Television Drama

Chapters 2 to 5 followed film. This chapter turns to the small screen, where the K-drama as we know it was built. It follows television drama from a fifteen-minute programme in 1956 to the two series that carried the Korean Wave across Asia, and it explains the most common historical genre, the sageuk.

The Beginnings, 1927 to 1980s

• Radio first. The Korean-drama article says radio broadcasting began in 1927 under Japanese rule, with radio dramas, and that about 30 percent of programming was in Korean.
• The first television drama. The experimental station HLKZ-TV launched in 1956, and its first TV film, The Gate of Heaven, ran for fifteen minutes. The article says the station "was shut down a few years later due to a fire". The title appears as "The Gates of Heaven" in the television article.
• KBS and the first series. After KBS launched in late 1961, the article says "television dramas began to gain momentum", and that KBS aired the first TV series in 1962. A competitor, TBC, aired "more controversial dramas".
• The 1960s. Single-act dramas came first, then daily soaps. Sajikgol Old West Room (1967) was the most popular drama, and Snowfall (1968) was the first daily soap.
• The 1970s. Sets spread widely, and because channels could not afford action or science-fiction dramas, the article says American and other foreign series were imported.
• The 1980s. Colour television arrived. Love and Ambition (MBC, 1987) "reportedly" recorded a 78 percent viewership. 500 Years of Joseon ran for eight years across 11 series and over 800 episodes, according to the sageuk article.

Three Networks and the Miniseries

KBS and MBC were joined by a third terrestrial network, the Seoul Broadcasting System. Its article says SBS was founded on 14 November 1990 and that its TV launch was 1 December 1991, though two of the article's own references point to 9 December. The article says that after the 1987 democratic reform the government created a second commercial broadcaster after MBC, and that the private licensing reopened in June 1990. It names Sandglass (1995) as the network's breakout drama.

The Korean-drama article marks the 1990s as the decade the form took shape:

• Eyes of Dawn (MBC, 1991) is called "the first real commercial success".
• Jealousy (1992) "is considered" the first "trendy drama". The article tags the source as unreliable, and the Korean Wave article says a drama of that name aired on Chinese television in 1992.
• The 12 to 24 episode miniseries became common.
• "Hallyu" was coined in the late 1990s after the drama Star in My Heart, and the article says this era "marked the start of export". Chapter 1 gave 19 November 1999 as the first known use of the term.

Winter Sonata, 2002

Winter Sonata aired on KBS2 from 14 January to 19 March 2002, on Mondays and Tuesdays, in 20 episodes of 60 minutes each. Yoon Seok-ho directed, and Bae Yong-joon and Choi Ji-woo starred. As the article summarises it, a gifted teenager, Joon-sang, falls for a classmate, Yoo-jin; after a car accident he loses his memory and moves abroad under a new name, and ten years later he returns to Korea and they meet again.

• At home. The nationwide average rating was 23.1 percent, with episode 14 the highest at 28.8 percent and episode 1 the lowest at 16.3 percent.
• In Japan. The article says it first aired on NHK in 2004, with the final episode on 23 August 2004, and was shown again unedited from 20 December 2004. It credits the series with having "improved the image of South Korea among the Japanese" and having "set fashion trends throughout East Asia". The 2003 date I had in mind appears in the article only for a broadcast in the Philippines.
• Tourism. Visitors to Namiseom (the island where it was filmed) "reportedly" rose from 250,000 to over 650,000. The article also says the series yielded "more than US$27 billion" counting tourism profit, without explaining how that figure was reached, so I do not rely on it.

The article says the actor Bae Yong-joon's nickname appears only in the titles of its references, and it never explains it, so I leave it out. It also contains a slip: it calls the 2026 re-release a "1400-minute" series, though 20 episodes of 60 minutes make 1,200 minutes.

Jewel in the Palace (Dae Jang Geum), 2003

The Korean Wave article names Jewel in the Palace (2003) as the drama credited with the greatest effect in Chinese-speaking countries. Its own article gives the Korean title as Dae Jang Geum (the transliteration is written Daejanggeum there), which settles the question Chapter 1 left open: they are the same drama.

The Sageuk

Dae Jang Geum is a sageuk. The Wikipedia article says the term "denotes historical dramas, including traditional drama plays, films or television series", and that in English it "usually refers to historical films and television series (of South Korea)".

• Early days. The first historical television series, Gukto malli, aired on KBS in 1962, set in the Goguryeo era. In the 1950s, the article says, "actual historical backgrounds were irrelevant".
• Accuracy moves back and forth. In the 1960s viewers became "more interested in actual historical events", in the 1970s legend and reality were mixed because legends were "easier to be dramatized", and in the 1980s series referred to official records "albeit liberally to some extent". The article reads as a back-and-forth, not a steady trend.
• Fusion sageuk. The article says this genre was "born" in the 2000s, with Hur Jun its key example, concentrating on "emotions and relationships" instead of "dry historical facts and distant wars". Damo (2003) was described as the first HDTV Korean series, with "Hong Kong style wire-fu action scenes". Dae Jang Geum is on the same list.

Exercises

Next chapter: The Anatomy of a K-Drama, which looks at how the form works: the episode count, the way a series is shot while it airs, the genres and the second lead.