S1234

Don’t know. I am around lots of small children including my own and have not seen it yet. But it may happen for sure. People are so different. I do feel though that some aspects are exaggerated to enhance storytelling and her brilliance is the main plot device for all of the story arcs presented within this drama. Her character has been “iconised”. This is why we have only seen her pain and tribulations so far.

In the last year there have been more than dozen dramas where the male lead is much older example Eve, Bulgasal, My liberation notes etc etc. No one protested but people protest so violently if the female lead is older. I want to understand why people hate this so much. Then I realised this article is true https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2020/09/28/gendered-ageism-is-the-new-sexism/ women consistently face harsh criticism and rebuke from society when they reach 40. What I don’t understand why girls are protesting in this website? Surely god willing every girl who is 20 now will be 40 someday (as long as this planet continues to exist that is 🤷‍♀️😊).

All are male oriented dramas headlined by popular actors. It’s basically economics. A list actors are expensive so either the female or the male brand is marketed. They don’t have the budget to afford both unless if very high profile like descendants of sun. And it’s evident in the costings. Chinese dramas on the other hand have very high budgets which is why both leads can be a listers. Also male actors have more sway in the type of scripts they can chose female actors barring Jun Ji Hyun and Gong Hyo Jin and Ha Ji Won, not so much.

I am fine with larger age gaps since the reverse age gap people love. So subverting that trope is a good idea. The point that women can also be attractive at 40. If you read Gone with the wind which was written in 1940s there is a line which says Scarlett O Hara dad is 64. “Her mama is 36 and she is middle aged”. So from than to this is a great achievement in how older women are slowly being perceived. But this is a feeling only women who are mid thirties and above will understand. So I can understand why Korean women love this idea. I once read an analysis of noona dramas by javabeans who ran drama beans. She wrote that article in 2011 I think since 2010 noona dramas started becoming popular with the drama “Woman who still wants to marry”. Many Korean women love it and since then it has been a regular feature where every year you have at least 5 noona dramas. So definitely not a new thing. It’s a trope similar to “boy love drama”, “friend with benefits” etc and has been around since 2010 I think.

Also it would be typecasting if Lee do Hyun repeats the same role after melancholia a drama which I loved since I love Albrecht Dürer painting which was done 500 years ago and has a very interesting history behind it. Plus the geek in me loved all of the maths theorems. But I did not like the student teacher relationship. They could have met in university where he was a teaching assistant and she was a adjunct professor (they are usually considered peers) and the scandal could have been about misappropriation of funds and even then the story would have been coherent but no we got this weird schrodinger cat drama which was not a romance or which was not a thriller. To cut a long story short I don’t want Lee do Hyun play a similar role here. Revenge dramas seem to be done badly by Korea creators almost everyone seem to be dissatisfied with Eve and Why Her.

I agree. I am also tired of the student teacher trope. I wish they did away with that seems like a weird fetish to be honest. But even if that trope is not there, where the female lead is older people seem to have a problem. And why so many dramas with school bullying it’s exploded after sky castle. Why can we not have more noona dramas like Romance is a bonus book where there is an age difference but no icky relationship

In encounter it was not like that. It was a Chabol and a poor person romance with the gender subverted that’s it. People are bringing in judgment from Lee Do Hyun last drama and not her last drama. He was the student there she has not been. Most of her partners in dramas were people she met at work. Lee do Hyun has played a student which is why people are deducing. And Goblin showed a problematic underage romance and people don’t have a problem with that. Anyways it is what it is. We live in a world where heteronormative rules dictate that couples especially women abide by the rules that is put forth for them. I have seen too many bashing of noona dramas to think otherwise on this forum. No one talks about Eve where the male lead clearly looks 10000 years older but people talks about Why Her where the male lead is only 5 years younger.

Why do people assume SHK is bad at acting? She was good in that winter the wind blows and other dramas too. In “Now we breaking up” no one acted well, so clearly the direction was poor. In fact I feel Jang Ki young acting as horrible that first scene where they both speak his French it was so cringey. Why bring someone’s personal life here. Is Song Joong Ki a purple unicorn who becomes The Great Wisdomous Buddha that people have to hate on SHK so much. He literally become famous due to descendants of the sun whilst SHK was an A Lister.
Also So Ji Sub, Nam Goong Min and Ji Sung only act with women much much younger than them. So Ji Sub clearly prefers much younger women who are decades younger than him in real life and Drama life but no hate absolutely no hate. Why is this going even in 2022?
Clearly Koreans and Chinese have no problem since their dramas have a even split sometimes men are older and sometimes women are older. Lee Do Hyun is a newcomer who also has to serve in the army soon which means he would want to earn as much as he can and also get as many high profiles dramas as he can so why do people have a problem?

