How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love K-Dramas

My daughter kept plugging a Korean historical drama on Netflix about a cooking competition, and I couldn’t understand the appeal.

I’m a reader, and not much of a cook. Why would I waste time on a fantasy cooking show in a foreign language?

Until my brother, a media aficionado, started plugging the same show.

I gave it a try.

The cast was fantastic! The king outrageous, yet charmingly earnest. The story engaging! (Will a feminist from the future win the king’s heart with her gimbap?) The food competition exciting! The romance! The intrigue! The drama!

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty was my gateway drug.

I hurriedly ordered Korean cookbooks, bought gochujang, and researched the Joseon era.

The Koreans, I was learning, like the Jews, were a people with a long history, respect for scholars, without many natural resources, often invaded.

They even had a similar version of their golden years, though their Joseon era ended in 1897, while our kingdoms were conquered just a few thousand years back.

We all have good memories.

Next came Business Proposal. Families expecting their kids to marry and carry on their traditions. The kids wanting to respect their families but also chart their own paths. Hmm, I had to do that in my own Jewish community back in Brooklyn…

I laughed. I cried. But mostly laughed.

I was hooked.

By Purim, in between incoming missile alerts, I was wearing a hanbok, blasting the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack, while my teen sons dressed like Saja Boys, and we danced to “My Little Soda… Pop!”

Hiding in safe rooms, as the enemies of Israel attempted to murder me and my loved ones, could lead to PTSD. Thankfully, in addition to the Jewish tradition of reciting Psalms, being glued to K-Dramas has helped put war into perspective.

Crash Landing on You had a South Korean executive fall in love with a North Korean soldier when she hang glided a bit off course… Impossible decisions, heartbreaking, and yet the hope for reconciliation and peace between the countries was a constant theme…

I could relate.

Before Passover, we traveled to Beit Shemesh to visit family and buy matzoh flour when the pre-warning sound blasted on my phone. I don’t know why I assumed I had ten minutes to get to shelter, but I did not. We were blocks from where a missile had touched down days before. At that time, the aftershock of the missile threw my brother across the room, a window frame fell on my sister-in-law’s head, and my former neighbors had their windows and doors blown out, with debris everywhere.

Suddenly, a siren of an incoming missile erupted. With no time to reach a shelter, we got out of our cars and lay down on the ground as I prayed. I wasn’t sure what felt worse: the fear of being hit by debris or the humiliation of having to prostrate myself for protection. My neck and shoulders were so tight from the stress.

Impossible decisions, painful concessions, humor, sabotage, love, family, and bittersweet endings are all hallmarks of K-Dramas. And such have been my experiences in Israel, especially during war.

Right before Passover, we went shopping for food. Sirens had everyone in the supermarket descend into the basement safe room as we heard the booms overhead of intercepted missiles from the Houthis. Who the hell were Houthis, and why did they want to kill me? And more important, how was I going to get my cooking and cleaning done before the holiday, with these constant interruptions of biblical proportions?

Oh, Goblin. And his bro, the Grim Reaper. And the Nine-Tailed Fox, all in love with human women, I had no clue how any of these couples were going to make it.

But that’s precisely why these dramas resonate so much.

Nobody knows how any of us are going to make it.

Passover was utterly magnificent, with whoever was able to show up at our table, and while we sang the traditional songs blessing God for his grace in freeing us from slavery and building a nation, we ate our marror mixed with charoset and were content recounting all the sadness mixed with miracles and grace we have personally and communally experienced throughout this war.

Loved ones off to war, trying to juggle it all, the disruption in family life, careers, school…

Yom Hazikaron hit harder than usual this year, as I knew too many people lost to terror or war.

Korea, too, has experienced loss.

It was time to return Stateside, heartbreaking leaving family behind. Commuting between two countries for work was difficult, but I wasn’t alone: In My Love from A Star, the dashing alien from outer space must find ways to return to his earthly love, no matter how difficult, no matter how brief. Seemingly insurmountable odds, as the characters are propelled to find a way to build a life together and overcome every challenge, sustained only through their love.

Like a seemingly disparate family in a K-Drama, we may fight with each other, sabotage, misunderstand… while also sharing a deep connection to each other that withstands the vagaries of time, of war, of rebuilding our nation, with love.

As K-Dramas tend to end with a return to normal life, I hope we get there, soon.

Until then, I’m checking out Netflix and cooking ramen.

Bon Appétit!