High production values, top-notch acting and attractive stars have helped propel South Korean TV shows to the top of global viewership charts, but therapist Jeanie Chang believes there are deeper reasons why so many people are hooked.
With plotlines that tackle everything from earth-shattering grief to the joy of new love, watching K-dramas can help people reconnect with their own emotions or process trauma, giving the shows a healing power that transcends their cultural context.
“We all have family pressures and expectations, conflict, trauma, hope,” she said, explaining that watching heavy topics successfully managed on screen can change people’s ability to navigate real-world challenges.
For Chang, who was born in Seoul but raised in the United States, K-dramas were particularly helpful in allowing her to reconnect with her roots – which she rejected as a child desperate to assimilate.
But “the messages in Korean dramas are universal,” Chang noted.
“Mental health is how you’re feeling, how you relate to others psychologically, how your brain has been impacted by things. That’s mental health. We see that in a Korean drama.”
‘Soften my heart’
Global K-drama viewership has exploded in the last few years, with many overseas viewers, especially in major markets like the US, turning to Korean content during the pandemic.
Between 2019 and 2022, viewership of Korean television and movies increased six-fold on Netflix, its data showed, and Korean series are now the most-watched non-English content on the platform.
US school teacher Jeanie Barry discovered K-drama during a family funeral, when a friend recommended a series – 2020’s “It’s Okay to Not Be Okay” – to help her through a difficult time.
“There was something about it, the way this culture deals with trauma and depression, that really struck a chord with me,” Barry, who travelled to South Korea as part of a K-drama tour organised by Chang, told AFP.
“There were a lot of tears during that drama, but it also made me see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Immediately hooked, Barry said she had watched 114 K-dramas since discovering the genre, and effectively gave up watching English-language television.
“They let me soften my heart,” she added.
Fellow American tour member Erin McCoy said she had struggled with depression since she was a teenager, but K-dramas helped her manage her symptoms.
With depression, “when you live with it that long, you’re just numb and so you don’t really feel bad, necessarily, but you don’t ever feel good, either”, she said.
She said K-dramas allowed her to experience emotions again. “There are so many highs and lows in every one of them, and as I felt the characters’ emotions, it helped me relate to my own more.
“I felt like I was able to express and experience emotion again.”
Art therapy?
The idea that a K-drama binge can help with mental health may seem far-fetched, but it chimes with decades-old psychotherapy ideas, one expert said.
“Watching Korean dramas can be beneficial for anxiety and depression from the viewpoint of art therapy,” Im Su-geun, head of a psychiatry clinic in Seoul, told AFP.
“Visual media like Korean dramas have significant strengths that align well with psychotherapy.”
First used in the 1940s, art therapy initially involved patients drawing, but evolved to incorporate other artistic activities.
K-dramas – or television and cinema generally – can help viewers “gain insights into situations from a new perspective, fostering healthy values and providing solutions to their issues”, Im added.
While it is unlikely to be prescribed by a doctor, if a therapist were to recommend a specific drama that related to the patient’s case, it could be helpful; for example, by providing a roadmap for patients “facing specific situations, such as breakups or loss”, he concluded.