K-Drama: What Jae-in Learned

One Spring Night, like much of K-Drama, has many layers. One of the intriguing small stories is that of Lee Jae-in, the younger sister of the show's heroine. In the finale, Jae-in sits by the river with her boyfriend, Park Young-jae. He asks what she is thinking about, and she replies she's thinking about the reason for her return to Korea. He says, "You said you didn't want to study." She answers, "I learned a lesson." He is interested, but she simply offers to clink beer cans with him and looks at him with admiration. 

The central reason for her return was that she was stalking a man in France. As that was a crime, she returned home to escape prosecution. On her return, she was plunged into the dramas of her older sisters who were being abused by men who wouldn't leave them alone. The parallels to her own transgressions are profound. She had chased Young-jae at the beginning, seemingly repeating the kind of behavior that had gotten her in trouble in France. This seemed to have sorted itself out as Young-jae realized his own feelings for her, and Jae-in became calmer. It is clear that they share a kind of perspicacity for the doings of those around them. It is a new basis for a relationship, not the obsession that had driven Jae-in before. It is also clear that Young-jae is not the heavy-handed patriarch Jae-in had experienced in her father. Young-jae is kind, loyal, and accepting of others, all qualities Jae-in finds honorable. 

I think what Jae-in learned was that the freedom she was longing for was not to be found by abusing others. She couldn't be liberated from the patriarchy by replicating its bad behavior. Rather she needed to find the people who offered breathing room so that she could be herself. In K-Drama, everything is put to use. The quiet scene by the river is perhaps the metaphor that Jae-in has found a man who sees and respects her path and her right to breathe. 

K-Drama: Taking on the Patriarchy

The K-Drama, One Spring Night, takes on the patriarchy, triggered by something nearly incomprehensible to me: a taboo against a single father. As we all know the trope in Western movies of sympathy for single dads -- Hugh Grant in About a Boy for starters -- the idea that this would lead to profound social ostracism is hard to conceptualize from my life experience. A little bit like the distance I now feel about Lydia Bennett's elopement with the infamous Mr. Wickham, though I did understand it as a teenager in the time before the sexual revolution.

OK, so it's hard to grasp, but I can accept a premise. A woman meets this man and falls for him and his son, as anyone would -- they are that delightful. She decides to face the censure and marry them. First she has to break-up with her boyfriend -- no biggie, right? But there again the story veers into territory that is way outside of my experience. The boyfriend says, "You can't make that decision. I have to save you from the error of your ways." He recruits his father and her father to help him, carrying on for many episodes about setting the wedding date. 

At this point, the seven key women in the K-Drama begin to show up for our girl, to help her resist the demands of the patriarchy. It is complicated, because the male oppressors are also the dads, boyfriends, friends, and at least one -- the ex-boyfriend's dad -- is an interesting character. There is also a lot of support from other men who, like the love interest, are younger and not inside the power structure. 

While the outcome is never seriously in doubt -- there is too much joy in the relationship -- breaking through the patriarchy is not trivial. South Korea emerged into capitalism very recently, so the old feudal Confucian systems of fealty has a greater hold there than in other places. Our heroine is fighting against cobwebs of the past. Her younger sister, who has studied in Paris, is the untrammeled voice of the new: defend your true feelings, she says, thus echoing Hamlet. The chaos of capitalism cannot be contained in the trappings of the old system. Just as I lost track of Lydia Bennett as the culture shifted, people will lose track of the old ideas. "Young people have it so easy these days," old-timers will say, not even really understanding how the old rules evaporated. And these days, people start to be old-timers at about 25 when they don't understand the technology anymore. 

It is important to consider here the "why" -- why is it so terrible for a man to be raising a child? I think that in itself is an act that takes on the patriarchy, because childrearing is a woman's role. And if we reject gender-defined roles, what next? You know -- people will reject gender, a fear that is inflaming the rightwing in the US. There was a great photo in The New York Times this morning of a teen band that is on the verge of making it big.  The caption said, "One narrative has characterized the band as 'just a group of five white guys,' [band member] Bassin said, 'I'm not white and Gus isn't a guy.'"

