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.