Hi everyone!
As you may know, there are monthly chat corners on my Patreon page, where folks gather to chit-chat on a daily basis.
Those corners are divided into the Deep-dive zone (where spoilers are encouraged – with spoiler warnings), Spoiler-free zone (where we chat dramas, but without spoilers) and The Water Cooler (where we chat about anything and everything else).
Well, over these last couple of days, one of the threads has turned out to be particularly entertaining and irreverently hilarious, so I just had to share.
Here is the thread (started by Merij), with contributions from everyone who took the time to participate, recreated for your entertainment. 😁 This conversation took place over 2 days.
I hope you enjoy – and if you’d like to be part of conversations like this, please consider joining us on Patreon!
Lens adjustment: this is all in tongue-in-cheek, irreverent fun; no offense intended, so may none be taken, too. ❤️
Here’s the thread as it stands now:
Merij: If K-drama is any indication of what South Koreans are actually like — and of course it’s not — than I have learned one very important lesson in life:
Never, ever, ever allow yourself to be in a life-threatening situation with only Koreans nearby. They will sit on the ground holding your head, sobbing as you proceed to bleed out.
After far too many precious minutes have passed, they will most likely think to call 911 or start applying pressure to the wound. But only after first wringing every drop of melodrama from the moment.
This is what I know. If there’s any chance you will be seriously injured, always keep a non-Korean nearby!
(Of course, the flipside is that if you do have SK folk around, they will escort you to hospital for a nosebleed, where you will receive an IV drip.)
Merij: Hmm. Perhaps I should’ve slapped a spoiler alert on that . . . for anyone who’s never seen one of these shows.
Trent: If you’re really lucky, they may even convince the doctor and his entourage to do a house call to set up your IV drip…
Elaine: Hahaha yes I’m always puzzled why they go to the ER when a child has a fever, or when someone faints from overwork.
Elaine: In case that makes me sound heartless, I think for me, unless the fever is over 40 degrees or the kid is having febrile seizures there’s no need to go ER, can give symptomatic relief at home. Or see the GP. Instead of clogging up the ER
Trent: I’m old school, I don’t even pick up the phone to ring the doctor unless we’re looking at limb reattachment surgery… (I’m joking of course, but not by *that* much)
uyen: 😂😂😂
CanIcallYouKate: @Merij I laughed so much, thank you for this post. ALL of this 🤣 😂
We should play the “I crammed for an exam for one sleepless night and fainted immediately with a nosebleed” bingo.
@Elaine @Trent indeed, that’s how I grew up as well. lol
The number of times Koreans become bed ridden with a fever merely because they had a fight with their boss or significant other 🙄
Or the instant fever after getting rained on for 5 minutes at the bus stop. lmao 🤣 Someone hook up the IV STAT!!! 😂
ngobee: Quite right. There’s also a tendency to strongly shake the severely injured and the dying and shout their names. On the flip side, folks tend to heal quickly – maybe to avoid having all their relatives fussing around their sickbed. Unless they fall into a coma or meet their demise, most accident patients tend to rip out their IV catheders – no bleeding ever – and continue to pursue some urgent business. It’s quite impressive, given they’ll wither again at the first contact with water from above. Snow seems to be less dangerous.
Merij: Ha. So true.
CanIcallYouKate: I am laughing again at this entire thread. We should write a blog post about the ridiculousness of the fragile and flipfloppy nature of kdrama characters‘ health. 🤣
Merij: What I find most interesting is the comparison to other nations in Southeast Asia. Somehow the South Koreans learned to embrace their male actors openly expressing extreme emotions/vulnerability. They honestly come off like junior high school kids at times, totally losing it at the drop of a hat and frequently wailing and whining the same way they portray their women behaving at their worst. Gender parity is good, so I’m not knocking it. Just surprised.
Elaine: @Ngobee Hahaha yes characters can get hit by the truck of doom but if they have plot armor they’ll just rip out their IV catheters and stumble out of the ER area with disheveled hair and a few artfully placed scratches that don’t mask their beauty 🤣 to pursue some urgent complicated business lasting a few hours and only then do they succumb to their injuries and fall into a coma for several weeks lol.
I find it hilarious how you point out that snow seems to be less dangerous than rain in Kdramas! Instant fever haha. It’s so “Asian parent” – don’t stay out in the rain, you’ll fall sick!
