A young woman gets trapped in a hostile country due to an accident, and is rescued by a kind-hearted officer. They fall in love, but must overcome many obstacles before they can be together, including crossing the border that divided their countries.
If this story had been told to an Indian a few years ago, they might have thought of the 2004 Bollywood film Veer-Zaara, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta as the hero and heroine. The story was about India and Pakistan.
But in 2019, a Korean drama changed the narrative. The drama, 'Crash Landing on You,' was about South and North Korea. However, the impact of this drama was completely different.
About the K-dramas, Paroma Chakravarty, the co-host of the podcast "Drama Over Flowers", says "Crash Landing on You" was very popular around the world because the drama showed the common sorrows of both countries very clearly. But I think South Asian people perceived it differently. Paroma Chakravarty's podcast, which was one of the first of its kind, is a testament to how popular Korean dramas have become in India. Korean dramas began to gain popularity in India when separatist rebels in the northeastern state of Manipur banned Bollywood films in 2000. After that, these dramas slowly became popular across the country. In 2020, there was a significant increase in the popularity of Korean dramas when the coronavirus pandemic forced people to stay at home. During this time, the number of Netflix India subscribers increased by 370 percent compared to the previous year. The comparison between Korean dramas and Bollywood is very interesting. Korean dramas are experimenting with their storytelling and are becoming more realistic. In this way, these dramas are also changing the preferences of viewers of Bollywood, which had already gained popularity before the coronavirus pandemic. Supriya Nair, editor of the weekly magazine "Fifty Two," says that the comparison between the two is not so easy. "Popular Hindi cinema and popular Korean cinema, Like Bollywood films, Korean dramas also create their own imaginary world where the laws of the universe do not always apply. The story here revolves between either extremely realistic or exaggerated depictions of the fourteen-layered hierarchy. Both are huge industries that are very popular among millions of viewers.
According to Supriya Nair, "Like popular entertainment around the world, Bollywood also likes the fusion of different genres and ups and downs. We can include deception, action, romance, magical realism, and poetic inner qualities in the same statement."
Korean dramas also write such stories. Often, positive and constructive endings are already known, but many surprising twists and turns occur during the course of getting there.
Supriya Nair says, "The most similarities presented in both stories are the family and social hierarchies. In Korean dramas, the strong grip of parents on children is expressed, which people of Western countries do not understand as we can. These effects often revolve around the central characters of dramas and films due to parents' decisions."
Choices made by characters such as love, career, and the responsibilities of women towards their husbands and homes are all included in these stories.
"On the one hand, where the reality of life is going through various difficulties, these stories help people forget their problems and provide a momentary escape from reality
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