The Rise of K-Dramas


Book Description

Korean dramas gained popularity across Asia in the late 1990s, and their global fandom continues to grow. Despite cultural differences, non-Asian audiences find "K-dramas" appealing. They range from historical melodrama and romantic comedy to action, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Devotees pursue an immersive fandom, consuming Korean food, fashion and music, learning Korean to better understand their favorite shows, and travelling to Korea for firsthand experiences. This collection of new essays focuses on the cultural impact of K-drama and its fandom, and on the transformation of identities in the context of regional and global dynamics. Contributors discuss such popular series as Boys over Flowers, My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun.




K-Drama


Book Description

This book, the third volume in the K-Culture series intended to promote contemporary Korean culture overseas, introduces foreign audiences to Korean dramas. K-Drama and Hallyu K-Drama: The Beginning of Hallyu K-Drama Reaches into Asia and Beyond Why K-Drama? The Appeal of K-Drama Foreign Media Respond to K-Drama History of K-Drama 1960s: The Age of Enlightenment 1970s: Entering the Era of True Entertainment 1980s: Portraits of a Modern Korea 1990s: More Ideas, Better Results 2000s to the Present: K-Drama Goes Global Top K-Dramas and Stars Top 10 K-Dramas Top K-Drama Stars From Little Acorns




The Rise of K-Dramas


Book Description

Korean dramas gained popularity across Asia in the late 1990s, and their global fandom continues to grow. Despite cultural differences, non-Asian audiences find "K-dramas" appealing. They range from historical melodrama and romantic comedy to action, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Devotees pursue an immersive fandom, consuming Korean food, fashion and music, learning Korean to better understand their favorite shows, and travelling to Korea for firsthand experiences. This collection of new essays focuses on the cultural impact of K-drama and its fandom, and on the transformation of identities in the context of regional and global dynamics. Contributors discuss such popular series as Boys over Flowers, My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun.







How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life


Book Description

Discover the power of how K-Dramas can improve your wellbeing and provide a sense of belonging Love K-Dramas and want more permission to binge watch them? In How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life: Powerful Lessons on Belongingness, Healing, and Mental Health, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Jeanie Y. Chang explores what K-Dramas can teach us about our own well-being and how we can use the lessons they teach us to live better and more meaningful lives. She also touches upon the powerful interrelationship between K-dramas, mental health, and belongingness. Topics covered include: Using K-Dramas as a roadmap to life, showing you how to navigate speed bumps, roadblocks, twists, turns, and dead ends Building cross-cultural relationships that you otherwise may not have without being a K-Drama fan Processing grief from the loss of a loved one to a loss of anything—a job, your physical safety, a relationship, or something else Harnessing the idea of Jeong, which is innate in Korean society and refers to the emotional sentiment of affinity, affection, kinship, and connection which is the thread throughout Jeanie's community Working the author’s trademarked mental health framework, Cultural Confidence®, to build up your mental health, identity, mindfulness, and resilience For K-Drama fans and enthusiasts and anyone curious about the influence of pop culture, How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life is an entertaining and educational must-read on how this enormously popular global phenomenon can help us become the best versions of ourselves.




Who Ate Up All the Shinga?


Book Description

Park Wan-suh is a best-selling and award-winning writer whose work has been widely translated and published throughout the world. Who Ate Up All the Shinga? is an extraordinary account of her experiences growing up during the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean War, a time of great oppression, deprivation, and social and political instability. Park Wan-suh was born in 1931 in a small village near Kaesong, a protected hamlet of no more than twenty families. Park was raised believing that "no matter how many hills and brooks you crossed, the whole world was Korea and everyone in it was Korean." But then the tendrils of the Japanese occupation, which had already worked their way through much of Korean society before her birth, began to encroach on Park's idyll, complicating her day-to-day life. With acerbic wit and brilliant insight, Park describes the characters and events that came to shape her young life, portraying the pervasive ways in which collaboration, assimilation, and resistance intertwined within the Korean social fabric before the outbreak of war. Most absorbing is Park's portrait of her mother, a sharp and resourceful widow who both resisted and conformed to stricture, becoming an enigmatic role model for her struggling daughter. Balancing period detail with universal themes, Park weaves a captivating tale that charms, moves, and wholly engrosses.