Merij: Whereas in Russia, one dies of pneumonia if there’s even a minor draft in the room or if you greet someone under a doorway. Or so I’m told.
ngobee: @Elaine: Fall into a Coma and then we all wait, spellbound, to glimpse one twitching finger … hurray – waking time is near!!! And you are totally right, these artfully placed scratches and band aids never disappoint.
ngobee: @Merij: Thank you for the doorway information, it is indeed a new insight!
Merij: Hopefully they do wake from the coma. A K-character in a coma is like Chehkov’s gun. What would be the point if they weren’t going to wake up, at exactly the very best or very worst time? However, going back to the Joseon era — or the 1970s — is always a solid option as well. Haven’t seen that for a coma patient yet, but it’s bound to happen, right?
Elaine: But… don’t K drama characters in comas ALWAYS wake up? Hahaha… And what amazes me is that they wake up looking perfectly kempt and walking, talking, RUNNING with no impairments whatsoever. I think only one show made a bit of effort to show the immediate impairment of waking from a multi-year coma (shall not name which it is as that would be a spoiler) but within a day or so that character was off and running too.
Elaine: Tagging @Kfangirl cos this thread is soooo funny!
KFG: Hahaha!! This really is very funny! Makes me want to make this thread into a post for the main blog – to share the fun, and also, let folks know how fun Patreon can be 😁
Merij: I love the way @Elaine summoned you here, as if she had cast a spell.
Tbh, I thought we just put the @ sign in front of names as a nod to other platforms, like Twitter or your blog, where it actually makes a difference.
I’m not aware that I get any notifications when people put the @ in front of my name here.
@Kfangirl – Is that really how Elaine summoned you? Or is there also a secret hand gesture one needs to make?
KFG: @MeriJ Lol. There is no actual tagging feature on Patreon, but I get email alerts on every comment posted on Patreon, which means I can’t read them all coz they’re too many. But I do scan them to make sure that if there’s something that needs seeing to, I see to it. So if I see @KFG or something similar, I make sure to pay special attention. 😁
ETA: I believe folks also use the @name at the front of a comment, beecause otherwise it can get confusing who you’re responding to, on a thread like this 😁
Elaine: Yay it worked!!! Haha, yes @MeriJ, KFG had mentioned before that she will take a quick scan to see if her attention or action is needed!
MC: I like the idea of a hand gesture and a secret summoning spell. actually I think it’s the Goblin style of blowing out a light that summons Fangirl. Especially as she loves (loves? loved?) Gong Yoo!
also this thread is hilariously wonderful and we should keep it for posterity’s sake!
phl1rxd: This is a riot!
In closing:
I have no idea whether this thread will keep growing, since it’s only been 2 days since this conversation started, but I just thought you all would get a kick out of this tongue-in-cheek conversation that we had so much fun with!
For more fun chats like this, consider joining us over on Patreon!
You might also be interested to check out my latest Patreon update post, which you can find here!
KFG ❤️
I totally missed that you moved this over to the blog, KFG! Yay! Everyone gets to share in the fun 😀
In addition to wrongfully administered CPR, we also forgot to mention inadequately performed resuscitation with the shock paddles or placing your stethoscope on top of 3 layers of clothing, lest anyone see the exposed chest of your actors 😛
It’s funny that TV writers and directors in every country care so little about widely known medical techniques that would be just as easy to portray correctly. It’s not as if the way they’re doing it wrong makes for better drama. (For example, applying paddles to someone whose heart is known to have stopped completely.)
Of all these, bad CPR or defib technique are the worst, since that’s something any of us might have do to unexpectedly and under great stress. Watching it done incorrectly, over and over, can’t be a good thing, right?
But guns? Oh, that has to be as realistic as possible. To the extent that they insist on real guns firing live blanks at actors’ chests just to get a realistic kickback. Even Bruce Lee’s death thirty years ago wasn’t sufficient to start that change. (Although the recent killing involving Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust might finally do so.)
My favorite is….someone gets shot in the leg, arm, side, anywhere that’s farthest from the lungs and then they cough up copious amounts of blood. Give me KDramas any day!
Yes!
