K drama to the rescue

 

 Right now, the K drama on Netflix that is a hit is Squid Game.

Very good drama, but too unrealistic for me: and a copy cat of a mixture of Hunger Games (without the altruism or the sympathetic characters that made that franchise so popular), and the Naked Prey (or the many other films about rich folks bored hunting animals and so they hunt humans).

Better to watch Vincenzo, which is a Korean mafia guy going against local businessmen thugs and corruption...

includes humor, and plot twists you don't see coming, like where Vincenzo stops the bad guys from wrecking the building late at night by throwing a party.

,,,,

But what if you don't have Netflix?

Well, our cable tv system has various channels that are constantly changing, and we just got KBS there so we can watch K dramas etc.

This one is being shown now:

... 

 it's a bit slow in the beginning, and has a lot of different characters to follow in it's 120 episodes. An elderly father who resents his sons remarries a widow, and the families clash and then heal. Hmm... reminds me of Lolo...

 KBS is also posting some of their older dramas on youtube. 

whereas the usual hallmark type drama is about a single upper middle class attractive female finding her old boy friend and settling down, but family, children, illness etc are now where to be found, these long K dramas are more like the old fashioned afternoon soap operas, with lots of different families from different levels of society, but with plots of family ties.

 Once again is about divorces and remarriage after the characters mature and learn to reconcile:

  ......

 and Beautiful Love Wonderful Life about bullying, teen age suicide, and how lies can distort one's life but the truth sets you free.

then there are the wonderful costume dramas.

....

or samidang which mixes past and future and fantasy with a modern art history professor who has soul links with the mother of a neo confuscian scholar and an artist in her own right in the past.

...

or this rewrite of the history of Korea when the debate was if they should open to the outside world.

so there are things to watch when you get tired of endless hallmark romances (g rated romances with no one working very hard and no families involved) or superheroes or serial killer plots.

Sigh.

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update: HERE is an article that explains the social and economic background of Squid Game.