Korean drama fans are familiar with waiting – for one touch of the hand, for one side glance, for the lips to be kissed by the “one”, the desired lover! Even the cameras do not miss these lingering feelings of desire and, most importantly, waiting. A brush of the fingers can feel more charged. The pause before a confession of desire more intense than a declaration of love. As a viewer I always crave that pause; when waiting increases, the intensity of desire increases. K-dramas understand waiting, they understand anticipation, and they definitely know where desire lives before it is fulfilled.
As a lover, I was drawn to what Ronald Barthes writes in A Lover’s Discourse: “Am I in love? Yes, since I am waiting.” The beloved may be absent, delayed or unaware, but the lover waits. In the K-drama, the protagonists wait for the beloved to admit their feelings, for the first kiss, for the family to accept the relationship. The audience waits for fate to bring two people who are in the “waiting” period back together.
One of the dramas that comes to mind is Crash Landing on You, where a North Korean soldier falls in love with a South Korean celebrity. If you think rationally, their love is impossible from the beginning to the end. They belong to different worlds, divided not only by class and temperament, but by borders, politics and history. He is stern, disciplined and emotionally detached. She is a difficult brat, guarded, and used to surviving on her own terms. Yet, slowly, almost against the rational logic of their (and also our) worlds, they fall in love.
What makes the story powerful is not just the love itself, but the waiting around it. They wait to recognise their feelings, to confess, to touch. And they wait to be reunited. But even when they are separated, the drama gives viewers a kind of certainty: that love, if true enough, will find its way.
In real life, waiting is hardly so poetic. People disappear, feelings change – there is work, distance, social expectations and the yummy-yucky (simultaneously attracted and disgusted) desire to move on. Because waiting is painful, humiliating and confusing. But in K-dramas, this waiting has meaning. Every delay becomes part of the love story. Every separation becomes proof of love and devotion. Every absence deepens the promise of return.
In a fast-moving capitalist world, where intimacy can also become quick, transactional and disposable, this waiting feels almost rebellious. Our real life is quick but K-dramas offer slowness. They ask us to sit with longing, to believe that love is not only about possession or speed, but about endurance.
Another recurring event in K-dramas is the unattainable lover: the CEO, the chaebol heir, the doctor, the soldier, the prince, the emotionally distant man. He is mostly rich, powerful, disciplined or socially unreachable. The woman may be poorer, chaotic, and/or wounded. Their worlds are completely different with family objections and class differences – yet love persists.
The feminist in me sometimes feels uncomfortable and I am sure others do too. But we all devour the fantasy of K-Dramas. We question: Why are so many of us still drawn to this unattainable figure? As feminists, we may reject controlling or emotionally unavailable men in real life. We may recognise the patriarchy hidden inside these fantasies. And yet, somewhere in the unconscious, perhaps many of us still desire the certainty of being chosen by someone who seems impossible to reach.
The fantasy is not about the rich man falling in love with the poor woman, rather that the cold man was never truly cold, he was wounded and waiting to be softened.
Even though he is emotionally unavailable to the world, he becomes available to her. We get to see an overlap of Mills & Boon romance tradition here.
Does this fantasy need questioning? Do women desire such men because we have been taught to see care as something we must earn? Do we imagine ourselves as saviours? Do we believe that love becomes more valuable when it is difficult to obtain? And does this longing offer certainty? I don’t have the right answer for it. I feel fantasy is not right or wrong, but it is important to acknowledge that we all have fantasies – some of which might be totally against our values.
What K-dramas offer is not only romance fantasy, but some certainty; in a messy world of uncertain relationships, unclear desires and emotional disappointments, they give us a universe where longing and fantasy have direction. The lover waits, suffers, misunderstands, goes away and returns. Love may be impossible, but it is not meaningless. And perhaps that is the deepest fantasy: not that someone unattainable will love us, but that our waiting will one day be rewarded.
Cover image by Matt McKenna on Unsplash
