Hallyu

 

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!