together and watch it or talk about it as our main topic most of the time. We can talk from night til morning just about kdrama and it'll never end. I made a lot of new friends (both korean and non-korean) from this addiction of mine as well.

Trying out korean food and completely loving it is a change for me also. Now I can't have ramyun without kimchi ever since i know of that wonderful combination, so-maek become one of my favourite drink when it's possible to get soju over here (since in the UK beside London, getting korean stuff can be quite hard). Korean food become my 2nd favourite just after my home country food, that also make traveling to Korea, especially to the countryside where all the fresh, unique kinds of food are is one of my biggest goal i want to accomplish ^^

The answer got longer that i expected it to be, so i'd stop now otherwise it'll turn to be an essay (which it shouldnt and i need to complete a real one for uni instead).

My email is huongbui@hotmail.com and i'm not a US/Canada resident (i'd love it if dramafever and viki can be available for UK resident someday *finger cross* )

because of korean dramas, i paid more attention to my skin... i never use foundation or any makeup before, but now because of seeing all the glowing, gorgeous faces of korean actors/actresses... i use BB cream... & also by seeing how much they cherish their facial masks & scrubs i do that now too!!!
so i think that was a positive influence for me because my skin is looking good!!! i have been recommending bb cream & facial masks to all my friends & family :) i would never go out w/o bb cream anymore!!!

email: tatin_hunny@yahoo.com

p.s.
i still have "panda eyes" though because of all the all-nighters i pull off from watching too much kdrama... well, that couldn't be fixed... so now i have clear fair skin with dark eye circles... vampire? sometimes....

I made my own plush pig-bunny. He's at least 3 feet long. Though, I don't know whether to consider it a he or a she because it represents Go Mi-Nyeo masquerading as Go Mi-Nam.

Also, K-dramas have opened up pathways to new friendships. I am always surprised by who else watches K-dramas. I'll have a conversation with a random person in class every now and then, and we both get all excited and start talking all fast whenever we make the connection that we both watch them. Though, they are probably more surprised than I am considering they are usually Asian and I'm the random white girl watching K-dramas.

K-drama has opened up a whole new world for me. I also catch myself saying just one more episode and then I can do whatever productive thing I had planned for today, which sometimes does not happen as I start another episode or end up here.
I caught myself saying simple phrases like I’m sorry, thank you, and hi in Korean. So I began to teach myself Korean and Hangul (I have gotten much further in Hungul, but I am pretty sure I could order something in a restaurant by now). I really want to make and eat Kimchi. Kdrama introduced me to K-pop, which I have come to love.
The dramas also have allowed for Blondie and I to spend more time together, and share something that the rest of our social circles thinks is weird, which makes it even more fun. And my current dream is to go to Korea with Blondie, once we get stable incomes that it, and see it all for ourselves. I am also seeing about teaching English for a year in Korea.

Crazy as it may sound, I started bowing to people! When greeting them, saying 'thank you', or when paid a compliment. Hahaha

I've started to become more aware of people who speak Korean especially since I live in NYC. It has made me interested in learning Korean too because I can only understand a few words in a sentence at most.

My friends and I have started to pick up some of the Korean culture and language. I remember one incident where my friend and I were watching a part of the variety show X-Men with eng subs on YT and when we went to select the next part, it took us about 5 min to realize that there weren't any english subs... We laughed our butts off upon realizing how much we can understand without eng subs :)
I've also started learning how to make some Korean dishes because for some reason, whenever I'm watching a drama or variety show at night, they're always eating something delicious like dukk bok ki.

P.S. My korean nickname given by my friend is Halmuni (thank you Goong).

I haven't really done anything new but I've become a lot more interested in Korea and its trends, hot spots, food, and popular sayings that allows me to feel more connected to my ethnicity since I live in the US. When I go back to Korea, I want to visit some of the places I've seen in dramas, hopefully run into a famous actor, and eat all the good food!

I hate kimchi, and I cannot drink soju because I'm underage. HOWEVER...

K-drama has impacted my life quite a bit. My best friends and I swore to each other that someday, after we graduate from high school, we would visit Korea and find a hot babe like Kim Tae Hee (IRIS). We even put Lee Min Ho as an Inspirational Person on facebook after watching City Hunter! Who would not want to kick bad guys' asses and get a cute girl like Park Min Yong? Besides, not only is K-drama a common subject between me and other girls, I also use it in daily life.
My first kdrama was when I was a little naive kid in middle school, and I watched Full House (Rain, Song Hye Kyo) with my mom. From then on, my view of romance was optimistic...I thought that maybe there was my own Song Hye Kyo out there that I would fall in love with. Unfortunately, kdrama is a bit exaggerated and reality is completely different. Nevertheless, I try to be as cool and do really sweet things like the main guy characters in kdramas. So I guess it wouldn't be far to say that kdramas form the basis of my love life. haha.

Kdrama is also a way for me and relatives to have fun. On thanksgiving last year, I sat in my cousin's room and watched My Girlfriend is a Gumiho all night (we managed to finish it, with a lot of skipping).

And to summarize, I LOVE 불고기!

Thank you, K-Drama!

Because of you, I am learning Korean and enjoying spicy food.

