I think Girlfriday X JavaBeans X Awesome is the new OT3 of the Internet.

*adoration in slightly creepy internet way*

Thank you for what will be a hella entertaining and informative series.

Woops Sorry Girlfriday, I thought you were Javabeans! Thanks for your funny article. I didn't understand what skinship was in Samsoon, and I was googling it but couldn't find a good definition.

LMAO for that Coffee prince picture!

Now do the Wrist Grab! The Wrist Grab!!

Ah but thanks for articles like these. I only recently discovered your site and I have come to love what you guys write- that's what sets you apart from other sites. Keep up the good work!

Yey! Lovin this idea! Great first post for it!!

So, my question is: what's up with the Time Gaps of DoOms/Going abroad? Almost every drama has this somewhere. The time gap itself is almost understandable in some circumstances but why does it ALWAYS have to be abroad? And, usually studying X abroad? Why can't they study in Korea???? WHY MUST THEY BE SEPARATED FROM (INSERT HERO/HEROIN's NAME HERE) FOR NO REASON?! Is this just an uncreative plot device used to prove so and so's love is "strong enough to transcend time and space" or is there something more to it I'm not getting?

I want to try a "piggyback" ride. I hope someone could give it to me too...someday.

I love piggyback rides! Cause they always do it! LOL. I think it's overused but never boring, imo.

That said, I really pity the heroes. I wonder if they go and train up their upper body just to piggyback their female leads for a long period of time. Though I doubt their female leads are heavy enough...but still...

My favorite is actually from the Successful Story of a Bright Girl, where Jang Hyuk's character actually placed a hand on Jang Nara's head as he brought her into the house so she won't hit her head at the door (which she did in their NG scenes... :P ) That is absolutely sweet.

like how Minwoo grabs the handbag for Kaehwa. All these small details are just pure love. (Sorry, I digressed!)

Actually, there's also the other instance where piggybacks are given: Broken heels.

Other reasons for piggybacks besides, twisted ankle that recovers immediately, Drunken haze that no one saw coming, and bizarre illness that can only be helped by physically running your friend to the hospital:

"I need to reach that thing over there that is so very important and just out of reach. Oops we fell into each others arms"

Some convoluted high school or college race/sport

Not long after the couple has been together, "She" usually finds a way to horse around in a montage date and will jump on his back directly.

another great entry.
I think I might be the only one here that loves piggyback rides. I used to make my boyfriend give me piggyback rides. Usually it was climb on a nearby high object like a bed or a ledge, but when that wasn't possible there was always the run and jump on his back. I think I did like it more after starting to watch Kdramas, but it wasn't far fetched to me since I was a bit of a monkey when young and never totally lost the inclination. Though I see both the points you make about the piggy back- the alpha male thing and the paternal thing, I feel it also can be more of a pure skinship thing or more of the girl in control thing. These would not be the drunk piggy back but the willing awake piggyback. Think the piggyback in The World That They Live In, where she is on his back while vacuming. He wouldn't have gotten her to help clean if he hadn't carried her around. I do admit that this type of piggyback is rarely seen, but it is another exception worth mentioning in addition to Coffee Prince above.

LOL wow the article is so true .. after reading the personal taste paragraph part it actually now makes a lot of scene.

I'm going to enjoy reading these new topics ;D

Wow great article! Thanks GF!

It'd be really cool to do a cross-cultural analysis b/w the various asian melodramas. To showcase their idiosyncrasies, and delve into the makings of a real drama :D

As an Indian, I can tell you...there is a HUGE difference b/w Kdramas and bollywood. The realism in K dramas is so much more... I kid you not... youtube any action sequence...especially from Southern India, and you'll see the ONE good guy combat 20 people, and somehow manage to kick them without making actual contact....and the funniest part is the sound effects that the director employs in the action sequence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2hPgcFgCVc

yay, thanks for this post! what a good idea for a series!
haha, i actually felt so proud that i recognised all but one of the scenes/dramas (although i guess those are all pretty popular trendy dramas so its not too much of an achievement...)

