K-Dramas: An Alternative Sentimental Education from the East

Romance is a globalized cultural form, disseminated through novels (Chick lit), TV series, and cinema from Europe to Central and Latin America (Mexican and Brazilian telenovelas), the United States (romantic comedies, sitcoms, soap operas), Turkey (TV series), India (Bollywood), Hong Kong (cinema). South Korea has joined the romance producers through K-dramas, which make love stories the topical themes of their storylines.

What is the significance of the K in K-drama? K-dramas take on the universal traits of the genre (strong emotional charge, wide female audience, focus on the trials that lovers go through, asymmetry of power and social positions, emphasis on a happy ending) while presenting specific features that are recognized as distinctively Korean: love does not hurt (Illouz, 2012), it emancipates.
We assert that South Korean scriptwriters (80% women) develop a discourse of love, made up of hybrid codes and imaginaries, articulating:

A) A blurring of gender stereotypes, with powerful women - the expectations and demands of the female figure are the driving force behind the construction of the bond, without any ‘war of the sexes’ - and ‘soft’ men - who embody non-hegemonic masculinity stripped of the signs of domination (Jung, 2012);

B) An emphasis on working on oneself and on the bond: this is developed within the framework of a South Korean bonding ethic, based on the Korean notion of jeong, a form of systematic concern for others, and on Confucian philosophy, emphasizing self-improvement (Chung, 2016);

C) A reinterpretation of international love norms: with the success of K-dramas and the investment from platforms (Netflix, Amazon, etc.), the love norms disseminated by K-dramas are constructed at the intersection of international norms (consent and equality) and South Korean cultural background.

We therefore propose to analyze romance in K-dramas as an alternative sentimental education (Cicchelli and Octobre, 2024).