Spill the Beans: Spreading the drama virus and ugly crying

by HeadsNo2

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If we had a nickel for every time we heard that grades dropped due to dramas. (But I was so obsessed with Baker King back in the day.) Yeesuyoon tells her story:

Hey Dramabeans,

I was debating whether to write this, and decided to do it anyway. I have been a K-drama addict since 2012. Well, I had watched My Little Bride before, courtesy of my sister, but I didn’t have much interest then.

But during the model exams of twelfth grade, I found KBS World on TV, and it caught my attention. I started watching Baker King Kim Tak-gu, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and so on. Ultimately the effect made my final scores drop, and my mom’s reaction: “@*(@)*@@!!”

That aside, I got admitted into college, and I had to stay in a hostel. I couldn’t have my daily dose… well, my excessive dose of dramas, and I actually had withdrawal symptoms. But thank God I found Dramabeans while surfing the web so I could find my K-dramas easily. I used to smile, laugh, cry, and curse in front of my phone, and my friends thought I went mad.

So I brought the classic drama Boys Over Flowers from my home and spread the virus throughout the hostel. Now, even my sunbaes as me what I’m watching nowadays, and tell me to bring any dramas from home.

 
The family that K-dramas together stays together, as Rue testifies:

When I was growing up, I always felt like I was the outcast in my family. I have four younger siblings and they usually paired up, so I stepped back, not wanting to be a third wheel. Then about eight years ago I watched Dae Jang Geum with one of my sisters, and thus began our passionate love affair with Korean dramas.

We have watched over sixty K-dramas, and it has allowed us to grow closer. Nothing shows you the heart of a person better than a well written K-drama (all the yelling, laughing, crying, and swearing we do while watching our dramas have shown me that my sister and I are more alike than I previously thought). We have cried together, laughed together, gotten rage-y together (I’m looking at you, Gu Family Book ending), and we have found diplomatic ways of dealing with falling in love with the same guy (flipping a coin works). We both recently left home, and while we are unable to watch K-dramas while sitting together on the bed like we used to, we do Skype to mutually sigh over the beauty that was Descended From the Sun and the awesomeness that is Park Bo-gum in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds.

It doesn’t hurt that much that we are in different countries because I know all I have to do is call and go, “Did you see that smile at the end of Moonlight Episode 8??!!” Which I can say knowing that she won’t judge me or roll her eyes while I wait for her squee, which I will translate to: “Oh my God I did. I want to have cute mini-Park Bo-gum’s soon.” K-dramas have made me cry, given me serious episodes of rage brought on by the sheer stupidity that characters sometimes display, given me a way to relax, made me fall in love, have given me friends (imaginary and otherwise), and best of all, they gave me a partner and friend in my sister, instead of me ending up with just another person I had to be polite to because we happened to have lived in the same house for twenty-five years. I have loved and I have hated, I have grown, and I have had serious moments of self-reflection. All thanks to the completely wonderful world that is K-dramas. I wouldn’t change it for the world, and knowing that there is a site like Dramabeans where I can meet like-minded people? Well, now that’s just the icing atop an already perfect cake. 🙂

 
“Because Gong Yoo” might be one of the best reasons ever to keep exploring dramaland. You’re starting strong, Monchers!

Hi, Dramabeans!

I’m a newbie to K-dramas, but one of my best friends has been addicted to them for a long time already. Me, on the other hand, had never watched a K-drama to save my life, even if all my former officemates used to watch it during lunch breaks and exchange series all the time, and even if it was available on our local channels, albeit dubbed in our language. I just wasn’t interested. In fact, we went to Seoul four years ago and my friend was super excited to show us places where K-dramas had been filmed (KBS, the Coffee Prince place, etc.) but our other friend and I were all like, “O…kay…” I did enjoy Korea very much, though!

Fast forward to 2016, my friend tells me, “As my BFF, can you like gwiyomi promise me that you’ll watch this new K-drama? The lead guy is sooo cuuuuute.” (On that note, a gwiyomi promise is what we call our pinky promises to do certain things together like saving up for a trip, trying out new things, etc. Complete with the gwiyomi actions.) The K-drama she was referring to was Moonlight Drawn by Clouds. We had just watched Train to Busan—another promise I made to her—and I was completely smitten by Gong Yoo, so I easily agreed. The title Moonlight Drawn by Clouds also sounded so charming and poetic that I got curious. Over a long weekend, I caught up with the first six episodes, complete with texting my friend all my reactions: tears, laughter, disbelief, amusement, anger, the whole spectrum! And now, here we are at the second-to-the-last week of the show. We’re both completely invested in the series: ugly crying, dissecting the plot, reacting passionately, and hoping for the best possible ending for our OTP and favorite characters (Byung Yeon and Yoon-sung). She also pointed me towards this site, and I love reading the recaps and comments—such healthy and insightful discussions among the beanies, not to mention the very good recaps.

