MsLatte’s Daebak Cybercafé (kdrama addicts #9)

[boatyardblues]

A quiet corner of MN for serious addicts of Kdrama, or the Kdrama-curious. (MsLatte is a Her Private Life reference.) Most of our viewing is drawn from Netflix and Viki, with a sprinkling of AmazonPrime and search engine-accessible content available on shady non subscription streaming sites (listed as ‘alt site’ below). The subtitling on alternative sites is variable in quality and the pop-ups can be adult themed...

The previous thread is here but our ‘Addicts Recommend’ list below is cumulative so includes recommendations and favourites from all previous threads.

Shows marked with asterisk(s) are more uniformly loved or admired. In categorising series, its important to note most Korean dramas have multiple strands - e.g. supernatural, romance and a thriller; crime series with fantasy elements. Genre-busting mash-ups are normal. Series that are tagged as dark may also have moments of comedy or the absurd, likewise fluff can have heavier moments. View the categories below as best approximate & ask if you need guidance, eg about suitability for younger teens.

Comedy (with a side order of absurd)
I picked up a celebrity on the street (Viki)
My Fellow Citizens (Viki)

Crime/Thriller
Come and Hug Me (Dramafast)
Healer (Netflix)*
Heartless City (Viki)
He is Psychometric (Viki)
I Hear Your Voice (Netflix /Viki)
Life on Mars (classy remake, alt site)
Live (Netflix)
Pride & Prejudice (Netflix)*
Prison Playbook (Netflix)*
Suspicious Partner (Netflix)*
Watcher (Viki)*

Historical/Period drama (“sageuk”)
Crowned Clown (Viki)
Mr Sunshine (Netflix)
Rookie Historian (Netflix)

Romance - lighter & fluffier
1% of Something (Viki)
Beating Again (Netflix)
Coffee Prince (Netflix)
Don’t Dare to Dream (Netflix, or as Jealousy Incarnate on Viki)*
Happy Once Again (Netflix)
Her Private Life (Viki)*
His Master’s Sun (Netflix)
Love from a Star (Netflix)*
Morning Call (Netflix - Japanese)
Pinocchio (Netflix)
Radio Romance (Netflix)
Romance is the Bonus Book (Netflix)**
She Was Pretty (Dramabus/Netflix)*
The Beauty Inside (Viki/Netflix)
Thirty Not Seventeen (Viki)
Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (Netflix/Viki)
What’s Up With Secretary Kim (Viki)**
You are my Destiny (Netflix)

Romance - heavier weight/more grown up themes
Because This Is My First Life (Viki)*
Chicago Typewriter (Viki)*
Descendants of the Sun (Viki)
Fight For My Way (Viki/Drama bus)*
Just Between Lovers (Viki)**
Melo is my Nature (Viki)/Be Melodramatic (alt sites)**
My Strange Hero (Viki)
One Spring Night (Netflix)
Red Carpet - film (Netflix, very adult content)
Search: WWW (Viki)*
Something in the Rain (Netflix)
The Package (Viki)

Supernatural/zombies/vampires/fantasy/sci-fi - lighter & fluffier
Absolute Boyfriend (Viki)
Are You Human (Netflix)
Goblin (Viki)*
I am not a Robot (Netflix)
Legend of the Blue Sea (Viki/Netflix)
Love O2O (Viki - Chinese)
Orange Marmalade (Netflix)
While You Were Sleeping (Viki)*

Supernatural/zombies/vampires/fantasy/sci-fi - darker/more grown up themes
Black (Netflix)*
Hotel del Luna (Viki)*
Kingdom (Netflix)*
The Guest (Dramafast)
Train to Busan - film (Amazon Prime)
W (Viki & Netflix)*

Guilty Pleasures (for the joy, not the quality)
Before We Get Married (Viki -Taiwanese)
Hwarang (Viki/Netflix)
The Last Empress (Viki)
Sassy Go Go (Netflix)

Mad as a box of frogs/uncategorisable
Strong Girl Bong Soon (Netflix)

We have some lovely occasional posters with links to Korea who pop in from time to time to provide the context for some of the more baffling cultural references. (Although we may have scared them all away since our early threads with the fangirling. If you’re still reading, please say hi.)

