• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.351-365
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• 2017

Illness has long been an important plot device in Korean dramas. In earlier years, the device typically was supposed to be in the form of a terminal bodily disease occurring for the female main character toward the end of the story. On the other hand, the latest trend is to situate a mental illness for the male lead character at the earlier part, and use it as a tool to build characters, construct causal relations and set the intense tone for the overall story. The mental illness as a plot device helps to provide a series of reversals, revelations and turnarounds, giving viewers a stronger sense of intensity, empathy and identification. While the illness used to play the role of a deus ex machina to make a big emotional finish, the latest adoption of the mental illness as a main plot device has enhanced the flexibility of the plot and the effect of versimilitude in dramas. These noticeable changes make one suspect that the focus of Korea's drama contents might have already begun to grow out of the conventional soap operas into different genres.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.211-219
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• 2019

This study analyzed the conflict plots of the top 5 most watched TV series during the 2000-2005 period. It was observed that those popular series typically took love and success as main subject matters to actually aim for such a sensitive social issue as the widening gap between the rich and the poor as well as audience's desire for higher status. They even dared to describe our lives at home and the job as power relationships to heighten the intensity of the conflict. On the other hand, the resolution took a wide variety of both positive and negative endings - ranging from marriages and conciliations to death and arrests - as a way to have the antagonists punished. The deus-ex-machina was often used. A chronological view of the change in the conflict plots of successful dramas should deserve further academic interests.