Learn Korean Through K-dramas 2


Book Description

A Korean Language Textbook Centered on K-Drama Scripts and Videos Learn Korean through K-Dramas 2 is a Korean language textbook developed around short scenes from five of the most popular Hallyu K-drama shows, making the study of the Korean language fun and effective. Subtitled “A Glance at Issues in Korean Society,” this second book of the K-Drama Korean Series features K-drama shows that offer an in-depth view of the various issues in Korean society—It’s Okay Not to Be Okay, Itaewon Class, My Mister, SKY Castle, and Misaeng: Incomplete Life—to provide curious readers a deeper understanding of life in Korea. This book is unique in that each script comes with QR codes and Netflix timestamps that provide direct links to corresponding YouTube videos and Netflix scenes, allowing for readers to access the clips at any time and understand the language content while watching and listening to it on screen. This book is also written entirely in both English and Korean to enable even beginner Korean language students to make the most out of its content. The right-side pages of the book are dedicated to the original K-drama scripts and the left-side pages provide English translations for a convenient learning experience for students of all proficiency levels. The book is optimal for self-study, and its size (150 x 200 mm), relatively small for a textbook, makes it handy and portable. Moreover, the book’s various exercises requiring short, subjective answers as well as the proven-effective dictation practice sections make the book suitable not only for self-study but also as a workbook for use in schools and academies. In particular, this second book places further emphasis on grammar to aid students preparing for the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). Furthermore, the cultural commentary in the book helps readers encounter and understand Korea’s food, fashion, entertainment, and cultural values in connection to the K-drama scenes. Seoul Selection will continue to publish and distribute sequels in the series through Amazon.com, Hallyu-oriented bookstores around Europe and Asia, and schools and universities outside of Korea. Understanding Various Expressions Used on K-Drama Shows and Learning Colloquial Korean, Acronyms, and Slang Though the videos are each only about five minutes long, there is a lot to be learned from their content. Vocabulary and grammar are thoroughly explained with examples from the scripts, and exercise questions to help readers master the various expressions used in the scenes are included in each lesson. K-drama shows mirror Korean language as it is used every day—colloquial expressions, popular or newly-coined terms and slang used by young people, text abbreviations, idioms, and so on—which greatly benefits those who want to learn “real-life” Korean language.




Falling in Love Like a Korean Drama


Book Description

Summer has been working at her dad's restaurant as a chef since her mom's demise. Enduring her step mom's verbal abuse and unthankful dad seemed to be the only thing each day brought. One day, she sees a man at her deceased mom's old house, and he strangely magnetizes her mind since then. But on the same day, her stepmom stomps out of their restaurant, her boyfriend sends her a breakup text, and her dad fires her. If there was any good news, it was that she had time, a few cash, and her mom's old photo. Yet, the Korean address at the back of the picture that she came across seemed to mean something. Summer hopes that a trip to Korea would uncover her mom's past, but she never expected to see the mysterious man who was at her mother's house on the other side of the world. The title includes the unfamiliar words, 'Korean Drama'; however, it is just the background for a love story that transcends culture, language, and other incredible obstacles.




K-Drama School


Book Description

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television—but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our societies and ourselves from watching them? From stand-up comedian and media studies PhD Grace Jung comes a rollicking deep dive into the cultural significance of Korean television. K-Drama School analyzes everything from common tropes like amnesia and slapping to conspicuous product placements of Subway sandwiches and coffee; to representations of disability, race and gender; to what Korea's war-torn history says about South Korea’s media output and the stories being told on screen. With chapters organized by "lessons," each one inquiring into a different theme of Korean television, K-Drama School offers a groundbreaking exploration into this singular form of entertainment, from an author who writes with humor and heart about shows that spur tears and laughter, keeping us glued to the TV while making fans of us all. Shows discussed include: Squid Game, SKY Castle, Crash Course in Romance, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, My Mister, Something in the Rain, One Spring Night, DP, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata, Our Blues, and more.




K-love


Book Description

Chase has been set up. She finds herself on a blind date with a Korean hottie, and all because her mom obsessively loves Korean romance dramas. It turns out that Daniel Bak is actually really dreamy, but things take a turn for the worse when Chase happens upon stolen research on her university professor's laptop. It throws her into the arms of wealthy corporate heir Hyun Tae, who also happens to be Daniel's best friend. Caught between both men, and hunted down by a vengeful CEO, Chase must rely on Hyun Tae's protection. But when the drama settles, where will her heart land?