[Essay/Opinion] The Habit of Watching Korean TV Dramas in My Generation


created by Zahra Nur Fadilah

            The Korean TV drama era has spread in many countries, particularly Indonesia. Korean TV dramas have been consumed both teenagers and adults. Technology has a great role in the spread of Korean TV dramas. There are various types of Korean TV dramas which can make most people interested watching it. The habit of watching Korean TV dramas can appear positive and negative influence. Addicted people of Korean TV dramas need to do some actions in order to decrease negative impacts.
            The spread of Korean TV drama in Indonesia is hard to be controlled. Besides getting a DVD of TV dramas from a legal store, in this globalization era, Indonesian can also get the DVD from an illegal store. Most people, usually girls and even teenagers, can easily get the DVD because of the low price and the easiness of getting it. The advance of technology has evolved for supporting the growth of Korean TV dramas in Indonesia. The internet connection facilitates watchers of dramas getting the soft file. Social media also plays an important role in spreading dramas to many countries. Based on the research of the website www.pewinternet.org, Internet, Science & Tech describes some graphics which show the increase of social media usage. The website has revealed that “the rise of social media has affected such things as work, politics, communications patterns around the globe”, getting and sharing “information about health, civic life, news consumption, communicate, teenage life”, and even more. How popular the existence of social media is. By having an account of social media, everyone can get more information. Fans of the drama can share, participate, and write some comments on social media. Besides of using social media, there are also a blog which shows some ongoing or booming dramas. People can easily download the file by following the step.
            Most people may be interested to watch the drama because of several factors. The number of episodes, various genre of dramas, a curious of story plot, and special songs of dramas soundtrack. A few of episodes of Korean TV drama may be preferred by drama lovers in Indonesia than Indonesian dramas. In contrast, most dramas in Indonesia have the long duration of episodes. The story also does not develop. The genres of Korean TV drama include detective, murderers, love (the most often), family, friendship, and many more. The love stories of Korean TV drama are usually related with other complicated events. For example, pinocchio, the drama of SBS channel in Korea has a complicated story. Although the love story of In ha and Dal po can be guessed, there are some intricacies of the plot of the drama. The soundtracks of  Korean TV drama have their own characteristic. Each drama or channel attempts to make songs for the drama soundtrack. The team project of drama does not take songs which have existed or from other bands.       
Korean TV dramas often contain many inappropriate scenes for teenagers. There are many sexual actions which are showed. Kissing scenes the most often exist in Korean TV dramas. Rude words are also often appear. Moreover most people, especially teenagers in junior or senior high school even in college, mix terms of Korean daily conversation with Bahasa in their informal conversation although it is not excused to mix them in one time. The usage of Korean term with Bahasa can ruin the usage of Bahasa in proper context. In addition, addicted people of the dramas can develop their ability of speaking languages. They can at least be bilingual or multilingual people including English as an international language. According to Jiang and Leung, they do a research on American and Korean TV dramas that “Learning was the third factor, showing that respondents watched foreign TV dramas to learn foreign languages, be exposed to foreign cultures, or keep up to date about fashion” (2012:11). Besides of kissing scene and the mixture of language, negative impacts can influence health of addictive fans. They usually sleep late. Sleeping at midnight or dawn time can make both their health and academic scores getting worse. Teenagers have to prepare their needs to go to school instead of watching dramas until midnight.
 Besides learning about Korean (its language), fans also get positive morals from K-dramas, such as Who are you school? 2015, My Daughter, Seo Young, You are the best, Lee Soon Shin, and many more. Each of them gives advice to fans. Who are you school? 2015 is about friendship, bullying, and a child-parent relationship, so on with My Daughter, Seo Young (a daughter-father relationship), and You are the best, Lee Soon Shin (a daughter-mother relationship).
Thus, the habit of watching Korean TV dramas can appear both negative and positive influences. It occurs to teenagers in junior and senior high school even to student in college. It is difficult to anticipate negative influences. The role of parents can be crucial by supervising their children while watching the dramas. There must be the fans awareness of national language in daily conversation and appeared impacts of kissing or sexual scenes.   

Jiang, Qiaolei and Leung, Louis. 2012. Lifestyles, gratifications sought, and narrative appeal: American and Korean TV drama viewing among Internet users in urban China. The access is from gaz.sagepub.com on Mei 29 2016

Word count: 840 words


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