Sorry to have missed out on the fun over on Patreon. You have already covered most of my least favorite medi-tropes, especially the whole business regarding IV usage (like at home!). But another one that always makes me grin/grimace is when someone has a cold and a friend will head into a pharmacy and bring out a little bottle, saying “here, take some medicine for that”. Now, aside from the occasionally used rhinovirus drug, there is no really good treatment for the common cold, much less one that comes in a little bottle from the neighborhood pharmacy. So what are they drinking? Is it some little energy drink? Or total placebo, with the whole point being that “it’s the thought that counts”?
We didn’t mention totally incorrect CPR technique and other irregularities, since that’s probably the case with many TV shows in every country!
oh doh I just complained about it lol
True, all shows worldwide get that wrong.
Medical care in drama land: The sageuk edition Part 2!
When women are shown giving birth, they are holding on two long pieces of cloth suspended from the ceiling. I am curious and want to learn more about this.
Medical care in drama land: the sageuks edition!
According to dramas, wounds inflicted by swords and arrows take about one episode to heal. The apothecary shops always have large supplies of magical herbs, carefully wrapped in neat packages. Acupuncture cures pretty much everything.
And in the stories set in modern times, super rich people cure all ills by consuming “wild ginseng.” Whereas the hoi polloi have to settle for the farmed variety.
I remember in a historical drama how someone was trying to sell fake ginseng and the heroine figured it out.
Don’t forget you should always rip the arrow out when there’s no medical help in sight. Keep on fighting.
I’m going to have to pay more attention to the three Patreon threads! This is hilarious. These types of posts are a big part of the reason why I joined Patreon to support KFG! Much as I have encouraged my friends to get into kdramas, no one loves them like we do!
When the heroine has a fever, the hero buys some mysterious powder from the pharmacy. The powder is mixed with water, and then administered (spoonfed) to the unconscious heroine. Cold compresses are also applied. I am curious what exactly is in that powder? It seems to have amazing healing powers, because the heroine is in perfect health the next morning, while oblivious to the sleepless vigil of the hero.
Nice! Is KFG able to blow out a candle to summon Gong Yoo though, since she doesn’t believe in the Goblin? 😊
Would she tell us, I wonder?
This is great! But there are some very good reasons S. Koreans flock to ER’s the second they feel the least bit ill (and have overnight stays for exhaustion). There are about 6x more hospital beds per capita there than in the US. The US has 2.8 per thousand and S. KOREA has 12.7. And large hospitals are mainly privately funded. Yes, there is universal healthcare too—so use the ER to your heart’s content. Chaebols are paying for those VVIP suites and your hospital stay as well. I had a friend just take a sabbatical in Korea when her daughter broke her arm. She says that she was seen within 15 minutes by the orthopedic surgeon who casted her arm and they were on their way with a bill for about $80.00.
Amazing. The thing is that they typically are not overused because people don’t want to miss work and their pay for being sick. And preventative healthcare, taking vitamins, and exercising are all readily accessible. They have a much healthier patient population than the US (hardly anyone is overweight and obesity is even rarer). I did a deep dive into Korean healthcare when the pandemic started since they seemed to have everything under control so quickly—and tried to see how the US could learn from them. Turns out, we couldn’t, because our infrastructure is nothing like theirs.
Yes. Another difference for those of us watching from Western countries is this notion of the patient’s “guardian” that the hospital staff always brings up.
It’s not at all what we think of when we hear that word. Not someone who has authority to make decisions on your behalf, for example.
Rather, it’s the friend or family member who will perform many of the menial tasks that we would expect hospital staff to perform here in the US. Sponge baths, helping you go to the bathroom, etc. Basically, someone who takes care of you while you’re sick.
Here’s a great explanation of what guardians do and don’t do and how this alters the nature and cost of hospitalized health care in South Korea:
https://koreahealthpages.com/article/being-hospitalized-in-korea-the-guardian.html
Haha. I must be hanging out at the wrong water cooler. Never has the bubbler repartee been so entertaining. 😆
I am surprised, though, that no one mentioned the all-purpose medicine in a brown bottle (iodine?) that is swabbed onto everything from head gashes to the below-mentioned paper cuts. How many romances have blossomed after such administrations? Love potion #9?
It only works if you dab it on gently, carefully, and scientifically with a q-tip. Smear it at all – or use a finger to apply! – and it loses 97% of its powers.
@rookie – Good one! 😆
Patreon is a lot of fun!
Lololol…😂🤣😂 Just remember how life threatening the paper cuts are guys and of course the blowing of the pacifying, pain relieving breath on wounds 🤢
I love this icon! 😉