About Korean Drama
Korean drama (Korean: 한국드라마) refers to televised dramas, in a miniseries format, produced in the Korean language. Many of these dramas have become popular throughout Asia and have contributed to the general phenomenon of the Korean wave, known as "Hallyu", and also "Drama Fever" in some countries[citation needed]. Most popular Korean dramas have also become popular in other parts of the world such as Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
PLOT
There are two main genres of Korean dramas, generally speaking. The first genre is similar to soap operas but without the never ending plot and frank sexual content. These dramas typically involve conflicts such as single and marital relationships, money bargaining, relationships between in-laws (usually between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law), and often complicated love triangles while the female hero usually falls in love with the main character who may treat her badly since the beginning, instead of the one who always cares for her. These dramas last anywhere from 16 episodes to over 100 (most often not exceeding 200).[citation needed]
The other main genre is Korean historical dramas (also known as sa geuk), which are fictionalized dramatizations of Korean history. Korean historical dramas typically involve very complex story lines with elaborate costumes, sets and special effects.[1] Martial arts, sword fighting and horsemanship are frequently a big component of Korean historical dramas as well. Korean dramas, whether the historical dramas or modern dramas, typically are characterized by excellent production quality, characters with depth, intelligent scriptwriting but largely relies on the use of archetypal characters.[2]
POPULARITY AND AVAILABILITY IN THE USA
Korean dramas became popular in the United States particularly in regions with populations of ethnic Koreans. The spread of the popularity of Korean dramas typically centered around these regions perhaps because Korean drama programming is publicly available in those broadcast areas. Now, due to information spread via the internet, cable TV, satellite TV, and DVD rental businesses, along with k-dramas' quality English subtitling and good production quality, Korean dramas have become even more popular across a diverse American audience – i.e., not limited to families of Korean descent. Many fans now include South Korea destinations among their tourist destinations, due to their enjoyment of the Korean TV dramas.
Many of the more recent k-dramas have been translated fully with high-quality English subtitling. However, some k-dramas DVD sets are not translated completely into English and are issued in sets with fewer DVD's than the Korean language versions, to the dismay of English-speaking consumers. These are typically done so that the story is coherent and satisfying, but viewers are always disappointed to know they are missing out on some portions of the story that were not subtitled into English (for example, with the story of "The Immortal Admiral Yi Sun Shin").
Korean drama fan clubs have appeared in Hawaii,[10] California[11] and the metropolitan areas of Chicago[12] and Philadelphia,[13] Pennsylvania. Cable channels in the U.S. (such as AZN, KBS World, and MBC America) have featured several Korean dramas during primetime, in addition to offering daytime and late-night Korean programming, usually subtitled.
In November 2008, Netflix began offering several Korean dramas as part of their video selection. In August 2009, DramaFever began offering free subtitled video streaming service, with video advertisements, in the United States.[14] As of May 2010 Korean dramas began airing on a DramaFever channel on Hulu. Additionally, Korean dramas are available at online DVD retailers. Some Korean dramas, however, are not available for Region 1 (North America) encoding and NTSC video format.
By late 2010 and early 2011, many popular Korean dramas began to air on Puerto Rican channels. This have impacted greatly on which is the Hallyu in the USA and Latin America. Such dramas as My Name is Kim Sam Soon, Princess Hours, The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince, Boys Over Flowers, All About Eve (TV series), Stairway to Heaven (TV series) and others have proven to be quite successful in Puertorrican households.
