OMG, this is a beautiful post! I've also watched kdramas for almost 10 years, and I completely understand your shift in finding cultural differences and staying for commonalities. I have to say that I've learned a lot of Korean cultures just by watching dramas and I love that I learn something new while watching them. As Asian myself, I find it amazing how my culture and traditions have some in common with Korean culture as well as the differences and I do appreciate both of it as a apart of learning.

Duuuude I lavyoo. I feel so warm and happy that someone wrote about Worlds Within! <3

Ever since that drama, I realized that 'ordinary' stories can be so much more meaningful (if written right, lol). Fantasy or big-plot/high concept dramas now need to be extra better to impress my kokoro. And this also explains why I love WFKBJ to bits -- its writing and directing (the chemistry is a very beautiful bonus) --even knocking off Healer and WW to get to #1 on my top three.

Thank you for this @pickwick!

Even though I'm mostly into sageuk for the Korean culture and history, I do stay mostly for commonalities.
I've been in an actual monarch culture so I do get the relationship between king and people, status and rank, the respect and devoted loyalty to one's ruler etc.
Even with it's more dramatic display in most sageuks I still find it fascinating.

Very nice post! I've never even heard of Worlds Within, but it looks good. I'll have to add it to my watch list.

What a lovely-written and personal post! Now I have to watch Worlds Within. ? I agree that the cultural differences seem baffling at first, then fascinating and a lot of meta is lost in translation. If I got hooked by kdramas a bit early on, I just might have majored in Korean lol.

Beautiful post. :) Thanks for sharing. Congrats on being a published author as well. Are any of your works available through Amazon?

Aw, this was beautiful, @pickwick. ?

I saw the title and I already loved it. It's an amazing feeling when a good K-drama comes along and you just connect with it–the stories, the characters, etc. The aspects of the show that are relatable are always fun to see because you resonate with it so well and it just brings you that much closer to the show, their world, that culture. It's a magical feeling that I feel almost every time I watch a K-drama.

Congratulations to you on all of your accomplishments! Stay strong and be happy and healthy, @pickwick. ?

Wonderfully written but my experience was Korean drama viewing was somewhat the opposite. I came for the commonalities in the drama story in my region but stayed for the exact same reason of change in perspective and being able to relate more than on surface level. I would like to visit Korea someday.

Woah! This is perfectly written I am nearly at a loss for words. Thank you(because you are here with us) and congratulations for being a survivor in the battle you had with cancer. I salute you! ♥

Really well written post @pickwick :)

I also remember that excitement of discovering a new culture. I came to BOF after several historical dramas, so ramen was as new to me as to Gu Jun Pyo. I then ask my Asian friends if what I'd seen in dramas was really what happens over in Korea. Do people always reply with 'huh?' to a question? Are shark loans everywhere Do they really just hang up the phone without saying bye? Is it really certain death to cross a road in Seoul? My friends would shake their head, all 'nope, real life isn't like that', but I learned a lot from our conversations. And they tell me they learned too about things they hadn't realised were culture shock for me, like the custom of introducing yourself by asking others to take care of you, or having to buy coffee for your boss and go for drinks in the evening.

Beautifully written. I can see why you are a published author :--)

I also loved World Within.
Can't believe this was my introduction to Daniel Choi and Eom Kijoon...

PS congratulations to surviving the cancer! May it never comes back... :--*

This is beautifully written, thanks @pickwick! ❤️

I love that you mention lessons in Kdramas which transcend nation boundaries; I think people in different countries are more alike than they think they are.

And my love to you for being able to endure those terrible days and hope that you're healthy now. These are flowers for you and your books. ? ??

What a fantastic read. It's always so nice when a fellow bean is able to capture bits and pieces of my feelings on kdramas. There is so much truth in this post @pickwick. One of the things that make kdramas so special and allow me (an international viewer) to become so immersed in them is the shared commonalities about human interaction and navigating life.

Even if the stories are of the fantastical variety like Oh My Ghostess or the not likely to happen in real life like Coffee Prince; there's always a theme or two that runs through them and can be translated whatever cultural background you're from.

Finding yourself, coming in to your own at the onset of adulthood, or finally finding your voice way into adulthood. Love, loss, family, hardships; regardless of the cultural lense it's being played through it still resonates to people. And the best thing is these themes can take on various shapes and different meanings to people depending on where they are in their own personal journey.

