Rich middle aged women have a natural reflex to slap and throw water on the women dating their sons.

I learnt the fine line between the ethics of the law and the humanity of the law in While You Were Sleeping.

One crazy random fact - the ML gets the FL, no questions asked. To the point where I have not learnt to stop rooting for a 2ML.

As a non-korean, I've learnt the meaning of the term chaebol.

I heard and learnt about the horizontal and vertical division of the world in Queen Seondeok. A lesson well explained by Mishil.

Herbal tonic packs are a vessel of bribery.

I feel kinda bad for this being what comes to mind but: adding the korean word for dog in front of words turns them into swears.
I learned that in The King 2 Hearts (through the subs. I think Jae Ha called the official dog bastards or sons of bitches) then it had happened again with My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. Miho called the vet a "dog vet/doctor (I don't remember exactly)" in anger and he bemusedly asked where she learned that and she said it was because he was a dog vet (as in he works with dogs in his job as a vet)

Fast forward to more recently. In The [Good] Bad Mother, the mother is teaching her son to swear at people who bully and mistreat him & the word for "dog" is clearly apart of it.

I sometimes feel like all swears seem to have "개" or the same thing is being said and translators/subtitlers just switch things up for context or variety's sake.

1. No one has morning breath in Korea. Fact.

2. Believe it or not, in Brain Works (Episode 7, 53 minutes in—thanks @midnight for finding that time stamp for me a few months back on Open Thread!!) our handsome brain doctor discusses a few different types of “love signals” that our brain produces, listing sexual attraction, monogamous connection, and long-term attachment as three separate vectors that don’t always have to work together or even be present together to create a love attraction. I though, “Huh! That seems about right. I wonder…”

So, I did a little Googling around it and found that Jung Yong-hwa‘s little speech was indeed based on relatively well-supported psychological theories (meaning, not the worst, but not the best science I’ve ever read) about the complex set of signals our brain uses to produce the feelings we call love.

At any rate, this episode sent me off to do more reading in the scientific literature—like @unit with Prosopagnosia—and that research ended up being pretty darn engaging.

Like @unit I learned about prosopagnosia through Kdramas (such as The Beauty Inside & My Holo Love)

Oh! I learned that "gay" sounds like the korean word for "crab/게" (The Beauty Inside kdrama)

My upstairs bathroom always clogs and I learned how to declog it by taping a plastic bag tightly sealed and flushing while pushing down from My Roommate is a Gumiho.

I learned about prosopagnosia from Girl Who Sees Smells. At first I thought it was made up like the Pinocchio syndrome, then someone mentioned in the comments that it is actually a real syndrome. I googled it, and was dumbstruck, because I had finally diagnosed myself after many decades! I have always had problem with remembering faces and I rely a lot on other cues like how people walk or talk. Turns out I have a mild case of prosopagnosia. Not enough to become a kdrama hero or villain, but maybe a cute side character.

I first learned about nut allergy from dramas. So far, I haven't come across somebody with the same condition but I think it really exists

I learned if I don't want to be found I should remove the battery from my phone. Oh, wait, I have an iPhone.

Oh! I'm not sure if this counts but I learned about real estate & housing scams being a thing.

Honestly this still doesn't even feel real. How do people even find places to live in SK if these scams are such a thing?

I've learned many fun things from watching Kdramas yet my brain refuses to give up any of them on demand. The one thing that struck me is the use of sign language in a few dramas which I love seeing and some of them have indeed stuck with me. I love the language of signing and need to learn more since I am hearing impaired myself. The trouble with that is my family would not follow suit so I would be signing to myself most of the time! Its even possible to learn a few foreign language words from various dramas.

I learned a lot about Jirisan and folklore from watching Jirisan and The Revenant... but I have forgotten it all after a few months...

