| I can demystify our notion of romance in two words : Korean dramas.
Korean dramas have forever tarnished the way we college girls do love. There's an entire generation of strong-headed females who walk back to their dorms wishing her special someone was standing just behind the street corner, bouquet in hand, waiting to profess his undying love. Or that in an unexpected spurt of vulnerality, her normally impassive alpha male will grab her by the wrist, call her name and whisper painfully, " Don't go." An instrumental ballad fills the scene and cuts to cold reality.
The only thing waiting at your door is a lewd Post-it note. Your vapid man only lifts his hand to bid you a "peace out" and, most disappointingly, you don't live in Korean drama.
The good news in all this is that we're not dying from leukemia. But the bad news: We're suffering from a severe case of drama-ritis. You're suffering. I'n suffering. Our entire campus of diehard "Star In My Heart" to "Fall Story" watchers is suffering.
Not many people know this, but when the first Korean video was imported to the United States, the South Korean president put a clause in the contract that said each episode must transmit subliminal messages: "To forever doom Korean Americans with a demented version of love, videos must cement three messages into their psyche. One, love triangles must only be comprised of one rich bad guy, one poor good guy and one girl, who must also be poor and a virgin. Two, you must never call anyone by name, but must be restricted to oppa, eonni, hyung and nuna. And third, love must be as dramatic and painful as possible."
It is a short clause, but it effectively screwed up the way we love and want to be loved.
With the intensity, the romance and the agony that is Korean mini-series ingrained in our hearts, we have grown up unconsciously re-creating those scenes in our lives. We foster quasi-incestuous senior-oppa-and-freshman-dongseng relationships, riddled with sexual tension. Infect healthy relationships with concoted grief because love is, of course, only as strong as the trauma associated with it. And feign virtue because the girl should always pull away - the only exception to this rule is the very tip of her left pinky, which may only be touched by his right pinky. Granted, it's not "Sex and The City," but it's what "Sex and The City" would be if Koreans made it.
The result: 21-year-ol chumps like me. Our hearts want our college lives set to a soundtrack of tender ballads sung by the Korean John Mayer. But our heads tell us we're all idiots who should be burned in effigy for wanting so. We walk with purpose and attitude, but films movies of love in our heads.
Beware, there are secret Romantics walking among you every day. It's the girl who rolled her eyes at your question during lecture. The pedestrian who flipped you off at the intersection. Even the one who didn't hold the elevator for you this morning. But inside, we're just dreaming up our own dramas. Please treat us accordingly.
From Janet Kim - campus mail - KOREAM Journal - The Korean American Experience - April 2005 - USA www.koreamjournal.com |