Very true. Which is why countries with more diverse backgrounds and communities do score better on many social performance indices.

Yes she was written to be an unlikable character I agree.

That’s exactly in my humble opinion the drama has sought to do. It shows up a very unflinching mirror onto the Korean culture of work pressure. It’s a tough watch but since I have had Korean bosses in the past it provides a good insight. Sky castle was similar in its brutal portrayal of Korean society too. I love shows like this.
I recently watched love and anarchy which was again quite honest in it’s portrayal of Swedish society of how people are expected to keep up appearances even at the cost of mental health.
That’s also exactly the reason why I hate shows like the crown (Netflix) since they completely whitewashed the brutal colonialism that the British empire did. The scene where the queen arrives in Kenya only to be greeted by jubilant Kenyan children was so difficult for me to swallow and it was completely dishonest. I would rather watch shows like flaw over shows like the crown.

It was Kim Young Dae and I think he would have done a much better job. He has a good personality

I agree in this case it’s the male lead whose personna did not match the role. I believe this drama was to have another lead and they had to search for a new lead at the last moment hence the massive miscasting

The one by Lee bo young in Mine and Jang Nara is VIP

There are some k dramas which is about revenge and the main female lead is left alll alone. For example one by Jang Nara and another by Lee no young. They are great dramas. For me I get a bit blue if I see women leads being all alone so I like romance. But if you feel called to it you can watch some good noir k dramas. For me personally I am glad this shows a love line but I do understand people who want some different

Well I do agree with you. But for people who have been lonely and in pain, love does heal. For example even in stranger things Hopper has a love story with Winona Ryder and his love for his daughter like person El. Oh Soo Jae reminds me of that in a way. All character arcs which show a character which has been wronged either end in death or sadness (example snape from Harry Potter) or in love example Aragorn LOTR, Hopper etc. it’s a plot device and something called a hero’s journey where love is explored as an archetype for the hero’s redemption. Even Classical Greek myth Odysseus ends in love. So that’s why authors continue to use it. It’s just my humble opinion :)

I would agree with you however it’s a Korean drama and Korean office hierarchy is notorious. She does that to her other female junior colleague also. In turn if you watch it later her senior at work also abuses her. This is why this drama has done so well commercially in Korea and not so much internationally because it’s quintessentially korean and is a very brutal portrayal of the toxic work culture. Several things happen in this drama which won’t happen in many other places.
According to the drama he is undergoing his roasting/hazing ritual. It would have seemed partial if she did not haze a newcomer. They show a similar concept in rookie historian go Hae ryung, where the newcomers are made to go through a tough hazing ritual.
This is similar to many south Asian dramas I watch where the patriarchy is extremely evident (example the wife never eats before the husband and only eats leftovers, the wife sleeps on the floor while the husband sleep on the bed etc etc). A foreigner will find these dramas horrifying to watch but these are loved by the locals who watch it.

I agree with you. Especially if he is a Korean. A Korean man at 18 enlists in the army and can even die in the line of duty. So if he is old enough to die and defend his country he is old enough. Why would a man at 27 be called a man child defeats me he is almost thirty in this drama if he is 27. In real life the actor is 31 and that’s no spring chicken. I am not ageist and I think no one below 55 should be considered middle aged, but I also think anyone over 25 is definitely old enough.

Yeah in goblin it was super creepy as you rightly said not because of the age difference but because 1) she was a minor 2) they almost had a ward guardian relationship very incestous somehow. But since it was a man doing it no one had absolutely any problems

I have learned to be more accepting of large age differences. I am also ok with student teacher relationships once both are adults since very famous people started as student Teachers example Dame Marie Curie and her husband and together they won the Nobel prize. What I cannot condone is if someone is kept in your custody as a ward and you are their guardian. In such circumstances it’s sacrilegious and Golbin was very creepy that way. It reminded me of Woddy Allen marrying his girlfriend who was earlier his ward. It’s icky