dear javabeans: maybe your dad would love to watch “Jeong Do-jeon” . I live near the local korean town and literally every ajussi & halapoji I knew are gushing about how great and historical accurate that drama is.

I totally get what you're talking about...we don't get any korean channels here...but there is one channel that dubs one drama after the other...but its like whatever they can get works so now its My Princess....she is totally against watching anything other than what's right tthere on the tv....

omg that is exactly how my mom is with CN Blue, found them from dramas and then starts fangirling about them to me xD Jang Geun Suk & Yonsama too....it seems moms have their "specific" tastes :P

We have Running Man on our local tv, my 81 y.o. dad loves it and will nvr miss an episode. My older sisters (all 3 of them) prefer all the tearjerker family dramas which I avoided like a plague. My partners in crime are my 2 boys, they have almost the same taste as I am. When it comes to new drama recommendation, our conversation usually goes like this, "it has Jeremy as the hero, he has black hair now and rich. It also has a ghost but she's not that scary". sometimes they bite and will ask me to download more eps but sometime they don't and go back to their old favourites, currently it's YFAS

Dear JB and GF, your moms love flower boys. JGS, LMH, CN BLUE, etc. Try watch Flower Boys series then.

For fathers who love sageuk, how about Tree With Deep Roots, my aunt really like it and I literally had to search for subs in my own language because my aunt only speaks few English. When I can't find the sub for the last epi I had to translate it manually. So bothersome.

I died laughing because I can relate. My mom loved Yonsama and I beeline for Lee Min Ho. Plus the dad = boring sageuks. Hahaha, it's so me!

Yeah, I don't think our future daughters would laugh because LMH sure is gonna age well - it's that bone structure.

Well my mum asked whether I meant it when I previously said that I'll let her have my Samsung tablet for the next 2 weeks when I'm on an overseas assignment. The Moon That Embraces The Sun is showing on our local tv now but she's thinking of downloading it to watch at her own leisure.

But even more surprising was my 67 year old Dad's taste. That Queen Seondeok and Jumong were his addictions when they were airing can be expected, but he has also developed a taste for makjangy stuff - Pink Lipstick, Temptation of the Wife and now Yellow Boots currently showing on rerun.....

But I love Winter Sonata too and I've watched it almost maybe tenth times (I lost count ^^, or not bother to count anymore). And I'm still on my twenties :P

Ha! If only my parents had the drama genes....I wouldn't have to hide my addiction for them. My mom is not into tv...she considers it a brain-rotting thing and if she watches, it's occasionally for the news, a movie once in a blue moon, some reality dance shows, and mostly religious programs. Dad, on the other hand, is very much a tv addict but only for news, gaming shows, reality shows, and recently, religious programming. None of that stuff interests me. I like stories.

My husband. Watch. Same with me and we end fighting he says boring. I say WHAT.?
So I watch. Alone
And he re watch salve. Hunter -.-for 100000times

I have the same conversation with everyone I talk to about Heirs because I enjoyed it even though it's terrible. I acknowledge how bad it is, but for some reason, I watched it til the end and it still makes me smile when I think about it. I just forget about the bad stuff and remember the good.

Yeah...dad's and sageuks. Count my dad in! He's currently watching Jang geum... for the thirty-first time *headinpalm*, after finishing Dong Yi. I offered him several "old" dramas such as MNIKSS, Pasta, Shining Inheritance, and when I checked, it's Jewel in the Palace all over again. My mom has no interest whatsoever in kdramas *sigh*. But my 2 year old daughter loves Tae-ik in Full House 2 hahahaha she even had Take One's Touch (the ost) memorized! And Hwang Tae kyung hahahaha she can do a perfect impression of his pout, oh my...

What a fun to read post! Thanks JB and GF! :-)
Me too I inherited my drama genes from my parents.
My mom was the one who got me started in K-dramas. It all started with Dae Jang Geum some years ago. She's also the one who gives me recommendations like "Giant", "Sungkyunkwan Scandal", "Gods Gift - 14 days", "Empress Ki", etc. So this week, we both are watching the final episode of "Empress Ki". I thank my mom for introducing me to the fun world of K-dramas. Love you Mom! :-)

Your parents are kyeopta ?

Is "history" even accurate? We'll probably never know whether Dong Yi was really a lowly laundry girl or what her real full name was. That's a point papabeans may like to consider. That said, I like sageuks as long as they are not associated with the Joseon dynasty - I share Song-yi's dislike of the era!

Oh my goodness, I love love LOVE this post and thread! I'm the first generation drama watcher here, and I love watching for the cultural daily stuff that happens in them that differs from my Midwestern US upbringing. I love hearing everyone's stories about your families!

My mom LOVES sageuks so she's watching this rerun of Moon Embracing the Sun on cable. And my uncle is into weekenders - HE ONLY watches those that has 50+ episodes. It's so weird.

My mom has also watched some kdramas - Winter Sonata and You're Beautiful, for sure - and she really likes Jang Geun-suk. If I'm not mistaken, she's also watched Mary Stayed Out All Night. Weird... I never pegged JGS as someone with a huge ahjumma following.

My mom did watch Full House back in 2005, when it was dubbed and I was always annoyed because I couldn't watch my fav shows. Yet now I'm here, watching like crazy.

But both of my cousins love Heirs OTL. I was scrolling through the recap of the last episode in DB (I dropped it in ep 7)and when one of them saw it, she literally screamed and I was like "멍~" And she called the other one and they spazzed over it and I was so blank. It's kinda usless to argue with it, and when a friend of them finally said it, I was thanking Heavens for it.