Kdramas do this so well and thank you for writing on it. Also, go you for kicking cancer's hindquarters! I wish you all the best in your health :) !

Oh this is very similar to my exprience too, previously a lot of my kdrama watching was driven by a fascination with South Korea and a need to learn more about the culture. I wanted to know how South Korean people lived (looking back now I sound ridiculous, kdramas are not the best things to use to learn about how South Korea is). I as a British person have only known maybe 2 people from South Korea and I was desperate to know more about a country I had discovered through the figure skater Yuna Kim. What made me stick with kdramas was the examinations of our common experiences as humans and our relationships with each other whether that be romantic, familial etc. and how well kdramas do it.

Thanks for this. I felt warm & fuzzy while reading your post. During my first foray into Kdrama land, I was surprised how different Korean culture was. That was what initially caught my interest, how different it is, a perfect escape from my day to day real life. Now a hundred dramas and more than a decade after, I keep watching kdramas, cause at the heart of it all, it shares some values & practices close to my heart.

This is such an introspective and beautiful post. Thanks so much for sharing! I particularly like how you described it as learning more about yourself, finding universal truths on shared experiences and "become a warm reminder of the realities, challenges, and relationships" of life.

One thing I really appreciate about kdramas is that beneath all the various concepts and tropes is a beating heart. Kdramas has a way of making you feel and see the good in life.

Oh so well written. I just had to sign-in to give this comment. You are what makes this site so enjoyable and uplifting.

Thank you so much for the lovely read! I think OP has just described what I feel with my 17 years of kdrama watching journey.

I relate a lot to what you wrote but I didn't know it until I read it!
It's been ten years and so much has changed in my life and in my drama trastes (the one impacting the other). I too was fascinated by cultural differences at first. Now it feels different, I'm looking for human connections, relatable stories and I've always loved being able to identify with a character. I usually stick to my favourite actors ' choices of projects when it comes to choosing my next drama as I think that I'll never be able to watch a commercial success without being sure it is of good quality (And I trust good actors to choose good projects). But I also discovered writers like Park Yeon Sun (White Christmas, Alone in Love, Age Of Youth) and Lee Soo Youn (Forest Of Secret), who make me want to write as well. Misaeng was also all about human connections with actors I never heard of before, but I still watched and I loved it! Dear My Friends whose main stars are older than most characters I identify with yet it is one of the most impactful drama I ever watched. That's how my tastes have changed...

Thank you for this post! It made me feel fuzzy knowing that there are a lot of people who feel the same way about kdramas. This made me realize that I've also been watching kdramas for 10 years now, too! I love learning about cultures, especially Japanese and Korean. But just like you said, it's the simple ordinary plots (as some people call it, "slice-of-life" genre) that make them great. There is something wonderful about the way kdramas are written and made that make ordinary life interesting, without all the exaggerated plots.

Reply 1988 is my all-time fave as well, so I'm definitely going to check out Worlds Within!

Cheers! Hope to read more from you in the future. :)

And here I thought you would be talking about the cultural differences, re: Korean culture vs whatever culture you came from. However, using this title, I sometimes asked my Korean students/friends questions like: a) from Secret Garden: Would a mother really do what Joo-won's mother did to him? b) from Boys over Flowers: Do universities really train chaebol heir like they did in Boys Over Flowers?; and c) from Rooftop Prince: And here I thought Koreans were old-fashioned, but she lived with 4 grown men. Ah, those are stories ....

Thank you!

Now, when someone questions my fascination with kdramas, I will direct them to this beautifully-written post!

I absolutely loved and really identified with your post! I've been a lurker on the dramabeans website for the past 6 years- got into dramas because of a concussion. It was fate, really! Didn't get amnesia and thank God I wasn't hit by the truck of doom. It was just a normal concussion which forced me to do nothing and get bored out of my mind. So BOF suddenly popped on my laptop and it took one bad hair style and one too perfect to be true second lead to be hooked, maybe, forever. I somehow came out of the shadows coz your post. Did I say I loved it? Just wanted to say that.

Excellent piece @pickwick. Thanks for writing it.

Shared human experiences as you say, no matter the cultural differences nor global distances, is something that resonates with me as well.

