Meaning and Joy: My Favorite Romantic Tragicomedies

The tragedy here is in male lead Lin Yiyang's past. The present timeline shows him reaping the fruit of everything he's been and done as he pursues the love of his life and finds his way home. This drama touches on community, chosen family, karma, redemption, national identity, and morality.

This epic love story spans a century, with two characters from the anti-Occupation underground reborn in a sunnier present that still bears hidden karmic scars. A third character lingers as a ghost, his karma unresolved. Chicago Typewriter has a profound message about the ongoing experience of trauma for people and their country.

Part 1, Moon Rising is lighter and more domestic than the karma avalanche to come. Here the drama explores family dysfunction, parenting dilemmas, sacrificing for the nation, and characters hoping for personal happiness. The drama depicts family and social conflicts, but also altruism, military glory, the dream of peace, and the aftermath of war.  

Part 2, Sea of Clouds takes characters who wished for happiness and fulfillment in everyday life and moves them into the royal palace. The dark side of family meshes with murky politics. Characters face conflicting loyalties. Peace is endangered by fault lines from past betrayals. Fated love meets inexorable history. 

Artfully written, Pinocchio has a fairy tale title for each and every episode. And like traditional tales, it explores morality, and specifically journalistic ethics. Throughout, it questions the nature of truth. The drama also illuminates family, adoptive family, loss, betrayal, revenge, redemption and forgiveness.

These lovers are beacons of liberation in the fight to resist societal prejudices. This drama probes the extremes that traditional parenting can produce when a parent has a troubled personality. Primary protagonist and female lead Yun Jin A  emerges from family and workplace betrayals able to discard stifling roles. This drama takes a loving yet merciless look at what she has to let fall away to keep her soul alive, and the undeniable losses and costs of breaking free.

A morality tale that grows in complexity as the story unfolds. The seeds of the past are slowly revealed, as the characters grow towards greater responsibility and awareness. This drama explores karma, loss, truth, justice, loyalty, revenge and redemption.

Two people are marked by the same heavy karma, and yet it takes a time slip and many threads of causality to bring them together. This drama shows people being pushed and pulled by karma, unable to see where it's taking them. But as the proverb says, "Fate brings together those that are a thousand miles apart."