'Korean dramas ate my brain!'

It starts innocently enough. These things always do. A 20-something girl — a Filipina studying in the States, say — starts watching episodes shown on YouTube or other streaming sites. Next thing you know, she’s showing the videos to other family members, even soliciting the interest of adult males who should have an immunity to this sort of thing. And then, faster than the evil videotape in The Ring, it just keeps spreading: across nations, across continents, like a pulsating virus emanating from its humble birthplace of… Seoul, South Korea.

I’m talking about Korean dramas of course, or K-drama, and don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. Not since the days of Maribar — when Filipinos young and old, male and female alike were sucked into the weekly teleserye that was shown here in Tagalog-dubbed versions in the ‘90s — has a soap opera genre got its hooks in a people. This time, though, the stakes are higher, the trend more disturbing. Back then, it was people gathering outside sari-sari stores on weeknights, crowded around a single TV set showing the Mexican series. Now it’s pretty much a solitary endeavor, as technology has made it possible for thousands here to view online or download episodes to their heart’s content — though with K-drama, apparently, there’s no such thing as “enough.” They just keep watching… and wanting more.

You’ve heard the stories. You probably have one living under your own roof, though it’s something you’ve all come to chuckle over, shaking your head and trying to keep the person’s condition hidden from guests and strangers. Though there’s really no shame in K-drama addiction. Unfortunately, there’s also no known cure.

The victims are usually Asian or Southeast Asian girls though, as noted, it quickly spreads across age and gender barriers. We’ve heard stories of professional Filipino males getting hooked; it’s a sad scenario that usually ends in more tears than an episode of Stairway to Heaven.

It’s pretty easy to spot someone whose brain has been snatched by Korean dramas. If the person in question stares at a laptop or TV screen six hours a day, endlessly viewing pirated DVDs of badly subtitled soap operas, then insists on sharing the plot points with you, this is a warning sign.

If the person buys an extra hard drive for her computer with 500 gigabytes of space devoted exclusively to storing downloaded Korean movies — that’s a sign. If they have a balikbayan box full of Korean dramas next to their TV, this is a red flag. If a couple invests in two TV sets for the bedroom — one for conventional television viewing and the other I.V.’d to a nearby DVD player with a steady drip of K-drama — there’s reason for concern.

We have heard of the affliction hitting Makati offices, where officemates are seen crowding around YouTube screens streaming entire seasons of East of Eden or Princess Hours or My Lovely Sam Soon during their break time… and often beyond their break time.

We’ve heard stories of Filipino couples living in the States — people who are otherwise normal, productive and benign, like the young Filipina professional who becomes quite toxic when she’s interrupted during her “viewing” time. When innocently questioned (usually by the male, who is engaged in some real-life crisis or other), she aggressively slams the “Pause” button on the remote; her head whips around at the questioner at whom she shouts “What???” in a voice familiar to those who’ve watched The Exorcist. K-drama addicts don’t like to be disturbed in their natural habitat, you see.

But thanks to technology, that natural habitat has now become… everywhere. Stroll through an airport these days, whether in Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila or Los Angeles. Those passengers you see who are heads down, focused on laptops, seemingly oblivious to the long waiting time between flights, are quietly absorbed in their drug of choice. You could shout “Bomb!” right in their ears, and they wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t even hit the spacebar.

We’ve heard stories of K-drama fans who don’t travel well. Or rather, they travel all too well — carting along plastic bags of pirated DVDs wherever they go, whether it’s Italy or the south of France. The trusty laptop rests under one arm, the bag of “goodies” dangles from the other, and if you’re touring the countryside by car you’ll be hard-pressed to get them to un-lock their gaze from the screen long enough to notice the natural beauty outside the moving vehicle.

If these K-drama travelers don’t have a TV handy, they’ll use a laptop; if the laptop’s not an option, there’s always an iPod Touch or some such handheld device; failing that, they’re likely to corner the nearest Koreans they can find and ask them to act out a little something.

At home, their interest even shifts to creating scrapbooks or online “shrines” devoted to favored Korean actors. (One viewer we know spent inordinate amounts of time taking digital photos of the TV screen while the video was in “Pause” mode, until we pointed out she could easily download endless photos online. In clinical terms, this is called “enabling.” There are even websites such as MySoju.com that are blatant in their mission: “Feeding your drama addiction” with web links to videos to watch online.)

Even after viewing up to 300 or so hours of K-drama, fans never lose interest. Sure, they’ll acknowledge there’s a “formula” involved in most dramas, but this is no deterrent to watching the same themes over and over. So maybe it’s helpful to explore the K-drama formula.

According to Wikipedia, there are generally two kinds of K-drama: the historical Korean dramas, usually set in the distant past and featuring complex plots involving greed, ambition and swordplay, set in palaces with lots of callow princes running around, smoldering for the camera.

Then there are the frankly sexual love stories. These run from a dozen up to 100 episodes long. They run the gamut from schoolgirls in love to Cinderella-type characters who find Prince Charming — usually sporting blow-dried jet-black hair and wearing a fur coat of some kind — after a series of comical mishaps.

Sometimes, the genres mix, as in Princess Hours, which involves a feisty schoolgirl who imagines a young prince sitting on the throne of modern-day Korea — and eventually meets and falls in love with him! Or there’s the winning Sassy Girl Choon-Hyang, based on a popular Korean folktale (a lot of K-drama is based on folktales and Western fairytales, it seems) in which an unlikely pair end up getting married after they accidentally sleep together — she falls asleep in his bed after drinking a bottle of wine, you see, and her spying friends announce it over the school intercom, so they have no choice but to get hitched! (K-drama makers are masters of the “meet cute” scenario.)

Of course, it’s easy to say that all these Koreanovelas are mere time-wasters, meant to keep viewers hooked with convoluted, labyrinthine stories and ludicrous plot developments. But we must admit they are capably shot and lit, well acted with plenty of modern-day references (cell phones and the Internet feature in many plots) and lots of humor to keep the pot boiling. In fact, as I sit here reviewing a video of Boys Over Flowers, based on a Japanese manga comic, in which young schoolgirl Jan Di wins a swimming scholarship, but must endure the bullying of the strikingly handsome Gu Jun Pyo, leader of a boy’s gang called F4 at her new school, until she stands up to his taunting and he eventually realizes, at long last, that he has feelings for her, but her mother is against them dating and does everything in her power to separate them, and then Gu Jun Pyo, in an unexpected plot twist, loses his memory, but in the end love endures and conquers all and… I don’t know… Maybe somebody else should finish this column for me. I’m kind of busy right now…