Thank you for this beautiful post, @pickwick. You put the thoughts I've had in my head about Kdramas into words that I could never piece together as profoundly and captivatingly as you just did. I'm also surprised to see someone talk about Worlds Within here. It doesn't normally get a lot of love because it seems "plainer" and "slower" than most dramas but I enjoyed its introspective, everyday tone. I liked the random musings of the main characters in the little voiceovers in each episode. It's almost like watching a documentary instead of a drama. I should check out more dramas like this. I still check out mainstream romcom dramas but sometimes there are just days when you're in the mood for something with more bite.

Wonderfully written, and there was much food for thought here. I started Korean dramas for the similarities between their culture and my own, but stayed for the differences. It was like coming home for me after being away for an entire lifetime.

Hello Pickwick,
My journey of Kdrama watching is exactly like yours?.. i've been watching Kdrama for 16years now. I still watch trendy dramas, but I love shows that I can relate to realities even more.. Thats why the reply series are my favourite series of all time..

I love your post! It strikes a chord with my experience in watching K-drama. I used to think that K-drama was ridiculous .. whenever I turned my head on tv screen, there must be tears and people crying. Endless Love was endless tears to me, Stairways to Heaven was stairway to cry. Those dramas were very popular among my friends.. well, I didn't watch anything completely until I watched Full House. I didn't watch it from the first episode, but I had a goood laugh and enjoyed it immensely despite its faulty plot and Rain's fashion. I thought I would only stick to rom-com, but since I watched Harvest Villa, I have completely turned into K-drama. I appreciate and admire those writers who are able to create suspense, mystery, humor, romance and even fantasy in such a way that the stories and characters are engaging and clever, while at the same time relatable. Now I am into family-oriented and thriller ones, such as Answer Me series, Signal, and Defendant.

This is basically my life.

This post resonate with me nicely. I like Worlds Within very much. In fact, I watched this right after Secret Garden (was on Hyun Bin marathon) and the striking difference between the 'crazy' fantasy and lowkey story was so refreshing!

Wow, such an awesome read! I have trouble putting into words sometimes how the cultural differences were one of the main draws for me. It all felt so new and exciting because some of the customs shown in kdramas were so foreign and different from anything I'd ever seen in my life in the Americas. I'll admit my knowledge of Asian history and even recent events when I started watching kdramas was slim to none, so now that I even started watching historical dramas they feel so new and like a different world in a way too. I mean there is the familiar story of king and palace court customs but it has its own twist and rich layers.

Like you stated though, it's the humanity underneath the cultural package that we see and learn from the most. We stay for the stories that resonate with us and make us feel for the characters. My first kdrama was Secret Garden and I loved that it highlighted kpop, young rich CEOs, the drama industry itself with our leading lady being a stuntwoman, and it included those tropes of evil MIL, cinderella type story, fairy tale feeling...aah and the whole oppa debacle too. I had heard of kpop but had never seen a fangirl so closely or even a kpop star in the form of Oska who was hilarious. The entire cast was beautiful in my eyes and the sets were gorgeous...but then there were the emotional scenes too where we see people openly crying loudly sometimes too and I was taken aback as it was so different from American tv. There is so much to say about this topic...overall, your post is excellent! <3

Nicely written. We are the same as we are different, don't you think?

@pickwick, such a beautiful post. I started watching kdrams about 8 years ago as i was fascinated by their culture but the more I watched the more I realized how similar this was to the indian culture. It was amazing to find these little similarities ( bowing to elders-- touching our elders feet etc). In my case the commonalities also worked cause I was homesick n lonely, living overseas with no family around and i started identifying with these characters and their way of life.
I am so glad i found kdramas and while I am yet to meet anyone here in melbourne who shares my passion, I am glad to have you all who love dramas as much as me.

Imagine there's a "LIKE" button for the post and that I hit it.

Add me to the chorus of people who really love this post. I came into Dramaland knowing nothing of Korea or Korean culture. I loved that the shows seemed so different from US shows while being undeniably entertaining and addictive!

Anyway, beautiful post, and I especially loved what you said about the very best dramas allowing you to gain understanding rather than losing time. Well said, and thank you for sharing! :)

Beautiful post ❤️ I feel like I've gone on a similar journey.