ooh, two questions...
in kdramas the leading females are usually played by pretty hot actresses
why must they always be called unattractive, either by their romantic interest, or by their mother or friend or something?
example: mnikss, bbf, tamra the island
do people in kdramaland think that i will empathise with a character more if she is ugly?

and mean mothers (or mothers-in-law)
are korean mothers that crazy? are they that obsessed with who their child marries? why are they presented as this crazy on kdramas?
it frustrates me so much when mothers try to break up or at least somewhat oppose their child's (usually son's) relationship...
example: smile you, bbf (this seems to be a reoccuring one for cliches...), you're beautiful, wwswtm, mnikss

and the wrist grab would be a good one too

I always fascinated by watching piggyback ride in K drama/movies. The drunk girl, the broken heel and twisted ankle girl are most common. There are many scenes on carrying a sick person, g/f, wife, mother , father carry and run to the hospital. I wonder is the hospital always that near to your place that you piggyback the patient? No taxi, no ambulances, no relative's car to send the patient to the nearest hospital? Caring is one but to carry the heavy person on your back and run to the hospital is very unusual in modern day life.

Love the piggyback rides in all the dramas. I've noticed, the girl always ends up with the guy who gives her a piggyback, and not his rival who does not.

@Girlfriday

I want to know about the pricking of the finger for indigestion. Does it really work? Is it done on the left or right hand?

some ideas....

-the norebang scene usually in a drunken outing, whether alone or with your friends
-The Han river
-Korean mothers or even worse mother-in laws for first sons
-Couple rings, t-shirts, shoes, and so on
-Of course the wrist grab and the lips only skim kiss

that's all I can think of for now

Awww~ Piggyback rides... Thanks so much for the sweet article, GF!
Look forward to reading more of this series.

Poor guys whose girlfriends are K-drama fans, though... Hihihi!

Great new segment! thanks for the lesson on piggyback rides. i didn't know "skinship" is a korean term which i slowly started using since watching WGM lol!

so what i want to know is why do male leads always literally run after the girl instead of using transportation? i mean it's not like it's going to get them there any faster. what's the emphasis or symbolism of that action?

LOVED the drama hero boot camp comment. And thanks for clearing up the cell phone bit. I was starting to wonder if samsung made two different versions of their phones..(the US version actually having off buttons).

What i'm wondering about is why the k-drama hero ends up usually being a jerk? I know it has a bad boy appeal but i'm seriously getting brainwashed into thinking that a nice caring guy is boring and i'm not in love unless i meet someone that i hate initially and fight with constantly.

I love this girlfriday! The Piggyback is probably one of the many reasons that drew me to Kdramas. It's not like I haven't seen or experienced(as a rider or the ride) piggyback before but the way they are used in Kdramas(and I'm assuming, in Korea) is very heartwarming. In my comfort drama 'Spring Days' Go Hyun Jung was pretending to be asleep while Ji Jin Hee was telling her how much he is suffering because of how heavy she is. Both pretending to dislike but honestly loving the piggyback. And then there was the brotherly piggyback wherein Jo In Sung knows he couldn't take Ji Jin Hee to the hospital by car after JJH's accident so he piggybacks him all the way there. In both cases there was a one way conversation(because those being carried are unconscious) and what's being said in those conversations is helping the story move along. These two are my favourite piggybacks scenes.

love this post!
I think, the best piggyride back is YEH and GY in coffee prince.
LOL! YEH carry GY home by herself. She's strong girl.. XD

I wish I could get a piggyback now *sigh* Thanks for the entertaining article :)

@nattacatta
I used to wonder too about the crazy mother-in-laws from hell portrayed in the dramas. Then I got one of my own ... and realised, that's why they appear in the dramas. The writers probably have one of those too.

