Pride Month after-thought:
(TL;DR: An overview of how dramas celebrated this yearly occasion. At the bottom of this post is an interesting question, go read it! :P)

3 channels (MBC, tvN, JTBC) tried to capitalise on the rainbow awareness movement by including queer elements in their dramas. Coincidentally, all the three shows that had gay characters written into the story were aired on the Mon-Tue time slot: Dinner Mate, My Unfamiliar Family and Sweet Munchies. I thought it would be interesting to analyse what they did and opine on how effective it was.

In Dinner Mate, Gun Woo is the designated connection between the four leads: he is family to Jae Hyuk, coworker to Do Hee, friend to No Eul and has a crush on Hae Kyung. When we meet him, we immediately learn that he has already confessed to Hae Kyung and got rejected. Furthermore, when he is flirting with a potential partner at his workplace, No Eul rudely barges in and doesn’t seem fazed by what she saw. It also appears that Jae Hyuk is aware of his sexuality. This may seem to promote the ideal that queer people are accepted by others around them, however, it should be noted that the drama doesn’t really do anything with Gun Woo other than make him a confidant for Jae Hyuk’s and No Eul’s sorrows, which means that it didn’t really matter in the end whether Gun Woo was gay or not. Personally, I thought that if the audience was not made aware about his sexuality, his interactions with No Eul might have led them to believe that he was actually pining on her and that she would end up dating him after moving on from Hae Kyung. In that alternate drama, the twist on his sexuality would come across as surprising but non-consequential. In this real drama though, it appears that the queer element was added without much thought for development, granted that Gun Woo is only a supporting character and MBC being a public channel probably had to play it safer.

In My Unfamiliar Family, Tae Hyung is a major supporting character who is the husband of the eldest daughter in the family, Eun Joo. His arc serves as one of the major stressors affecting Eun Joo when she discovers his sexuality. Through his actions, we are able to understand the societal pressures that South Korea places on its gay citizens to stay closeted: Tae Hyung has a hidden chatroom in his computer where he is able to interact with other gay people and has kept his secret hidden from Eun Joo until blackmailed into dropping the truth on her. His conservative mother also shows the prevalence of heteronormativity in South Korea: while knowing about her son’s sexuality, she sweeps it under the carpet to preserve the family’s reputation as a group of doctors and arranges a marriage to keep the pretence up. Eun Joo’s reaction to the truth is perhaps a didactic lesson the drama hopes to impart to its viewers: while she rightfully is angry at Tae Hyung from hiding the truth from her and wasting a significant portion of her life through a loveless marriage, she stands up for him against his controlling mother and puts her in her spot for not acknowledging her son for who he is. I think the drama has done a great job inserting the queer element while weaving it as part of the family tensions that are the main focus of the show. Barring any future disasters, a job well done tvN!

In Sweet Munchies, Tae Wan is one of the central characters of the story with even a feature in the official drama poster. The show plays out an atypical love triangle where a man (Jin Sung) is the object of affection between a woman (Ah Jin) and another man (Tae Wan), which occurs as they work on the same television program produced by Ah Jin which also has a queer element within it. Like the previous drama, we get to understand why many queer people stay in the closet: Tae Wan’s brave decision to confess when he was young is met with ridicule and his father has been pressuring him to produce an heir to continue the family line by setting him up on blind dates with women. However, in spite of the very brave decision to feature a gay character as a main lead, the show butches the queer element badly by having Jin Sung lie that he is gay for money and mocking the queer community with Ah Jin’s program concepts. The show tries to justify the lie by making Jin Woo (Jin Sung’s younger brother) gay and heralding Jin Sung as a champion for the marginalised but it falls flat when Jin Woo easily forgives Jin Sung for lying and disappears from the story. All of this is made worse by Tae Wan’s arc of him being inspired by Jin Sung’s lies to muster up the courage to confess once again with his heartbreak dragged out for dramatic impact. Given that JTBC is a cable channel, I was so disappointed.

Conclusion: tvN thumbs up (pending the 6 episodes to air), MBC thumbs down (unless a miracle happens in the last two weeks of its airing), JTBC thumbs down

Question: If you were to be a writer, how would you come up with a drama proposal with a queer element included? Try coming up with a short synopsis!
(Radily’s submission: Character A and Character B have known each other for several decades having gone to the same school and are now working in the same office together. As they celebrate two decades of friendship, their relationship will undergo a significant change when one of them receives a confession from the other.)