Think American, Feel Korean

As I was walking to work today I had a song stuck in my head, which took me all day to finally figure out. It's a song called "Please take care of him" (Butak haeyo) by a Korean singer named Wax. I think it came out sometime while I was in law school - by that time, I had long stopped listening to K-Pop, but during a visit to Korea to visit my dad, it was the one song that stuck with me. It's a sad song from one woman to the woman who is now with her old lover, asking the new woman to take care of him and to love him in a way she couldn't. It's emotionally stirring in that manipulative way that only Korean songs and dramas are.

And...it's the stuff I grew up on. Korean dramas and K-pop were so much a part of my childhood and youth - I basically grew up on rice, kimchi, Korean dramas and K-pop. Which might explain why I'm so short (rice and kimchi lack nutrients) and so affected by K-dramas and K-music. I can't really explain the effect that Korean dramas and music have on me - it affects me on a much deeper emotional level than American media or music. I can watch my favorite TV shows (Gilmore Girls and How I Met Your Mother) and laugh and cry with the characters, but I won't be emotionally sucked in the way I am with Korean dramas. I can listen to a moving American or British song and think "wow, that's beautiful" or "wow, that's sad" but I won't be affected by it on the deep, under-the-skin, emotional, cellular level that Korean music affects me. Korean dramas and music resonate with me on such a deep, subconscious level that for days, I'm unable to disentangle myself from the emotions I felt. After I finished watching Chuno with my grandmother, I couldn't shake off the utter devastation I felt at Dae Gil and Un Nyun's tragic story. Utter. Devastation. And seriously, was it necessary to make Dae Gil DIE? Why not just let him live happily ever after with the other girl that was always pining after him? Why have him sacrifice himself to save Un Nyun and her new husband so they can live happily ever after when all he did was live a life of suffering with his sole life goal to find Un Nyun, only to finally find her when she had given up hope that he was alive and married someone else? It's so heartbreaking. So unnecessarily emotionally manipulative.

Only after four or five days did I begin to erase the sad fictional love story of two fictional characters from my emotional memory.

I was thinking about this today and initially thought that maybe it has to do with having grown up with an American mind but with Korean emotions. Yeah, maybe. I do believe that I think in American (English), but feel in Korean.

And then I realized that while that may be true, the real reason I am so affected by Korean dramas and Korean music is really that Korean dramas and music are EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATIVE. Totally, utterly, unabashedly emotionally manipulative.

Have you seen "Jib euro ga nun gil" (The Way Home), about a MUTE grandmother who is SO old and feeble and MUTE who has to take care of her beyond-belief bratty grandson, and all the sacrifices she makes for him? SO emotionally manipulative.

Or "Tae guk gi: The Brotherhood of War" (Tae guk gi is the Korean flag), where two brothers are separated in the chaos of the Korean War and end up fighting on different sides, and one brother spends the ENTIRE movie looking for the other brother, only to DIE to save him right after being reunited with him? SO emotionally manipulative.

Then there's the classic formula for successful Korean dramas: there's a poor girl and a rich girl (both are beautiful, but the poor girl is always a little bit more beautiful and helpless in that way that makes guys want to take care of her and the rich girl is always bratty and not-likeable). There's a guy, who is rich and good-looking and kind of conceited. But then. He falls in love with the poor girl, and his love for her totally changes him into this selfless, loving, likeable person. Then they find out...she has cancer. Or is going blind. Or has leukemia. But amazingly, the guy has exactly what the girl needs to save her! So he gives up his eyes. Or, she dies, after spending a beautiful two weeks with him. Or, they find out they are brother and sister. All Korean dramas basically follow this plotline, and all are emotionally manipulative.

And what about K-pop songs? A sampling of the songs I grew up with:
- "Bu dee" (Please) - a guy is telling the girl he loves and wanted to marry to please find someone else that her parents approve of and marry him and be happy, and forget about him. Um...unnecessarily sad, thus, emotionally manipulative.
- "Uh muh nim gge" (To mother) - a song from a guy to his mother, who was poor but sacrificed so much for him, and all the heartache he caused her because he was ashamed that they were poor...and you find out the mother died before he could make amends. Emotionally manipulative.

Korean dramas, movies and music are all about longing, heartache, heartbreak, sacrifice...so emotionally manipulative! I don't think I started maturing emotionally until after I stopped watching Korean dramas and listening to Korean music. And even then, I was scarred/stunted for life because of a lifetime of emotional manipulation. I feel much more emotionally stable (and sane) when I stick to American TV and American music.

omg, I am totally forbidding my children from watching or listening to Korean media.