I don't know why but I love watching sageuks and Dong Yi is actually my favourite hahaha

Heh. As a CNBlue fan, let me just say I love your mom, gf. :D

I've tried to get my mom and my sister to watch Korean dramas with me, but they don't want to because they complain they can't understand the dialogue and think it's a chore to watch the screen all the time for subtitles. The one drama they managed to get through, though, was Dong Yi. Twice. Because the royal court and the Cinderella story fascinated them. The one thing my sister was able to take away from it was "chuncheon mama"-- she kept telling her son to call her that. :D

Mom's always nagging me about one particular drama, though. She wants me to find her a copy of Only You, "that drama with all the cooking!" XD

there was an airing of iljimae (the lee jun ki one) and my brother watched the first episode - only drama he actually bothered to watch from the start to the end and it's also one of my fave dramas ^^ but then he and my mum had to go watch dr jin and spoil it all for me -.- that was such a bad show btw ...

wish i knew more friends that were more discerning about dramas and not hooked onto pretty boys - although i think i just got onto the yang myun / jung il woo train and can't seem to get off ~

Aw, this post was very cute and funny. Your parents sound adorable.

I just had to google Roku because I'd never heard of it before. It sounds useful but seems like it's only available in the US. :(

My mother won't watch dramas. She always complains that there's too much yelling in them when I'm watching one sans headphones but she went with me to see Architecture 101 when it was showing at the cinema here a few months ago. She liked it a lot too - I think she was surprised by how much, ha, but it did not begin a trend for her. To be fair though, nowadays she only watches reality tv (like Food Network and the Amazing Race) because she says scripted shows bore her so it's not just dramas she has no interest in.

Wow. It's really interesting to hear how everybody's family gets involved in drama-wonderland. My dad wouldn't be caught dead watching an Asian drama or anime, fantasy, sci-fi, ... he used to like the A-Team ... anyways...

My mom, though, takes after me. Fantasy, sci-fi, anime, bollywood, E Asian dramas, everything. She keeps telling me to get her this or that OST for her, because she loves listening to KPop. She named our cats for her favorite anime characters.
It's funny how we're disagreeing over which actors we like. I'm totally into ajusshis and ajummas, while she loves them flower boys and girls. The younger the better, apparently. Lee Min-Ho, Jang Geun Suk, and the like.
Oh, and she loves how everybody dresses nicely in E Asian dramas (and in E Asia, actually). She's a dress maker, so she's getting a major kick out of that. ^^;

What's also interesting is that (back in the days) I could never get my mom to watch something subtitled. Now she's so stuck on dramas, she doesn't care. Recently, when we went on a little holiday together, she'd be watching drama all evening while I was trying to get some work done.

Question: Are your familes/moms Asian, though? (Not JB's and GF's, everybody else's.) Everybody I tell is really surprised at my European mom liking Asian stuff. Same for a friend of mine (mom's a major drama addicts - she even watches them raw!). So I was wondering if that's really sooooo unusual...

I am fangirling over moms fangirling over cnblue , and i'm a fangirl !

My mom is also a "Winter Sonata" fanatic lol. The only other drama that she would watch over and over is Dae Jang Geum. I'm always on my mom's good side because I buy her dvds to feed her K drama addiction. On top of that she has access to 4 Korean channels. Yep I'm her favorite girl.

hi there! just wanted to say, it's fun to read your posts here! :)

Hahahahahha! I recently got my mom into kdramas too although it was mainly due to the massive popularity of You From Another Star in china. So far she went from watching everything ji sung was in and moving onto so ji sub now XD

Great post and fun discussion. I like that "Odds and Ends" posts can be about anything, not necessarily related to how the past week has been.

No matter how much I try to explain that "K-dramas" is an umbrella term that encompasses a number of different genres, my loved ones think that they're all trashy soap operas and are surprised that I'm so into them.

I admit that I also used to be rather judgy about other people's taste in dramas~ like I'd wonder what was wrong with someone if they said they just loved Nail Shop Paris. But I've witnessed myself thoroughly enjoying a lot of craptastic stuff, and now I get that we all have different hooks that can cause us to say, “I know, but it’s so cute!”, “I know, but I don’t care!”, and “I know, but I like it!”. Knowing that doesn't stop me from occasionally shaking my head when someone else's perception of a drama is so different from my own, but I've come to appreciate our subjective differences. (And let's face it, enjoying k-dramas is way more about subjectivity than it is about objectivity, though it's jjang when both are satisfied.)

Mom's first drama was You're Beautiful so now JGS is one of her faves. Our tastes are pretty much on par although she doesn't like too much violence so Heartless City was a no-no. But then she loves sageuks and it was both of us along with Dad (kinda on and off) that marathons Jumong over a three week period.

Normally I download everything and put it on her laptop but with her new smart phone, her dependency on me is faltering thanks to Viki. Now she's also watching dramas from other countries. Lol.

Your parents are cute JB and GF

And yay for Jang Geun Seok (and his hair).

I totally relate. My mom introduced me to kdramas starting with the classics like Winter Sonata, Stairway to Heaven, all that good cheesy stuff.

ah your story remind me to my grandparents. i even started my kdrama addiction thanks to my grandma lol because she love dong yi and pink lipstick soo much (but i didn't like both dramas, even really hate the latter lol). my grandpa like sageuks, from the very loooonnnggg sageuks like dong yi and jumong, to some fusion sageuks like the princess man. i doubt he knows about make-up the history thingy, but he always praise joseon kingdom while watching because joseon kingdom system is better than our country in once upon a time era