We are generally fans of all things Korean, so equally happy to talk about Korean cookery, language, film and music when the mood takes us.

We have a few frequently used acronyms:
FL/2FL = female lead/2nd female lead
ML/2ML = male lead/2nd male lead
SLS = Second Lead Syndrome (where the FL/MLis too dense to realise how much better the 2ML/2FL is)
🥾🍑 (boot, peach) = kick up the arse to go to bed

We also abbreviate titles if they’re long, but usually only after using the full title & acronym together or an obvious abbreviation. Some favourite actors & actresses have been abbreviated for speed/efficiency, eg Lee Jong-Suk (LJS), Park Min Young (PMY), Ji Chang Wook (JCW) and his hotness Kim Jae Wook (HH KJW). Don’t be afraid to ask for help/clues if we’re not making sense or have descended into acronym soup.

If you want to join us down the kdrama rabbit hole, welcome! Pull up a chair, say goodbye to early nights and get stuck in…

I like that boatyard it's quite poetic. It's better than overhead and roots which is the way I remembered.

Those two clicked quickly for me. There are other vowels I’m still struggling with....

I've got sucked into my mowgli boy on viki! Brushing up my mandarin! 😂 😂 😂... It's quite silly to begin with but I have to say the relationship stories are quite touching! I've been drawn in! Not watching it properly though! It's 48 eps I think! 😱... I'm skippitydoodah ing my way along! 😂 😂
Going to try and make proper concerted effort with the hangul as I can see possibilities for progress! Thanks hello!

While I remember, I will post WatchingTheMoon’s excellent post from a thread about the ethics of Westeners going to Africa, Thailand etc to volunteer in orphanages, where such activity is fuelling child trafficking & encouraging parents to give up children to ‘feed’ the orphanages. I thought Watching’s post explained so much for me - there seem to be lots of orphans in kdrama, and orphanages:

I live in Korea, which also has a large number of orphanages/children's homes. There are a few reasons - there is very little interest in adoption here since family bloodlines are considered to be very important. Sex education is abysmal and having a child outside marriage is still very taboo, plus disability is seen as something disgusting or embarrassing so any child born with a disability is very likely to be put up for adoption (but never adopted unless to the west which is another issue entirely). These children's homes get very little/no government support.

And yet, I don't see hoards of westerners descending on Korea to pat the cute little orphans. Why is that? I'd say the answer is pretty obvious. Korea is a modern, developed country, where the people walk around with smartphones, dressed in designer labels, living in big fancy apartment blocks, listening to hip hop or pop music, looking and acting very much like the average westerner.

People don't come to Korea to see poor people. It's as simple as that. Go to Thailand or Cambodia to see the nice poor people and give the nice little babies hugs, but people would not do the same thing to children in Korea, because they find them too relatable.

What's interesting is that as Korea becomes more and more developed (even 30 years ago, there was a lot more poverty, and until the 50s, it was one of the poorest countries in the world), they also start to join in with the poverty tourism. Even 10 years ago, you didn't really see that, but in the last 5 or so years, it is increasing. They volunteer to work in orphanages in SEA, they go there to teach Korean or English (despite having no teaching skills), they have thousands of missionaries handing out food in order to persuade people to go to church, they post the pictures of them holding little black babies in Africa...and yet, they have little to no interest in the adoption crisis in their own country. Nor the elderly poverty crisis. Nor the homelessness problem.

When countries become rich, they are ashamed of their own poor, I think. It is too close to home when we look at someone and think that it could be us in that position. Much safer to go to Thailand and think that essentially those people are in an orphanage/homeless shelter/on the street because, well, of course, because they are inherently poor. It is a saviour complex. People who visit those places don't see the people they are 'helping' as equals. They cannot imagine that person working beside them in an office, or being their manager, or giving them a lecture. They see them as childlike, below them, someone who they can help but not someone who could ever help them, beyond giving them some instagram likes, some feels and maybe 'realise how happy we can be with so little hashtag smiles hashtag thailand hashtag crying eyes emoji'.

