Hallyu
When
I got addicted to Korean Dramas I felt I was one of the few who is odd man out.
I was in for a big surprise. Within a month after publishing my blog on Korean
dramas I came across three articles published on the same topic in three
totally different media. In HT ‘s
‘Brunch’ the author had expressed exactly the same view I had expressed
a month earlier and surprisingly her choice of K dramas matched with mine to the
last ‘T’. Then there was article on Google and last but not the least in ’The
India Today.’ In next few days ‘Netflix’ itself came out with the figures for
India that said the viewer ship for K Dramas went up in leaps and bounds practically
by 370%. It made me wonder and I started searching for the roots.
It
turned out that till then our knowledge about Korea never went beyond the song
‘Gangnam’ made some time in last decade or their national dish ‘Khimchi’! At
the most dictator Kim from North Korea. The fact is Korean art forms started
capturing far east way back in 80’s, initially as Boy bands doling out pop
songs for generation next followed by the K Dramas that actually took the form
of ‘Tsunami’ termed as ‘Hallyu’ in Korean.
We
Indians missed the wave, it reached our coasts quite late, may be mostly
because ‘Netflix’ came to us in comparison very late and we till then were totally
immersed in ‘Saas Bahu’ sagas, practically in all the languages catering only to
female audiences. Men were glued to ‘Fast and Furious’ ‘Two and Half men’ and
‘The Friends’ so much so that generations after generations refused to come out
of the spell ‘The Friends’ had cast. So it was popular even after repeat,
re-repeat telecast. Why even my son who is now a father of a son , still
prefers to watch ‘The Friends’ and ‘How I met your mother’ and mocks me
watching ‘Yang Chu Minh’ all the time making matching faces, that’s clinking
the eyes and pursuing the lips with sounds stretched in nasal twang!
The
one that swept me off my feet was ‘It’s Okay to be Not Okay’ The handling of
the subject that included psychiatry, murder mystery, love story and family
drama was so perfect that not a single frame, not a single scene and not a
single performance was out of the tune. I never realised that I binge watched
it continuously practically for 18 to 20 hours. It never was boring at any
minute, at any juncture and I never felt that any part is added to dilute the
story line just to increase the viewing hours! A common practice for Indian
soaps!
And
then there was as if deluge. ‘CLOY’ Crash Landing on you, a story of South
Korean female tycoon landing in North Korea in paragliding accident never goes
overboard. Though they are enemy countries, both the protagonist, South Korean
Female Tycoon and North Korean police officer are shown to be so human that
never it sounds like a propaganda film. The common man, mostly female counter
parts in North Korea are so lovable that they grow on you.
The
last but not the least, which I fell in love with, may be because it is based
on my profession of 50 years, is Dr. Romantic. The first season was aired in
2016 and the second one was in 2020.
It
starts from the ouster of extremely talented, intelligent and righteous triple
board certified surgeon, from a well known institute Hospital in Seoul after framing
him in graft charges by unscrupulous money minded superiors, also doctors but
the pawns in the hands of non medical corporate management The story unfolds at
different levels about the doctors from various fields, hierarchy and acumen in
a rural medical centre which is always short staffed, underprovided and is
ruled with iron thumb by the parent institute in Seoul. I was so caught in the
narration because I had observed, seen, at times gone through many incidences
that was shown that it became difficult for me not to relate to. Working in
hospitals where even the basic provisions are not available is like walking on
a tight rope, balancing patient’s at the same time your own life from taking a
downward spiral any time if the patient is lost even after your herculean
efforts, because the layman on the street still is not aware of the puzzle that
nature has created the human body! Being in Korea even being in rural area
Gangwon, the hospital Doldam has every facility that I could not dream of even
after working in Mumbai’s 700 hundred bedded hospital for more than 35 years.
Though Doldam was in rural area it had CT scan, laboratory running for 24 hrs
giving reports of important but expensive reports like Arterial blood gases
within minutes, dedicated nursing staff or the ward boys who never said that ‘it’s
not my duty’. Just for the heck of it, once I had to get in writing that 700
bedded hospital is not having any ECG machine in working condition and had to
refer the patient for a simple ECG, an investigation differentiating between
life and death for Myocardial infarction patient to the nearest Civil hospital.
It was a test run, knowingly, and I knew the ECG would be normal. Had it been
otherwise I would have without wasting the time referred the patient directly
to the same hospital that’s over flooded and thus has its own problems to deal
with due to overload fatigue!
