4. Gender and Identification in Korean Drama Cont'd

It must also be noted that second-wave Korean dramas are increasing in Korean drama safe increasingly turns orthodox representation of femininity. The 2017 mbc

drama Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (Yeokdo-yojeong Gim Bok-ju), for exam-

ple, features a female weightlifter athlete who enjoys eating and repeatedly

physically intimidates men, including her eventual boyfriend.The female char-

acter is both strong-willed and physically strong, defying the conventional soft

gendered representations of femininity.Thatsaid,while Weightlifting Fairy KimItmustal so be noted that second leave Korean dramas are increasingly turning towards a more unorthodox representation of femininity. The 2017 mbc

drama Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (Yeokdo-yojeong Gim Bok-ju), for exam-

ple, features a female weightlifter athlete who enjoys eating and repeatedly

physically intimidates men, including her eventual boyfriend.The female char-

acter is both strong-willed and physically strong, defying the conventional soft

gendered representations of femininity.That said,while weightlifting fairy Kim BokJoo garnered a cult following it failed to become a commercial success; only

a few of our informants actually watched it, and those that did, did not finish it.

It is difficult to classify second-wave dramas as being simply ideological

reproductions of traditional gender norms. Most of our female informants

activelyrefusedtoidentifywiththepositionof thewomanasimaginaryphallus

as represented in many of these dramas; rather, they chose modes of viewing

the character from a different subjective position.

In spite of the literature which shows that Hallyu was originally driven by

the male star's power to capture the fantasies of a female audience (Lee 2010),

our interviewees rarely mentioned the male protagonists in the dramas. Their

focus was almost exclusively on the female characters. These characters functioned as an ideal-ego for many of our female informants.

Building on Freud, Jacques Lacan discusses the concept of the ideal-ego

(moi-ideel/Idealich), in terms of the narcissistic capture of the imaginary. This

ego, however, is always an idealised vision of oneself. The ideal-ego exists in an

ambivalent relationship to the subject. It is both loved and hated since this is

also the 'unattainable place of perfection' (Chiesa 2007, 20). It should hardly be

surprising that the ideal-ego is often provided to us from somewhere outside

the individual in the age of mirrors and selfies (Fink 2016, 73). The ideal-ego

projected on to female protagonists in Korean drama provided many female

informants with idealised versions of themselves—images which at the same

time they feel they fall short of achieving—and often eliciting ambivalent feel-

ings. Interestingly enough, however, these images are not validated by a male

desire.

One can appreciate the significance when one contrasts this with the way

male informants approached Korean dramas. Male characters in dramas could

also provide points of identification for male viewers. Joong Ki is a 24-year-old

male student from a middle-class family. Both of his parents are in their fifties

and work in a government agency. He was very critical of the ways in which

males are portrayed in Korean drama, believing that such men set impossible

standards:

The male characters are always strong, clever and rich. I look at dramas and I want to be like those male characters. So I follow them. When

the characters meet their girlfriends they are always so gentlemanly, you

know, like always offering her his seat and so on.

Joong Ki looks at these male characters as idealised versions of masculinity

even though he resents the impossible standards they hold men up to (ambivalence of the ideal-ego). There is, however, an added step to this imaginary relationship, which at this point is fundamentally triadic. In Joong Ki's words: 'I

look at drama and I study it, I guess, unconsciously, because girls want guys to

be like that. The guys are always gentle and kind.'

In a way, Joong Ki's response hints at the feelings of uneasiness expressed

by the male audience in East Asian countries from the experience of seeing

these idealised male characters, resulting in negative views on Korean dra-

mas (Shim 2003, 417). That said, contemporary Korean dramas also contain

the potential to recreate new points for cathartic identifications with counter-

hegemonic masculinities. Elfving-Hwang (2017) discusses at length the drama

Incomplete Life (Misaeng) (tvN, 2014), which represents the precariousness and

frustration of 'underdog salaryman masculinity' (2017, 56). Following the 1997

financial crisis, the dominant hegemonic masculinity of the corporate war-

rior began to show cracks. Elfving-Hwang argues that 'Misaeng represents a

counter-discourse that aims to reclaim hegemonic masculinities from neoliberal materialism' (2017, 66). Joong Ki and the other male informants in our

study, however, did not watch or make reference to Misaeng. Joong Ki ulti-

mately looked to drama to learn a thing or two about woman's desire. Lacan

famously formulated that desire is always 'other': 'Which basically means that

we are always asking the Other what he desires' (Lacan 2008, 38). In this case

Joong Ki answers the question posed by desire by looking towards the male

protagonists in dramas. His ideal-ego is the result of an interpretation of the

other's desire, by what he generalises as woman's desire.

Interestingly enough, Joong Ki seems to reverse the reading of dramas taken

by many scholars. Dramas for Joong Ki do not reflect an androcentric consti-

tution of the female object of desire but rather they represent the idealised

object of female desire. What both Joong Ki's and the conventional scholarly

readings of Korean dramas miss, however, is that behind the veil of the imag-

inary relationship of love there is a very different identification in play for the

female subject. Our female viewers did not identify with female protagonists

in order to project their fantasy for an idealised male 'prince'. Female infor-

mants projected an ideal-ego into the personalities of the dramas looking for

strong,fierce,independent,kind,funandsuccessfulrolemodels.Identification

was often expressed as empathy (gonggam) with the characters in the dramas.

Informants could relate experiences of the characters to those in their own lives

(such as parental pressure for educational achievement, ambivalence towards

the prevailing cult of plastic surgery, etc.). Through watching such dramas our

female informants also felt that they could express themselves and their emo-

tions in ways which they would otherwise find difficult. Da Eun is a 23-year-old

female student. She believes that many young Koreans can relate to characters in dramas because these characters are able to express a personality which for many of them is difficult. She believes that 'all Asians, even Japanese, don't

express their thoughts openly'. However, the characters in Korean dramas are

full of confidence ( jasingam). While 'Korean culture is not direct in Korean

drama characters express their thoughts naturally, confidently and powerfully.'

Many informants enjoyed watching dramas because it allowed them to express

their own feelings through their sympathetic identifications with the charac-

ters. Da Eun, however, seemed torn about this ideal-ego. She said that she does

not aspire to be like that, since 'expressing oneself freely is not good to others'.

In this sense the ideal-egos represented through female protagonists in Korean

dramas were not read as products of male patriarchal desire but, rather, they

expressed a desire developed in opposition to the prevailing allocentric moral

order.

In part this reading is enabled by a certain transformation in the texts of

second-wavedramasthat,tosomeextent,arechallenginghegemonicvisionsof

society. Many of our young Korean informants expect dramas to correspond to

theirowndefinitionof reality.Thesubjectof therealism(hyeonsiljok)of Korean

dramas was frequently brought up by our informants. Dramas were often crit-

icised for being unrealistic (bihyeonsiljeogin). This standard of 'reality' applies

not only to the gendered portrayals of subjectivity but also to the portrayals of

the modern social order, echoing in some respects the scholarly critique of the

melodramatic representations in Korean dramas.