Random things I learned:
* its a thing to have a Chinese character correspond to a korean name and it would change the meaning of the name.
* how to deal with indigestion through pressure points or a needle (but I haven't tried it yet)
* how to make kimchi
* various hangover remedies
* that pink beauty stick will make your skin dewy 😉

Oh, gosh. So many things. Kdrama has enriched my life with so much knowledge not even just limited to Korean history and geography. Sageuks are always accompanied by Wikipedia searches leading down rabbit holes so I’ve learned about everything from Japanese history, shipbuilding, textile dying and weaving, the Silk Road to the development of gunpowder and fireworks.

It seems like I often tell people something and then say “I learned that from a Korean drama “ but I’ll be damned if I can come up w any good examples now! Except for knowing there’s such a thing as chicken sexing (learned about from Kim Sam Soon).

The girls having manner hands where you put your hand over your chest when you bend over in case you would show something you don't want to and guys with their manner legs when with a short girl.

When life imitates art. I watched The Roundup: No Way Out a few months ago, and mentally rolled my eyes at the drugs in clubs trope. But then here we are with breaking news about Lee Sun Kyun's drug use along with chaebol offspring in a Gangnam club. It sounds like something from a movie or drama. I guess tropes are tropes for a reason and have roots in real life issues.

I learned about makgeolli and made a batch.

I learnt a lot about the healing powers of certain foods either for specific ailments or generally to have a healthy diet. These include certain vegetables, leaves and roots etc used to make various Banchan or to serve with meat as a wrap. I think it would be easy to have all your 5 a day in one main meal.

I learned there are a lot of Subway restaurants in South Korea.

I learned from K-dramas -

- Prosopagnosia from Rich Man, The Beauty Inside, The Secret Life of My Secretary, My Holo Love and The Girl Who Sees Scents (in that order).

- Proper way to wash hands from The Secret Life of My Secretary and My Secret Terrius.

- Channel the Goblin's Bride and start yelling "Ppoppo,  Ppoppo" in episode 8 of a rom-com  unless there Song Kang - you would be hoarse by episode 8 if you shouted each time he locked lips.

- Couple items are a thing - rings, charms, clothes, shoes, key-rings - any and all things qualify.

- 100 day Anniversary is also a thing.

- Aegyo is a Real thing.

- "Ramyeon meokgo galrae?" does NOT mean the other person wants to eat noodles with you!! If its Song Kang then you get to see butterflies. 🦋

- Makeup can replace plastic surgery (Go the True Beauty way rather than Gangnam Beauty). Pro tip - BB Cream is all you need to cover up your zombie-ness (Zombie Detective) or scarring (Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo).

How prosecutors also can also conduct crime investigations in South Korea! It always confused me seeing a prosecutor just go out into crime scenes to do a bust and being the person leading the raid while dressed in a suit.

Forest of Secrets 2 had their characters also meet and debate about investigative authority of the prosecutor's office vs the police - pros and cons - as changes were being made in real life. Which I thought was pretty cool.

Korean homes and floor heating, so it's not cold when they sleep on the floor.

Giving myself away as a city girl here...but learning that onions can sprout from the drama, She was Pretty.

EVERYTHING can have an educational value if you try hard enough to learn something from it. When someone tells you otherwise, they are just lazy, narrow-minded snobs. You're welcome^^

One of the funniest random facts I've learned this year (thanks, TOTNT38!) was the k-folklore bit about spoiled, mean bitchy girls becoming toilet ghosts when they die. This is pure gold tbh, I should've known this when I was younger to threaten all my enemies with that! Could've save a lot of time and energy wasted on catfights...

I think I've learn a lot about food/cooking while watching dramas. Too much, maybe. Hahaha. Did I need to know/see how people cook/eat octopuses? Nope. I could've died without knowing, but now I know, thanks dramas.

I've also learned a little bit of history thanks to sageuks. It's fun to see what they show in the dramas, read the comments of people that know a little of history and also search on your own about the situation or historical figure.