Members of the band, Geese, from left: Max Bassin, Gus Green, Dominic DiGesu, Foster Hudson and Cameron White. Photo by OK McCausland for the Times.

This train of thought clicked with a piece from the American Medical Association about the experience of abuse among medical students in the US, which was associated with burn-out and regret for the career choice. Medicine, when I was in school, was a very "Polite White" affair, run by white men in shiny loafers. A few were openly racist, misogynistic and homophobic. Most stuck by the genteel work-arounds. I protested not being selected for the medical honor society, AOA, even though I was awarded the Franklin C. McLean Award as top minority medical student in the US. The answer was that I didn't get honors in medicine, and it was medical school, or had I not understood that? I did and do understand what he was saying: If you're Black, get back.

The great joy of One Spring Night is in the creation of a new family, in which the child is the first to say, "We're family." More power to them all for taking on the patriarchy!

K-Drama: Anatomy of a Crisis

K-drama revels in peeling the layers of a crisis so that we can see the individual moving through the morass of uncertainty. Pharmacist Yu Ji-ho, the hero of One Spring Night (봄밤), is a single father, a scandalous fact in South Korea. Yu Ji-ho was managing his situation by suppressing his feelings -- a solution that can't last. The show carefully watches as he moves to the moment of falling apart, graciously then letting us see his repair. In this careful study, we can see the "anatomy of a crisis": the initial conditions, usually set before the show starts, which create the uneasy resolution; the challenge; and the recreation of the self. Shows partition the parts differently, but successful shows take us on this journey and offer some ideas about the management of each part.  

The initial conditions are set by some trauma. In One Spring Night, the trauma is the abandonment of Yu Ji-ho and his son by the child's mother. This places Yu Ji-ho in the position of social outcast, though he is diligent, even conformist, and did nothing to merit such judgement. He uses his will to control his emotions and manage the day-to-day slights and arrows of this. He shows the fortitude of the bear who, in order to become a person, spent 100 days in a cave eating mugwort and garlic. The bear became a person and the mother of Korea. 

The challenge to Yu Ji-ho's fortitude comes as he falls in love with Lee Jeong-in. She loves him and fights against the stigma that surrounds him -- a version of the Rapunzel story we met in Rookie Historian. As Lee Jeong-in tears the barriers down, Yu Ji-ho becomes more and more exposed. The growing anxiety leads to the falling apart of the fortress of fortitude and the deep hurts and insecurities are finally spoken. 

The recreation of the self is accomplished in the society of loving people, first and foremost Lee Jeong-in, but also her family, his family, his friends and his co-workers. While he has been viewed harshly, his long endurance and sweet personality triumph. That he enters this new world without bitterness is remarkable: he states a number of times that he has refused to be angry or resentful about his situation. In the end, everyone is crying with joy that Yu Ji-ho, his son Eun-u, and Lee Jeong-in can become the family they long to be. 

Principles -- like the refusal of resentment -- drive the person's path through the uncertainty. We have no guarantee that things "will work out." We are offered the security of character, tested by fire. One of the assumptions of character, which has no real US equivalent, is what I call "oori consciousness," the existence of a "we" that is larger than the self. Yu Ji-ho has been pushed out of oori by his circumstances, but he never gives up on oori. His loving stance makes it possible for his ferocious girlfriend to bring him back in and it's that deep feeling of reconnection that makes everyone weep -- like snapping wooden train cars together. One can almost hear the "pop." 

In this regard I note that the pharmacy at which Yu Ji-ho works is called "Oori Pharmacy." It is translated as "Woori Pharmacy," though to English-speakers who don't understand oori, it's probably no big deal. 

In the US -- lacking "oori consciousness" -- we limp through crisis and have less access to the spiritual healing of being embraced by the collective. I have long thought that our society is birthing a new consciousness, though I lacked the word for it. In that revolution in our thinking lies the hope of salvation in this place and time.