My friend now kids me that I am a subject matter expert on K-dramas because I now know the terms used and can keep up with the all the drama details. I’m still slowly treading into K-drama territory one drama at a time (after Moonlight, I’m going to try Coffee Prince because, Gong Yoo), but I’m thoroughly enjoying this whole experience (also: another trip to Korea is in the works, haha). Ever since people found out I was starting on K-dramas, recommendations have been coming in left and right, and from the most random people too aside from my friends, like my aunts, former officemates, my brother’s staff, the recruitment officer at work, and so on. It’s quite funny, but I love how these K-dramas draw us all together and how fun it is! Cheers, DB!

 
Oh trust us, we’ve heard way more far-fetched reasons to be addicted to dramas. Starswillshine shares an interesting tale:

I considered myself as a very imaginative person, so I have to supply my brain with ideas so that I could imagine things as vividly as possible, which explains my need to watch dramas, because life is far too mundane (what a far-fetched reason to be addicted to dramas).

Anyway, I started watching Korean dramas when I was eight, and that was when Dae Jang Geum, Lovers in Paris, and Stairway to Heaven were airing on public broadcast in my country, Singapore. Dae Jang Geum swept the whole of Asia off its feet and needless to say, I was addicted to it, so much so that I watched the whole drama twice (for someone who was only eight at that time) and still can remember a large part of the plot even now.

As I had no idea how to watch dramas using the internet back then, my only source came from public broadcast, which was airing Korean daily dramas such as Wife’s Temptation. Simply mentioning the drama title was sufficient to make my blood boil. I was so emotional while watching the drama until I could not enjoy my dinner and had to switch channels, because if I stared at the antagonists any further, I would probably throw the remote at the TV screen.

I would not consider myself as a K-drama addict back then because I did not have dramas to watch. But any Korean dramas that I did watch, I would fall in love with. I asked my dad to buy the DVD of Goong from China because it was cheaper there (my Dad was so surprised about my demand because I seldom asked him for stuff). I remembered discussing Goong with my piano teacher, and how she felt that the height of actors/actresses was falsified. I finished Sad Love Story and The Snow Queen in two days for each drama as a ten year old kid (I’m amazed at how I had shown the potential to marathon dramas back then). I watched The Snow Queen because of Hyun Bin because I had just finished My Name is Kim Sam-soon, and Hyun Bin looked so good in it.

In 2007, I visited Korea for the first time. I had watched half of Witch Amusement when I went to Korea. I was addicted to the drama (what a lousy drama to be addicted to, I know) so I was so excited to go there while not knowing that it had already finish airing in Korea. I went there expecting that I could continue watching the drama, but to my disappointment, I only saw sageuks airing and there were no subtitles. Anyway, when I saw the carousel in Everland (or was it Lotte World?), I was so happy because it was like seeing Stairway to Heaven in real life.

I stopped watching Korean dramas in 2009 to 2011 because I was focusing on my academics (which showed so much improvement, even though I did manage to watch Personal Taste in 2010). After my O Levels (High School Entrance Examination), I was reintroduced to Korean dramas through City Hunter. Lee Min-ho was beyond perfection in it. He looked so good from every single angle. I was hooked. And from then on, my crazy Korean drama addiction began and spiraled out of control.

I went to Korea again just after rediscovering my love for K-dramas. Since there were no subtitles in Korea, I had to watch dramas on my laptop with subtitles and was busy downloading dramas using the rapid speed of Korea’s Wi-Fi. I remembered enjoying more of the scenery in the K-dramas rather than enjoying Korea, when I was physically there and looking at the country with my own eyes.

Watching over one hundred Korean dramas came with a benefit, which was the ability to understand basic Korean. I recently took a plane, and I was sitting next to a girl and her grandmother. They were facing difficulties filling up the immigration card, so I lent them my help. We bonded over simple English and Korean. They were speaking to me in Korean and I was replying to them in English. They asked me how I picked up Korean, and I proudly told them, “DRAMAS!”

 
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