You didn't think I'd go through this quarantine without binge watching at least one K drama did you? This time it was 2. "The world of the Married" and "Yeonmo", The first one.. a bit crazy and psycho but I still got addicted. "Yeonmo" translated as "The King's Affection", I had been watching it on and off and wasn't all that into it. Then the last 10 episodes really drew me in. It's a totally unrealistic story, but these formulaic romcoms are so addictive. It just had the right formula for a sucker like me.
After watching the sappy, corny, tear jerking unforbidden love story, I did some digging around and found that it was adapted from... of all things.. "Manhwa". In Korean, it's comic books. MANHWA!!! Oooowah, brought back so many memories. Manhwa was the reason I started drawing. I spent endless days tracing and copying manhwa characters. Manhwa was the reason I found out about Theadora, the empress of Constantinople. Coincidently, many years later, my friend Joseph Asteinza gave me the biographical book of Theadora, and I became so captivated by her that I named my daughter after her. Manwha was the reason I wanted so badly to do gymnastics because one of the main characters of my favorite manhwa was a gymnastics star. But what chance did I have of even hitting the balance beam growing up in a struggling post war country as a middle class girl? I begged my mom to find me a gym but she was too busy raising 3 kids on her own while my dad was working in Vietnam to feed his family.
Growing up in post war Korea, Manhwa was the most popular form of reading and entertainment for Korean children. I didn't really read books per say except textbooks, but I spent hours reading Manhwa books until the age of 11 when I moved to the US and there was no more "Manwha bang" so I had to resort to reading real books.
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In post war Korea, there used to be many manhwa shops "Manhwa bang" where you can rent by the book or a whole series. That was my library and my escapism. Then came the discovery of "Candy Candy". It is a Japanese Manhwa that was translated into the Korean language. It took the Korean manhwa world by storm, and I got lost in that storm. I wanted to be Candy, the bright freckle faced curly haired orphan girl who rose above all the struggles and ended up finding love....
Manhwa was the tour de force of my childhood and now it's realized in the form of K drama romcom. So I could not fall so hard for it?
The adorable young actors and their cuteness, who can resist? The sweet crush that blossoms into true love.. never mind that the main characters almost die like 6 times but they survive the bloody attacks and even self-imposed poisoning (sorry spoiler alert too late). It's a story of forbidden love between the king who was forced to take the place of HER dead twin brother, the prince. Disguised as the king, she somehow manages to trick most people in the palace into thinking that she is a man despite her beauty. There's a sense of uncomfortable gay moments as her lover Tutor Jung falls in love with "King". Then there's another gay relationship between the queen and the "King". When the queen begs to sleep with the King, can you imagine the uncomfortableness on the part of the King? There are sweet tender moments and funny moments! I giggled my way through it all. This time I was alone in a hotel room, and no one was going to barge in and mock me for giggling or crying through another K romcom.
They suffer through insurmountable obstacles but overcome them all in the name of love.
Escapism into the K romcom drama can be dangerous. It's a dark world of never ending, unfailing love ... But is that really how love is in real life? Does it even matter? K romcom transports us to a world that everyone longs for, the love of their life that never gives up on you. You can choose to wake up to reality or you can choose to live in it.
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