4 Things That Ruin a Romantic K-Drama

Hello MDLers! How are you doing amidst a time like this where we all are social-distancing and staying safe at home?

I hope you all are safe and well at your houses!

[This article might include spoilers for certain dramas]

South Korea has been quite well known for its romantic series and films for a while now, and the love they portray are of all kinds. An average K-drama of the romance genre shares many tropes. Starting from the very popular 'Rich Man/Poor Woman' trope to the common trope for melodramas 'Lovers Separated' trope. If you look closely, most romantic Korean dramas have a certain common trope. They may be annoying to have in a drama, or they may be what makes the drama great. Depends, I'd say, as some tropes are super annoying meanwhile there are a few tropes that I love.

But today, I'll be discussing 4 things found in romantic K-dramas and the ones I'll mention are what, in my honest opinion, RUIN a K-drama. Some of these tropes might be hated by you too or might be loved by you. I hope we are all on the same boat with these :)

No One : 

Female Lead/Male Lead after just a day of getting together: Hey, let's break up because there are still two episodes to go and apparently writer-nim ran out of ideas

I feel like pretty much every one of us is sick and tired of this. Just imagine, an average of 12 episodes was needed for the main OTP to finally start dating. But then out of the blue, just a week left for the drama to finish airing, the screenwriters decided to go with the old-fashioned and god-knows-why-they-love-this-so-much trope, 'break 'em up cuz why not?'.  

But seriously, isn't this one of the most annoying things to ever add in a romantic drama? It brings unnecessary angst, a ton of pointless crying scenes, repetitive flashbacks and an hour loop of the most emotional OST the drama has. It’s definitely one of the worst ways to fill out the rest of the drama in case the writers run out of ideas.

K-drama OTP getting together in Episode 12: We shall stay together forever. 

Writers in Episode 14: oops

SLS. 

That's it. That's the title.

Gong Tae Kwang will always hold a special place in my heart  :,)

I don't know about others, but I absolutely hate love triangles. Not because of the unnecessary drama, but because of SLS. In short, I don’t like having SLS at all in a romantic drama.

SLS is the abbreviation for Second Lead Syndrome. It's a syndrome you feel when the second lead is much better than the first lead.  It totally ruins a K-drama for me when the second lead doesn’t get a happy ending. 

Goodness. At this point, my complaints know no limit.

The Reply series surely always knows how to play with your feelings

Hey, aren’t you the boy who let me borrow a pencil when we were five? 

Perhaps, it’s dEsTinY?

Oh, don’t even get me started with this...

Well yes, at first this seemed so romantic and beautiful. But after coming across many other romantic K-dramas with this same trope, I realized how tiring and awfully unrealistic it is. Popular K-dramas like What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim or Angel’s Last Mission: Love, both had this element in it and they ended up to be romantic dramas I was extremely disappointed with, after hyping them up for more than a month. Yes, I admit these two dramas are overall pretty good, but they would have been perfect if they didn't have this trope. 

Occasionally, I do not dislike it when the 'childhood connection' trope plays an important part in the story and is revealed upfront in the very beginning of the drama, as we can see in She Was Pretty and Just Between Lovers. But, I absolutely hate it when they bring it out of nowhere after 8-10 episodes, as an excuse for either a filler or a so-called exciting plot twist. 

Park Min Young has a thing for k-dramas with childhood connection, right?

OTP gets together before you even know it

To put it simply, lacking in relationship development between the leads. I feel like this is one of those problems in some K-dramas that really bother you mentally while you're trying to watch the drama in peace. 

At the moment when they have only started to show bits of feelings for each other, you feel emotionally invested, and you're excited to see how further their relationship develops before they truly admit to liking each other. But in some certain dramas, the OTP gets together way too early. They are called 'fast burn' dramas. But in some fast burn dramas, they seem very forced once the leads start dating while there was still a lot of room for development. 

This truly pisses me off and quickly ruins my mood and excitement for the drama. 

Me feeling complete lost when the leads suddenly say they love each other

[Credits to the respectful owners of the GIFs used above]

Thanks for reading!

What things completely ruin a K-Drama for you and which of these can you relate to? Comment down below! 

Until next time, sweeties! <3

^{Edited by: Cookie (1st editor) & Jojo (2nd editor)}