I've also learn a little bit of Korean, and I'm really thankful for that because I'm really bad at learning languages in the tradicional way, so kdramas are my best option.

*1. MLs and FLs always sleep at night with the light on their bedside table turned on.

*2. Mothers beat their grown children, especially the daughters. Kim Mi-Kyung, the quintessential Korean mother-figure who brings lots of homemade side dishes to her children, almost always exhibits this behavior, e.g., in Another Miss Oh.

*3. People choke on their food or drink when hearing something surprising.

More seriously:
*4. I incorporated into my exercise regime Eugene’s technique of getting up from sitting on the floor, which he used when having tea with the Potter in Mr Sunshine. This recently proved handy in a train station when I landed on the floor while attempting to sit on a steel slippery “perch” that is what rail authorities consider good enough seating for weary passengers. The other waiting passengers looked relieved when I could smoothly get up on my own.

*5. I was curious about Bracken, prepared as a side dish by mother Lee Jung-Eun in The Light in your Eyes. It is known as fiddle-head fern in the US but as bracken in Britain, where it can be wildly abundant on hillsides. Various websites say it’s poisonous for grazing livestock and may be dangerous to humans (but having never tried it, I do not know).

The most random factoid I ever learned from kdramas concerned the Korean crow-tit, which came up in a show this spring citing the BTS song Bapsae/Silver Spoon, which I knew the music for, but not the english translation of the lyrics.

So, that song, I know now, cites a saying about the crow-tit trying to walk like a stork-- meaning trying too hard, striving above your place, or something.

Anyway, I looked up the crow-tit, and all the pictures that first came up had a cute, white really fluffy bird, but then, perusing the Internet more, there were an equal number of sites that said, no, that's not a crow-tit-- the Korean crow tit refers to a vinous throated parrotbill, which is also a cute fluffy bird, but definitely not white.

So, I know now that

1. There is a korean saying about the crow tit that BTS refers to in the song Bapsae
2. The crow tit is definitely a cute, fluffy bird.
3. BUT there is controversy over the bird that is often incorrectly referred to as the "Korean" crow-tit.

What I DON'T recall is what show made reference to this saying, but I regardless, I am eternally grateful to it for broadening my bird horizons to include the crow tit controversy.

I learned that SK baseball teams have cheerleaders.

I learnt:

In my fantasy fanfictive life:

1) Gravity stops working and swoons when FL slips and falls in slow motion while the ML grabs her in slower motion and they stare at each other in that awkward angle without tumbling over and breaking their neck/jaw/nose.
2) Even if they tumble over, they do so dramatically, falling in perfect coordination, sometimes even in a lip-on-lip situation.
3) Rain never ever creates flood like situations, or even muddy, icky, slobby difficult-to-walk-in situations; only umbrella sharing, eye gazing, and sexy-droplets-on-skin like situations for us to drool on.

In real life
Halimonis exist!!! As I recently discovered and posted it here:
https://www.dramabeans.com/2023/10/team-dramabeans-what-were-watching-october-21-2023/?nid=4506283&nidwpc=4131205#ready-comment-4131205

I've learnt a lot about different careers watching Kdramas. I appreciate the level of research and detail writers put into fleshing out a character's profession. Romance is a Bonus Book taught me about book publishing, Dali & the Cocky Prince and Her Private Life taught me about art curation, Rain or Shine demonstrated the importance of architecture, modelling and construction being in sync and Forecasting Love and Weather showed me challenges in being a meteorologist.

I've noticed that middle/high school culture in SK seems to be quite lenient.

Where I come from we have mandatory attire with school shoes and socks (which bore the school name or logo) that we had to wear everyday. The only exception is if we injured our leg of course.
We also weren't allowed to bring any blankets, seat cushions, pillows, stuffies etc to school as well.
If we were caught with those it would've been an instant confiscation :')

So you can imagine my shock when I saw them around in dramas or manhwas.

not dramas but from Taemins´ live I learned some cat talk that actually works.