I think piggyback rides are "forced hugs", you have to hold on for fear of falling, hugging him with 50% of your body. Just like motorcycle rides where you have to hug for dear life. The girl is dependent, the guy feels macho.

lol fun post! :)

As inappropriate as I always am: *crush nycgrl's hubby*

o Cdrama and Jdorama have sth that is similar in effect as piggyback by carrying the damsel in his arms お姫様抱っこ/ 公主抱/ 横抱. It's less patronizing imo, can be more romantic, but much more 'in her face' literally and figuratively

Don't forget the Jimjilbang needs an article too. Although it is not allowed, I want to live in one after my last visit to Korea. It is sooo much more than what they show in the dramas

interesting topic! and i think the forced piggy back ride by LMH in personal taste was rather innovative!

also, after watching some NGs, I think it must be one of the hardest part to act -- to talk normally and look cool when feeling like your back is going to break any minute!

I Love the piggy back ride in Prosecutor Princess..
hahaha so romantic...
I'm an Asian, an asian people not as extreme as West culture in terms of skinship.. so I can understand why piggyback ride often as a device to make the main couple in korean drama as a reason to make a skinship without being shy into each others.
Yes, it's all about culture... I'm asian, so I can relate to Korean culture... ^^

i've submitted a definition for KADDICT at the urbandictionary.com ( kindly visit the site coz i know you guys can give a much better and precise definition than i do )that's a tribute to us who can never get enough of the dramas!

I love this part of Dramabeans...it teaches a lot about Korean culture. Just a heads up but I also heard the term "skinship" in Hana Kimi (JDrama)....so I dunno which country it actually started from.

Thanks!

I don't think I ever got a piggyback ride from my father. He had a bad knee. I tried though!

Surprisingly I'd figured most of this out just from watching dramas, with subtitles no less since I don't speak a lick of Korean. I've seen so many piggyback rides, and I haven't even seen that many dramas so far!

haha thanks, that was fun to read gf! keep it up :D

i love piggyback scenes in kdramas they are so lovely and romantic that i always make my brother get me a piggyback ride and most of the time he doesn't!

Ojou_Belle is right...I was always under the impression that "skinship" was a Japanese-English word. I heard it in Japan when I was there in the early '90s, and didn't hear it in Korea until more recently. Maybe it's come to have this sexual/relationship meaning in Japan now, too, but originally it just meant the physical closeness of mother and child, and was thought of a good thing for child development.

ah.. no soundtrack? :D hehe.. will read this anyway

Christ, even Dae Jang Geum did this once.

I think it's a real weakness of K-dramas that they rely so much on tropes and conventions.

wow, i learnt a lot from this post. very interesting, add on my knowledge on korean culture. now i can appreciate the storyline better.

thanks

Really enjoyed this article. I'd really love to see more of these cultural motifs!

I don't like piggy-back rides either XDDD

Urgh, do I see a wrist-grab post coming? XD

Thank you for this post!! ^-^

Drama hero bootcamp! LOL!!! Made my day, Girlfriday, you're awesome!! haha

wouldn't happen in real life, sad.

Very nice post. Really enjoyed it. It's funny how dramas can tell a lot about a culture, but also terribly misinform or exaggerate things. I did notice this piggyback thing with many series, but it does seem like something you wouldn't see Koreans do all that very often. :P At least, if in a romantic capacity, not in public.

Although I'm all for piggyback rides in kdrama, I find them a veery early stage of maybe-romance (unless done like the later ones in Coffee Prince) and I don't think they can carry the romance very well. Especially when it's just done as a necessity cause the other party is wasted.

It stills pisses me off that kissing (rather pecking) is so childish in most kdrama and a kiss is really the seal for a normal adult relationship. They can have all the piggybacks they want, but unless the skinship moves on from such "innocent" expressions of it, I can't, as a westerner, feel that the relationship is full and secured. :P

And to steer away from piggybacks and to kissing, if you're gonna do it, do it right. I can "fall for" the romance notion between two characters the way the plot makes me so, but when it's time to kiss and I see those now-I'll-kiss-u-like-we're-7-years-old kisses, it makes the illusion just shatter.

Piggyback is a nice "safe" way to show skinship, but if you're gonna move on from that, as you should, do make sure it's realistic. People, adults, don't kiss like that. It's disrespectful to adult viewers and to the actors as well, when you force them to act badly. They work so hard to make a story and character convincing and then are forced to do a kiss that just ruins it all.

