Old dramas offer clue to where cultural clashes come from

 

A scene from 'The Couples Clinic: Love And War' of which Season 1 ran from 1999 to 2008. Korea Times file
A scene from "The Couples Clinic: Love And War" of which Season 1 ran from 1999 to 2008. Korea Times file

In Korea, social changes occur so fast, pitting older and younger generations against each other

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Watching TV dramas that aired two to three decades ago which are currently rerunning on cable networks makes me feel that unbeknownst to ourselves, there have been seismic changes in our society over a relatively short time period.

Some of the stories told in dramas are quite shocking by current standards. Among others, Koreans' attitude toward sexual minorities is an issue that made me realize the differences between Korea of today and what it was two decades ago.

In the 118th episode of "The Couples Clinic: Love And War" Season 1 that aired on KBS 2 in February 2002, which recently reran on a cable network, a couple is grappling with a tricky issue that put their marriage in trouble years after their wedding. The wife turns out to be a lesbian having a same-sex lover with whom she has been close since they were in middle school. Her husband takes his wife's extra-marital relationship seriously, concluding their marriage cannot go on.

"The Couples Clinic: Love And War" is an experimental drama featuring couples in crisis and a group of matrimonial experts who give them advice to save their marriage from breakdown. The situation of the wife having a female lover is brought to the experts.

One of the experts calls out the wife, stating her "problematic sexual orientation" is the root cause of her and her husband's rocky relationship and urging her to fix it if she wants to keep her family intact.

His remarks are alarming. His characterization of sexual minorities as people having a problematic sexual orientation is something we would 안전놀이터 expect to hear on TV today. If someone did that openly nowadays, they would face the consequences. They may see their careers cut short because of their discriminative remarks. They may become a target of internet witch hunts. Or they may face both ― being bullied online and then laid off from their work for their inappropriate demeanor.

What the 2002 show reveals to us today is much more than a shift in Koreans' attitudes toward sexual minorities. It offers a clue to the origins of the generational rift between the younger and older generations, which is so deep that they are pitted against each other in some issues.

Dramas mirror society, its norms and the ways of the people. This means people in the early 2000s believed certain things and thought a certain way, and this is why the matrimonial expert's reading of the situation ― now seen as discriminative remarks ― didn't trigger a backlash back then. And this is why season 1 of the KBS 2 drama was able to have a smooth sailing until 2008 when its last episode aired.

This, in turn, shows such scathing remarks on sexual minorities were acceptable here in the early 2000s.

Considering that the loyal viewers of the drama back in 2002 were married couples in their 20s, 30s or 40s, many of them were convinced that the wife was born with an abnormal sexual orientation and this was a stumbling block to her marriage with her husband.

Nearly two decades after the first airing of the episode, the audiences are now in their 40s, 50s and 60s. People rarely change, even though they get older. Considering this, we can presume that it is no wonder there's a generational rift between the older and younger generations.

Contrary to people of older generations who were told that there are only two genders, younger people have grown up being taught about the diversity of gender and sexual orientation and thus see no justification for discrimination based on those differences.

As shown in the shift of Korean society's attitudes toward sexual minorities, there have been a lot of societal changes in Korea over the past two to three decades, particularly in attitudes toward minorities.

Again, dramas mirror society. Nowadays a drama or film deeming sexual minorities as people with problematic sexual orientation would be unthinkable.

The seismic societal change that has occurred or is still occurring in Korea may explain where the cultural clash between older and younger Koreans comes from. Social changes outpace the disappearance of accepted norms, causing Koreans to live in an era of chaos.

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