rje1

Thank you! Although I began with Japanese dramas, later I found I prefer Korean dramas. Japanese tend to be overwrought emotionally, and actors tend to be exaggerated rather than natural. My favorites would be:
Nobuta wo Produce - for the unlikely friendship between three very different young people, who each had to learn to be true to their self rather than worry about what others think.
The author of Mother (you mention) has written several other fine dramas. I think his Woman is a preferable story about motherhood (Mother manipulates the emotions of the audience, especially the ending) and Quartet is excellent too.
Transit Girls has natural acting (especially Sairi Ito) and a gentle story.
"17.3 about a sex" is focussed on a particular theme and does it well.
Dakara Koya is about an unfullfilled and mistreated housewife/mother who leaves her family to make a life for herself.
The Queen's Classroom is a fascinating story about a teacher with controversial methods and how her sixth grade class grow up during that year (great child actors). The Korean remake is also excellent.
Fruits Delivery Service is a sensitive and sympathetic drama about a group of prostitutes, through the eyes of the young man who drives them to their jobs and supports them emotionally.
I've watched a few asadora and although they're entertaining, and each is informative about an area in Japan, local slang, and a particular profession, they're not so memorable in my experience.

have a look at Transit Girls

Mostly gloomy tale of a middle class Singaporean Chinese family who hires a philipina maid to help the pregnant wife, while the family struggles to keep up, what with the husband's failed investments, the wife duped by a self-help scammer, and their delinquent primary school son. The maid, despite pining for the one year old infant she had to leave behind, and the demeaning treatment she is given by her employers, is only one who has any love to give amongst this unhappy family. But in the end, it's not enough.

This is being subbed at DramaAddicts and there is a torrent at nyaa and Avistaz.

She sings in one later episode - joining a busker in a noisy street, but the voice still rings out. As one would expect, she's a competent actor, although the role didn't require much. I hope to see her acting in more dramas.

A romantic comedy traces the path to fallen in love, and if that path starts at feelings of terror or rage, then the journey of the transformation of the emotions is the longest possible and affords us plenty of the pleasures of this genre. One mark of a good relationship is that it brings out the best in each partner, or even further, that it heals each partner. They protect each other, and also support each other's growth and learning to achieve self-protection. This drama represents these themes well.

The portrayal of PTSD, anger management and psychiatry was reasonably realistic. Do psychiatrists wear white coats in Korea? Certainly none do where I live, and also it seems to me that most police avoid psychological treatment.

The side story of the transgender woman and the female student part-timer was slight and didn't add much to this drama. The best secondary couple stories play variations on the theme of the primary couple.

Ep12 would be craziest 45 mins I've ever seen on television. Everybody from the scriptwriter, director, camera, to all the actors were evidently drunk or on drugs.
I reckon this show subtly subverts the Chinese censors. This set of episodes at the school military cadet camp is making fun of the whole military patriotic thing. And I think there are several subtle homoerotic references.

I haven't watched it for a while, but my recollection is that the women who are initially afraid and compliant, support each other and learn to be assertive. We can't just count on karma to give just desserts to wrongdoers.

Go Ah Sung chooses good roles in quality movies and dramas. So I'll check this one out.

I have to agree!

There's a mysterious young woman with streaked hair who appears in a few episodes on a laptop in the family restaurant, eavesdropping on our three girls and apparently writing a blog. She's never explained in the drama. Not sure if this is an author cameo, or whether this drama is actually based on a real blog?
Research elsewhere reveals the screenwriter is apparently Yamada Yuri (whose name is not listed here but should be), who also seems to be a model. She doesn't resemble the mysterious young woman in the drama.

Does it still count as G-rated when we know full well what was going to follow after? Actually it was appropriate, because they both were inexperienced and were consciously taking things slowly.

The structure of this unique drama is what literary critic Northrop Frye called the "anatomy" i.e. the drama's main intention is to provide information, usually directly as speeches by the characters, commenting on the action which previously dramatized that information.
In this case it's about sex in relationships, and amongst social attitudes, all the important stuff that is so often left out of school sex education. I was pleasantly astounded to find this drama was made in Japan, which alas so often portrays conservative male-dominated values regarding sexuality.
As such, the characters each have a role to facilitate this exposition, but they work together well to create some engrossing drama that inevitably leads to a tearful denouement in each episode in which characters typically admit to their simplistic and prejudiced thinking giving way to enlightenment and tolerance. If only every teenager had a fairy godmother in the form of the formidable Sensei Shiroyama, or a boyfriend like Asahi Yu. One theme is how teenagers and parents both unwittingly contribute to a communication gulf, when young people are so anxious about their sexuality and parents are so worried about them, and how courage is needed to bridge that gap.
In this information-providing function it's similar to all those Japanese food dramas, except the ideas are not just about how to make and eat food, but deeper matters, psychological and social.
I'll give this a high score, not because it's the best drama ever, nor even my favorite drama, but I think it succeeds in its intention, and how many dramas fulfill the promises they make and the expectations they create? And as everyone is saying here, it should be seen by every young person and their parents. And I think by every drama scriptwriter. Should dramas only depict the worst of human nature, or should they also show role models of the best?
A great companion to this is the Korean webdrama on youtube "It's OK to be Sensitive" which presents the worst and best of sexual harrassment, issues of consent etc. The first series is set in a university campus, the second in an office workplace.

alas no longer available at youtube

The parents are troubled because 1) they're both girls 2) they're nominally sisters 3) this will split the new family. And one of the girls is too afraid to show their relationship in public.
SPOILER:
So the blended family splits again, then the parents realise how deeply unhappy the girls are, and that they're not hurting anyone else, and so they decide to accept it, and the younger girl's schoolfriends give their support too.

It's a sweet story, in which everyone gets a bit upset initially but then good sense prevails.

There's also a rather good Japanese drama called Transit Girls, about two young women whose parents start a relationship then live together, and then the girls fall in love. The younger one actually refers to the older as "onee-chan" ("older sister") when talking to her friends.

Our predicament is that we're all here because we love Asian dramas but in general Asia is not a place that's at the forefront regarding gender relations, although of course it is progressing, and any discussion here, even if only in a tiny way, will contribute to that progress.

These are important articles - kudos to you.
I recommend a Korean webdrama series on youtube called It's Okay To Be Sensitive (nothing to do with It's Okay to be Not Okay, and in fact referring to the well-known gaslighting comment). It's a series of short episodes which are explicitly exploring consent, sexual harrassment, mysogyny, showing good role models of female assertiveness and well-behaved males. The first series (which add up to about 2 hours) is set in a university, the second in the workplace (about 2 hours total).

Amnesia is such a staple of drama, yet just doesn't occur in real life. People can have amnesia for the period surrounding their injury. But personal identity is such a deeply-embedded part of our mind/brain, that for someone to truly forget who they are, they have to be extremely unwell (and inevitably other mental functions are impaired).