Just finished Tunnel. It was brilliant and that has to be one of the most satisfying last 30 minutes of a kdrama ever. It has to go on the list for the next thread!

I saw a English/Korean documentary about a man and his wife who had set up a baby box. It's a small box you can put your baby in, they access if from the other side and take the baby into their care. They had cameras on the box and found that a large majority of people who were placing babies in the box were high school girls or young single parents. I'll have to see if I can find it because some people disagreed with his methods for really odd reasons.

I agree with Tunnel going on the list!

That documentary was called The Drop Box. It's quite emotive as you'd expect, but you hear how these people are willing to kill themselves and their children but now at least have a life line.

I think CJH was perfectly cast in Tunnel. He pulled a Dad vibe perfectly. I’m also reappraising Yoon Hyun-Min. He warmed up considerably in this.

I also agree with Tunnel going on the list, and Signal is great too!

Is anyone else watching Extraordinary You? I'm really enjoying it, it is a fresh take on the comic book manwha scenario (dramafast)

I'm not bettys but I know Rowoon is in it so it was on my watch list. Is it worth bumping up and getting to it soon?

Well it's one of my first to watch as soon as it airs, but there are only 4 (8) eps so far so you could wait & binge. It has Lee Jae Wook as well as Rowoon in, and Lee Tae Ree

oooh bettys that sounds like I will have to partake in viewing a couple episodes, for scientific purposes, of course. I'll give it a go at some point tomorrow and I'm sure I'll be back to complement you on your excellent taste!

The FL is really good fun & feisty, apparently she was also on Sky Castle which I’ve not seen

It feels like we ought to watch Sky Castle because it generated so much buzz...

Right. I need a surefire lovely romance to pick me up after Tunnel. Like Hello, I’m not averse to a contract marriage or similar. Ideas?

Have you seen Marriage Not Dating? Only problem is it’s not on Viki or Netflix

Ah. Would prefer something on Viki or Netflix. I just started Black Knight but I’m all over the place - this is my third shuffle in the last hour. 😕

boatyard ill have a quick look through my lists for what I enjoyed that might take your fancy

Thanks all.

You could try Beauty Inside if you haven't already. It's on Netflix but it's a very marmite drama.

I haven't found any good fluffy romance dramas lately and all the early 10s ones seem ridiculously dated and hard to find now. I say bring back silly impossible stories like Emergency Couple!

I loved Beauty Inside (Lee Min-Ki 😍), so that’s already done.

While waiting for various episodes and subtitles to arrive I've started Because This Is My First Love because of your recommendations up thread. Loving it so far! I'm up to episode 6 already. Just what I needed after a rubbish work day 😁

You could try some of these, I'm unsure where to find them and most of them aren't even close to what you wanted but I'm always ready to recommend Flower Boy Next Door for a little bit of relief.

Flower Boy Next Door - absolutely bizarre, Korean man named Enrique and an agoraphobic woman
Age of Youth - 5 women in their 20s live together and you watch their lives as they struggle with dating and work
Love Affairs in the Afternoon - I haven't watched it yet but I hear its not dissimilar to BWGM? (subtle attempt to ask if anyone else has heard anything?)
Mary Stayed Out All Night - honestly a bit forgettable, she gets a fake boyfriend to avoid Kim Jae Wook. What a nutter.

Im really struggling with good light romances lately. Everything seems to be a melodrama or sageuk.

For future reference here is a 30 second video to help you understand why I nominate Flower Boy Next Door for nutty romance of the teens decade. Move along Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, introducing Enrique!

Might be too late for tonight but try Go Back Couple on Biki. Nita a contract marriage but a failed relationship going back in time to their student days. The first episode is a bit grim as their marriage collapses but it is fun after that as they revisit their early life but aware of their future.
And it has Park Morgan in a supporting role