Take "You're Beautiful" as a very good example. LOVE that series. Seen it about 13-15 times already. Now, the actors do a good job. There's some skinship to begin with and the story is convincing too. Then comes the kiss moment and it's aaaall gone for a while. I mean, I cringe at the kisses there. It's like the woman has lip herpes and he's too scared to touch her lips with his. The only fragment of a second where you see a proper kiss, is during the first angry kiss, when he grabs her and wee see them from the side and that happened by accident cause Jang Keun Suk pulled her too hard! Ahahahaha!

I mean, adults don't kiss that way. They just don't. When you kiss someone you like, it's not as "innocent" as that. Especially if you're at an age where your hormones are raging and/or love that person. And it's one of the first and supposedly passionate kisses. You might give them pecks if you've been going out for a while and are going out shopping or something and you just want to give them a quick peck.

If the kiss involves holding on to the other person and it actually lasts more than a second, it's just not realistic that you'd kiss them that way.

@girlfriday Meaning, I'd love to see an article on the awful kdrama kissing, why it happens, exactly who are to blame, what the cultural reasons might be and all that. Cause as a European, it really ruins the story for me when I see such things. I mean, I'm not saying I want deep tongue kisses all the time, but they could make them better. Also, why do some series do it? How come they get permission or aren't critisized etc etc? I mean, if Personal Taste and Coffee Prince could have proper adult kissing (which was amazing btw), why can't more series have it? Also, do Korean viewers like this kind of kissing in kdrama or do they also want to see more realistic things?

Being European, I'm clueless about the culture and possible "rules" about such things in Korea so I honestly want to understand why they still do such prude kissing in the year 2010. Cause to a westerner, it just makes the story lacking and the actors seem like they're not doing their job well, which isn't the case.

Sorry for the long post, but this is something that has been troubling me for a while :D

just wish gong yoo can piggyback me, haha

lol if only i were light enough to be piggy backed like that.

and i totally forgot the gender role was reversed in coffee prince! all these screen caps make me smile... ahh the memories!

Samshik looks ready to beat Samsoon in the first picture. LOL.

Oh my god. . . how nice would it be if I had Siwon-oppa or Minho-oppa give me piggy back rides? Without the whole drinking fest. Ick.

My question is, how do you get the person physically on your back when they are passed out? It seems like it would be a tough maneuver. They can't hold on to you, and they cant wrap their legs around you.

They never really show that part in the dramas. You see the drunk scene. Then she passes out. Then it cuts to the guy walking down the street with the girl on his back. I want to see the guy actually put the limp rag doll on.

It would be even funnier if we had an inept guy who couldn't do it. He attempts it several times and fails. Then our HERO steps in and says this is how it is done. Of course he is in excellent physical condition. He has just returned from Military service. He is able to walk 10 miles and up !,000 steps with the girl on his back. :D That is why the actors returning from Military service are even hotter.:D

Would love to know more about finger pricking for indigestion. I may use this one someday.

Have used the hold ears after handling something very hot. I know that works!

I'd like to know the home remedies for illness or maintain health.

call me crazy but when i first saw piggyback in kdramas i thot woahhh that sweet of guys to do that & to me kdramas won't be complete w/o piggybacks! hehehe one other thing i really like seeing in kdramas is when either a guy or gal pulls out a blanket & covers their loved ones while they pass out to sleep or just being drunk sometimes! where else can u see these things in western movies? NADA! Those are unique scenes i really love most in watching Kdramas! luv it luv it! I also luv the fact that kdramas always keep us in suspense when it comes to skinship...the guy almost kissing the girl but then not & the gal pulls back; also the way the guy grabs the girl sporadically....ahhhhh sigh sigh....this is why i everyday every single day...i need dosage/s of kdramas without which i'll go bonkers perhaps! :))))

thnx DB

i'd like some of those actors piggyback me hahahaha one would be kim ji hoon! i think he's got one of the most beautiful faces in Kor. entertainment & he's an eye candy without a doubt!!! he seems very kind & charming! he'll be my top choice for piggyback! hahahaha :)))))