A K-Drama Voyage: The Quite Pleasurable Cultural Journey of an American Watching Korean Drama

By Dr. Carl R. Ackerman

Demand for television programming depicting Korean popular culture is steadily growing in the wake of the Korean Wave, which gave rise to worldwide interest in South Korea's cultural economy. Author and ardent devotee to K-dramas, Dr. Carl Ackerman noticed an uptick in the availability on most streaming services as a result. Longing to offer acc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638374688

Dr. Carl R. Ackerman

Dr. Carl R. Ackerman is the recipient of a Presidential scholarship from President George H. W. Bush. He earned a Ph.D. in European History at U.C. Berkeley. Having taught history for 37 years in Hawaii at the Punahou and Iolani Schools in Honolulu, Carl also founded and developed the Clarence T. C. Ching Partnerships in Unlimited Educational Opportunities Program. He is a board member of the Atherton YMCA, Youth Service Hawaii, and Straub Hospital. Carl lives in the lovely Manoa Valley in Honolulu with his wife, Dr. Lyn Kajiwara Ackerman. His oldest daughter, Laura is a professor at Arizona State University, and his youngest daughter, Jennifer, is also at ASU as an undergraduate.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

NORTH KOREAN MARXISM-LENINISM AND SOUTH KOREAN CAPITALISM

The Korean War in American History represents a fundamental part of the Cold War and it would eventually result in the division of the Korean nation and the political systems that differ between the North and the South. The austere, personality-focused, and ruthless North Korean communist country sits within firing range of its southern, capitalist, and democratic neighbor. People of the same lineage are painfully separated by politics, economics, and manner of speech. Northerners are not free to watch K-Drama, much less anything that marks a free market society.

I start with this theme as this divide is a very real threat to everyone on the Korean Peninsula and is made very real for even visitors like myself; when one enters the DMZ, the sight of small red flags revealing the location of possible mines, and the North Korean tunnels uncovered by South Korean authorities (and with this author, being 6’1", hitting his helmeted head often during the tunnel tour), make this daily danger readily apparent. And of course, the South Korean capitalist corporation is not perfect either, although there is no comparison to the ruthless North. Living in the United States, one almost always feels safe from foreign invasion, although during the first decades of the Cold War, there was something akin to the fear one now associates with the divide in the Korean Peninsula, but not to as large an extent. During our own McCarthy Period in the 1950s, there was a heightened false fear among American citizens, and for a few weeks during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, that fear was real, and it almost produced armageddon. Crash Landing on You seems a good place to start to discuss the political and cultural issues that face the Korean Peninsula.

Crash Landing on You (2019)

Written by: Park Ji-eun

Directed by: Lee Jung-hyo

Promotional Poster

T

he backdrop for this story is the terrible separation of North and South Korea. Of course, the North is a Marxist-Leninist (perhaps Maoist) totalitarian state, and this sets the tone for the entire plot. Escape to the South is most dangerous and difficult and the South is the Mecca for goods, capitalism, and even for the Korean Drama so admired by one of the North Korean soldiers in this drama. The South is marred by the giant Korean corporation which is complicated by vicious competition for leadership. The conflict between North and South is yet to be resolved, and it hangs dangerously over the Korean people on a daily basis.

Crash Landing on You is the story of a romantic relationship between Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin), a South Korean fashion leader with a highly profitable company Se-ri's Choice, and Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), as Captain Ri in the North Korean Special Army Police Force. The action begins in this K-Drama as Yoon Se-ri, on a whim, decides to paraglide outside of Seoul, South Korea, when suddenly a tornado appears and blows her off course. She awakens to find her paraglider in tangles in a tree in the DMZ of North Korea. This area is not where a South Korean citizen is permitted to travel. There, she meets Captain Ri on patrol and he eventually he gives Yoon Se-ri shelter and creates plans to secretly help her return to South Korea. Over time, the two leading characters fall in love despite the cultural divide (which leads to many a misunderstanding) and the continuing conflict existing between the North and the South. During Yoon Ser-ri's time in the North she befriends village women as she gradually learns about their life. She is introduced to the soldiers under Ri Jeong-hyeok's command and they begin to really appreciate—one might even say, adore—Yoon Se-ri.

The first half of the story follows Ri Jeong-hyeok's attempts to hide Yoon Se-ri and help her get back to the South. In the second part of the story, Yoon Se-ri escapes and returns to South Korea and resumes leadership of her company, surprising her family and others who had thought she was dead. The denouement of the story is when both Yoon Se-ri and Ri Jeong-hyeok are nationalistic enough to return to their separate countries; still, when Ri Jeong-hyeok goes back to his first love of music, the star-struck lovers can be together at least once a year in Switzerland, under the guise of international piano competitions.

When Yoon Se-ri is blown off course in her hand gliding apparatus she is left in the hands of the North Koreans. Much of the immediate plot is how to get Yoon Se-ri back to South Korea, and in the process of this action unfolding, we learn about the plight of the North Korean people, which may even paint too rosy a picture (from what we all have read in the Western press). The lack of technological innovation, the shortage of food, the constant worry about politics, and even the songs people sing point to a totalitarian state. Still, the humor of the local North-Korean army soldiers following Captain Ri may also mask the grim realities of the Marxist-Leninist regime. Grim reports of starvation, a cruel dictatorship. and authoritative rule have marked this totalitarian rule under Kim Jong-un in real life, but life in North Korea as displayed in this K-Drama, had a humous bent to it. As the famous Russian playwright Anton Chekhov suggested in this same situation in Russia: Laughter through tears.

Totalitarianism has always been familiar to this author; I lived in the former Soviet Union and took a student trip to Cuba in the 1970s when I was attending the University of California at Berkeley. In both locales, I remember the shortages in stores, people being afraid of telling you the truth, and the massive propaganda posters and the quite vociferous and bombastic speeches (as in Jose Marti Square with Fidel Castro talking about Patria o Muerte, in English, Fatherland or Death). So, the North Korean society is familiar to me and also brings back crystal clear memories of other totalitarian states.

The South Korean people daily need to deal with the threat of war against a dangerous and hostile regime within eye-shot of their northern border. The threat of immediate danger in one's contemporary life puts the South Korean perspective into a unique and courageous position. In this sense, any American watching this drama will both admire the tenacity of getting Yoon Se-ri back into South Korea, and anyone from the Baby Boomer generation (of which I am one) will have comparable visions of people taking the life-threatening chance to make their way across the Berlin Wall. In addition, the tension in living in what could any minute become a war zone, reminds one of what must be the plight of many of those living in the Middle East, especially in Israel.

The contrast of Yoon Se-ri ‘s life as a corporate executive could not be a greater contrast with even the most connected Communist Party bureaucrat in North Korea. The plentiful supply of consumer goods, the bright lights of Seoul, Yoon Se-ri's large apartment, her fashionable clothes and decidedly expensive makeup, and even the long shot and then close up of her living space make a significant comment about the differences between the North and the South. Yoon Se-ri's rivalry with family members in her corporate work seem to indicate one of the only downsides of capitalism in the South; but the fierce family jockeying for position seems a bit more ruthless than this American is used to even in the most corporate Wall Street World (Of course those who have watched Wall Street with the lead character, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, may disagree with me here).The pecking order in corporate life first made its appearance to me in this drama, and it will be discussed at greater length throughout this