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15 things I now know about K-drama

15 things I now know about K-drama

It’s time to admit defeat. I’ve been sitting on the latest Blood Sisters Book Club read (Indigo by the legendary Bev Jenkins) for a month waiting for our virtual tea date. But my book club sister (and best friend) has disappeared down the rabbit hole of Netflix K-dramas. So I’m going to turn the blog over to her this week. I’ve fallen hard for the Korean show Crash Landing On You like many others in Romancelandia, but Kelsey has taken it to the next level. She’s on her seventh K-drama and counting. So what has she – and by extension I – learnt about this genre after this extensive study?

  1. They like an older woman – 3/7 shows featured an explicitly older heroine, while the other four were the same age as the male lead.

You’re so on trend, admires a side character in Romance is a Bonus Book when the heroine kisses a younger man.

  1. They like their virgin heroes – 4/7 male leads were virgins with zero or minimal relationship experience. All blush easily. The female leads are always the more worldly, even if, like Dionne in Clueless, they are technically a virgin.
  2. They take absolutely massive bites of food. Slurping is totally acceptable table manners, as is talking with your mouth full.
  3. They deal with real shit in a playful manner.

Whether they’re stuck in the DMZ or a mental asylum, whether rendered homeless or a social pariah by divorce, K-drama characters retain their pluck, humour, and excellent layering skills.

  1. Kissing is. A. Big. Deal. Light pecks in public are basically fornication.
  2. Parents just don’t understand. Our twenty and thirtysomething leads live in the 21st But their parents have the social values of 1950s American suburbia. Bridging that gap is brutal.
  3. Men casually tell other men that they are handsome, almost like a greeting.
  4. They like a woman who’s mouthy. 7/7 heroines have been ballsy as hell. 3/7 have straight up difficult personalities. And one has a severe personality disorder. There is very little stoking of male egos.
  5. Women hitting men is fine (it’s actually attractive).

The female lead of Crash Landing On You was even caught delivering a vigorous chest barge to her male co-star while he giggled besottedly – thereby outing themselves as an irl couple.

  1. Characters exclusively drive white hatchback Volvos (unless very rich)
  2. Men moon over their crushes from afar. 3/5 heroes have secretly been madly in love with the ballsy heroine for years (in one case, for over twenty years). And for the rest of the men, it’s an immediate case of heart eyes.
  3. Subway sandwiches are good for every meal.

Probably even Prince Fancy Pants in Rookie Historian ate at Ye Olde Steam Engine Sandwich Shoppe

  1. The big love for powerful and difficult women does not go both ways. There has only been one “jerk” hero and he was just extremely awkward due to his crippling social anxiety (and not in a hot way).
  2. Turtlenecks are fashionable.
  3. If it is snowing, you have basically declared your passion to the world.

*For the purposes of this research, Kelsey watched Crash Landing On You, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay, Rookie Historian, My Shy Boss, Romance is a Bonus Book, One Spring Night, and Vanguard