On March 28, 2025, the Narrative Team of the SNU Contemporary Korean Studies Research Institute hosted the first session of its year-long colloquium series “Narrating Contemporary Korea.” The event took place in Room 422 of Building 14, with Park Yoo-shin (Seoul National University of Education) as the featured speaker.

Park’s presentation, “K-Dramas and Hallyu Dramas: What Do K-Dramas Spectacularize?” examined the distinctions between earlier “Hallyu dramas,” dominated by melodramas and romance series popular across Asia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the more recent wave of “K-dramas” that have achieved global success through Netflix and other streaming platforms. Drawing on works such as Winter Sonata, Dae Jang Geum, Crash Landing on You, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, The Glory, and Squid Game, she analyzed how K-dramas transform social issues—violence, inequality, disability, education fever—into spectacle. She further emphasized the changing audience demographics, the influence of webtoons, and the persistent gap between the global marketing image of “K-drama” and the ongoing popularity of traditional romance dramas.

This colloquium highlighted how the label “K-drama” reflects not only media industry strategies but also shifting cultural identities within Korea. By situating dramas in relation to globalization, gender, class, and digital media, Park opened a conversation about how Korean television dramas mediate both social critique and spectacle, raising questions about what it means for cultural products to be branded as “Korean” on the global stage.