The
protagonist Master Kim as he calls himself discarding his original name Dr. Boo
Yong-joo to remain anonymous after the fiasco, played by Han Suk-kyu is so real
that I would have loved to be his disciple even today. The actor lives his role
to so much of perfection that after few episodes I forgot him to be Korean and
I started looking in him at times myself when the incidence was from my life or
that of a colleague who had faced the same dilemma. Of course he got Korean
Oscar for this role.
Mostly
the second seasons fail to stand up to the first ones. They don’t have the zest
of the first ones and look diluted just to make the show go on. Here to my
surprise in second season, they have so many new aspects of medical profession
those are dealt with so much of precision that you are left spell bound. The
eternal dilemma of medical profession is results versus money. And the outcomes
are always painful because we are dealing with human lives here. Patients
throwing their arms up in the air while making the payments if the results are
not up to their satisfaction is the commonest woo of the profession. To decide
to operate on critical patients is another nerve wrecking process; surgeon has
to go through, because if the patient dies relatives always feign ignorance and
say, ‘Patient had come walking to the hospital and how come he dies after the
surgery?’ without realising the fact, otherwise too he would have died! I have
gone through such type of incidences so many times that I could not hold my
eyes from welling up! I lost the count of how many times I had to hold my heart
while watching the second season. I had gone through every phase of the
profession and experienced every nuance trying not to shed a tear even in the
most of the crucial situation. Doctor too in the end is a human being!
The
list does not end here. There is every genre for every taste, served in its
most pure form. No add on like ‘Helen’s dance’ or fights in the go-downs with
papier-mâché drums!
I
in the beginning was sceptical to watch ‘The Moon Embracing the Sun’ a fantasy
period drama. For one who hardly can tell the names of Muslim kings those ruled
from Delhi, Korean history was like Latin American history told in Mandarin.
But... a big but it’s not at all about Korean History and the producer flashes
disclaimer at the outset. I was so drawn in the narration that never realised,
it’s a period drama. The characters wore traditional Korean clothes but the
lingo, the characterization and the plot befits today’s politics like a glove.
The production values of such dramas in India are highly deplorable, card board
walls, thermacole minarets, ramparts shaking with heavy action, swords gilded
with silver paper you name it and the superficial glimmer is given away within
seconds. Here everything was so perfect that they actually erected an old
Korean village in the studios. Even in the close ups nothing seemed synthetic.
The Koreans do have their martial arts still being practised vigorously, so the
skirmishes looked real without any doubts and not like well rehearsed in WWF.
There
are many more like, ’Run On’, ’More than Friends’, ‘Coffee Prince’, ’My Love
from the Stars’, ’Law school’
The
success of K dramas mostly lies in their narration. None runs beyond maximum 20
episodes. Script is so tight that it never goes away from the main plot, every
scene, every sentence and every action takes the narration ahead and it never
lingers. Second important fundamental is casting. At the helm of the affairs is
always a matriarch wielding the power wand. Not the likes of Nadira, Bindu or
their counterparts from Hollywood like Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo. They are
superwomen climbed hard way up on their merits and have prospered the business
single handledly without being too shrewish of harsh. They do preserve their soft
feminine instincts till last and these Elderly matriarch though wield the power
with iron hand, are rightfully respected by all from the new entrant novices to
the men who would succeed them. Even being old, they never wear traditional Korean
outfits but are absolutely westernized in their attires. Paraphernalia does not
leave even stilettos behind along with slit skirts and chiffon blouses thus all
of them mostly look like incarnations of
Barbie dolls. Every actor looks the part., It’s interesting to note that, the beauty
is a ‘Male’ Domain, In K Dramas. In every episode invariably it is reiterated
at least 3 to 4 times that ‘How handsome the hero is!’For a change rather than the
girls being the object of desire after a long chase by the boys, here the girls
swoon over the handsome hunks and there are skirmishes to win him over ‘OPENLY’! In entire episode ‘HE” is described as
‘Handsome’ or its congener at least by three rival groups to have their hands
on him. Koreans have naturally good complexion so everybody looks handsome.
Especially males as they have sparse facial hair, their skin always looks
youthful. No more out of shape pot bellied ‘Randhir Kapoor’ or Just returned
from the wrestling rink, Sunny Deol for them!
Rather
than watching dumb beef cakes and dumber blondes get washed away in ‘Hallyu’ I
guarantee, you won’t repent!