: )

Happy 5 -Year Anniversary, Dramabeans!

Once I started watching K-dramas, I wanted to learn so much more about Korean culture and entertainment. I started listening to OSTs, which led me to K-pop, which led me to K-hip hop (which is awesome). I also started watching Korean variety shows.

But the most memorable thing? I walked inside an Asian food store (which is pretty rare in my neck of the woods) and could IDENTIFY the song that was playing on the radio (Lee Seung-gi's Let's Break Up) and had a full-fledged conversation about Lee Seung-gi's time in 1N2D, his current drama plans, Korean actors in general, etc. K-dramas let me communicate with people around me about mutually interesting topics and that is always awesome.

it made me eat,sleep and dream korean literally!I wolfed down kimchi and samgyupsal ,slept under giant posters of hyun bin and dreamt of korean hotties.
The best part was I finally made a pilgrimage to korea and visited places that I previously only saw on the screen =)

i'm not from US/Canada

Oh man...! Now that I really think about it, I've done a lot of things in the name of k-dramas. LOL.
1. I took Korean language class for 2 years in college
2. Started writing fanfics with friends because some endings for a few dramas just weren't enough
3. I compare many men to the hot korean actors I see in the k-dramas. (Sad..I know..haha.)
4. Started eating/cooking Korean food - especially bibimbop..YUM!
5. Did my first ever all-nighter because I just HAD to finish watching a drama...

Those are only a few of many things that I've done. After looking at it, maybe I am more of a fanatic than I thought I was..LOL! ^^

To watch, rewatch and rewatch kdramas, I have to download and save the HQ files. So, I have to keep upgrading my storage disk. I'm now using a 2TB storage disk. Yes, that's TB.

Korean dramas got me into Kpop (and other korean music). Also I find myself shouting omo and aigoo and random times with my friends :)

I love this question...

-I'm learning Korean
-My boss is Korean-American, she is not into k-dramas, but her parents are so I went over to her house to meet and get recommendations from them
-I have a Korean Flag in my room
-I travel 6 hours to Chicago to visit Korea town and shop at a real Korean Supermarket
-Dramabeans is my homepage
-I have applied to go abroad to Korea (fingers crossed!)
-There is not a day that has gone by where I have not mentioned a fact about Korean culture, greeted someone in Korean, or mentioned something about a Korean Drama since I became hooked
-There are many others...

I am a US Resident...do we have to include our email addresses in the post or can you see it hidden when we post our comments?

I've trained myself to eat kimchi even though I usually can't stand spicy food. I randomly blurt out korean phrases like "omona" or "aissh". I say "fighting" around my friends and family members haha.

The korean lady who owns the only legit korean place to eat in my city knows me because I use random korean phrases and catchprases around her. I'm originally from the Philippines but live in the US so when my family and I go back to visit the Philippines this next December, we're already planning a stop over at Korea.

Haha, my family thinks I've developed this weird liking for all things Korean - food, language, whatever. Little do they know that it's the addiction at work. I've started eating kimchi and cooking Korean foods, I randomly reply to them in Korean, and have even got my younger brother and sister hooked on kdramas.

Watching korean dramas have lead me to make youtube videos. You see, it's mainly because of the music in the dramas. I love how every drama has a list of soundtracks made especially for it, and especially the theme music. In my personal opinion, I think out of all asian dramas, korean dramas make the best use of theme music, putting the right kind of music in the right moments. City Hunter's got that cool "sad run" song that pops up every time something cool is happening, stairway to heaven has that ave maria song that I can never take seriously ever again because it has spawned so many parody moments in korean variety shows. So, I've been downloading theme songs from kdramas in hopes that I can use it when I make a youtube video. *I am no famous youtube celebrity. I just like to make mini movies of my dogs.

After watching Kdramas I started eating korean ramen. I can't eat any American instant noodle anymore because it taste bad to me now. I much prefer the shinn ramyun brand, soo good and spicy (which I love). I also did start eating kimchi, however I love the cucumber kimchi more. Also one way it has changed my everyday life is me randomly spouting/thinking Korean words in place of English. However its only a few words that I pick up from dramas. It has come to the point where it sometimes is a reflex. lol

I make bibimbap and dream about that red pepper paste.

started learning korea language, then visit korea, and like the indie korean singer...

Hmm...I know that watching Fermentation Family made me want try all those kimchi in the drama. It also made me aware of all the different kinds of kimchi out there. I'm not Korean so the only kimchi that I'm exposed to is the one given as a side dish at a restaurant. I was completely blown away at the variety of kimchi you can make!

Vampire Prosecutor was the first vampire film production that I've seen since the whole vampire-y hype. It really made me fond of vampires...well kind of....umm....maybe not but I'm more tolerable toward any kind of vampire-y show now. It even made me want to watch Twilight....not really.

Korean dramas has changed my life dramatically. I used to think that kim chi is nasty and I would never eat it with ramen and/or as a side dish. But after watching kdramas, I gave it a try and I fell in love with it. Since the price of kim chi is not cheap, I made it from scratch a few times thanks to youtube :) AND sometime I can't help myself from saying, "omo" and "aja aja fighting." Haha