Cross-cultural communication （119）　

119) Korean dramas and an overemphasis on academic background
When 2020 began, I hardly went out at night due to the coronavirus pandemic, and I started to get hooked on Netflix. At first, I was watching classic Hollywood movies (from the 70s and 80s) and American TV dramas, but when I started watching Korean dramas after being recommended to do so by several acquaintances, I found them quite moving. In February 2020, just after the pay TV broadcast of “Crash Landing on You” ended in Korea, I was watching it, ignoring the time I should have been sleeping, and it became so famous that I was a little embarrassed to talk about it in 2022. Since then, I think I've watched about 20 dramas by the end of 2021, with 30% of my Netflix viewing consisting of Korean dramas. I would like to talk about one of the social aspects of modern Korean dramas.

The social disparity in South Korea and the fierce competition to get into prestigious universities, which is a necessary condition for becoming a winner in this society, are reported in the news in Japan every time it is time for university entrance exams in South Korea. It wouldn't be very interesting to make a drama about this as a documentary, but I found that there are actually quite a lot of dramas that indirectly incorporate this social phenomenon. To be more specific, the main character is a math genius, or comes from Seoul National University, which is said to be the equivalent of Japan's Tokyo University (or even more difficult to get into), and is also a science major. The fact that science is often featured in these dramas is probably related to the fact that South Korea is a trading nation that relies on exporting products that use advanced technology. I'll list four representative dramas that I've seen that demonstrate this.

1) The Snow Queen
This drama was broadcast on pay TV in South Korea in 2006. This is the only one that is not on Netflix but on Amazon Prime. The main character, Han Tae-woong (played by Hyun Bin, who also played the North Korean captain in “Crash Landing on You”), is the son of a poor family whose mother runs a noodle stall, but he has excellent academic results and is accepted into a high school in Seoul that attracts the best science students. During his high school years, there is an International Mathematical Olympiad, and he wins first place. However, a student who was both his best friend and rival also participated in the competition, and he regrets not being able to win and kills himself. Tae-woong takes this as his responsibility and gives up on going to university, instead joining a boxing gym. Of course, there are many more rollercoaster-like developments to come, so be sure to watch. Even Amazon Prime members have to pay 220 yen per episode (the first episode is free), and there are 16 episodes in total.

2) Startup
Dusan is the only son of a middle-class family whose father is the head of the labor union. From an early age, he was known as a child prodigy, and when he was in elementary school, he took part in an international mathematics competition and won first prize. After graduating from a science-based university, he set up a venture company with two of his classmates to make smartphone apps, but unfortunately they didn't get very far. So they took part in a competition run by an organization that supports startup companies. The woman that Dusan happens to fall in love with is a high school graduate, but she is intelligent and wins a prize at this competition, and she starts up a startup company with Dusan and the others. However, this chance encounter causes them to drift apart. After that, you'll have to watch to find out what happens.

3) Umimachi Cha Cha Cha
Doo-sik is a popular handyman in a seaside regional city a few hours drive from Seoul, but he is actually a genius who graduated at the top of his class from the engineering department at Seoul University. The story gradually reveals why this genius is working as a handyman in his hometown, and a female dentist who quits her job as a dentist in Seoul to open her own practice in this town gradually finds out. The actor who played this role of Doo-sik was Kim Sung-ho, who played an important supporting role as a character who helped Dusan and others in “Startup”.

4) Smart Doctor Life
This is a story about five music-loving classmates who graduated from Seoul National University's Faculty of Medicine and are now working as excellent doctors in their respective specialties at a high-class private hospital in Seoul, while also pursuing their hobby of playing in a band. One of them is the son of the chairman of the board of the private hospital, but he is a saintly nice guy who wanted to become a Christian priest rather than a pediatric surgeon. As the title suggests, I myself, as a doctor, felt that there could be no smarter life for a doctor, but as someone who has been a doctor for over 40 years, I think their (one of them is a woman) lifestyle as doctors is too ideal (and enviable)! I have a doctor friend who is a Korean resident in Japan and who graduated from Seoul National University's Faculty of Medicine. I had heard that it was very difficult to get into Seoul National University, Faculty of Medicine, so I asked him about it, and he was a nice guy who humbly said, “There is a quota for foreigners, so it's not that difficult.”
I love serial Korean dramas.

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