Late at night, when the house is quiet, I find myself in Seoul. Or rather, Seoul finds me.
I never set out to become someone who watches Korean dramas. It sounds almost embarrassing to admit — a grown man, alone with subtitles and a bowl of cereal, completely undone by people he will never meet, speaking a language he doesn't understand. And yet here I am. Three years in, no apologies left.
The question I've been sitting with is why. Not why K-dramas are good — they often are, remarkably so. But why they reach something in me that almost nothing else does.
I think I finally know.
When I was a boy moving between countries — Colombia, Indonesia, Brazil, Portugal, wherever my father's postings took us — I developed a habit I never quite named. Whenever we left a place, I would fantasize about going back as a spirit. Not to change anything. Just to follow my friends through their lives. To watch how they grew up without me. To be present, invisibly, in the rooms I once belonged in.
That is exactly what a good K-drama feels like.
I have thought about it and have realized it is about how I relate to them and the bridge they build for me. They remind me of who I am and the life I lived. That sounds very dramatic itself... but it is true. They capture feelings I have had my whole life but not always being to express them. Is it the romances themselves? No, those can be great but often it is other elements that stand out or that spark deep seated emotions.
I believe that the magic of a good K drama is in the writing first. These writers to me are poets.... They somehow capture the eloquence of the almost. That hand that reaches but doesn't quite grasp. The emotions that are felt completely but spoken only in the last episode or never at all. There is this amazing natural tension between restraint and longing - which I feel I always experienced when I left a country that I lived in. The suffering carried alone until it can't be anymore. I never understood what to do with all the emotions I carried from friendships after leaving. I would often fantasize about time travel to go back or to follow my friends like a spirit being just watching how their lives unfolded over time....Love isn't communicated the same way overseas as it is here. Many cultures communicate love sideways, through action and presence rather than declaration. When someone does declare it in a K drama it is almost like holding ones breath because it doesn't happen very much. So much of the emotion is held and shown in nuance, like the food prepared without explanation, or the meaningful glance.
The fantasy dramas where there are other worldly beings that come to earth and have to learn what it is like to be human, to be mortal, to love something they will eventually lose -- That is me, the 3rd culture kid turned into mythology. I am the one who alway came from somewhere else, some other place that was home temporarily but never permanent, learning to adapt, learning the local customs, loving the place fully knowing I would ultimately leave it. These stories unlock something inside -- No, these are not foreign to me,
I am watching something that finally speaks my native language.
A language I understand immediately.
K-drama writers are poets of the everyday. They sprinkle symbols and metaphors like little easter eggs throughout a series — you have to be paying attention, and I always am. Hollywood rarely trusts its audience that way. K-dramas do.
Food is never just food. Sharing a meal is an act of intimacy, of familial care, of love or comfort that doesn't know how to say its own name out loud. I miss that extension of hospitality from the countries I grew up in — the way someone felt genuinely honored if you accepted what they offered. Not obligated. Honored. There is a difference, and I haven't always felt that Americans get that.
Rain scenes are iconic in these dramas, and the umbrella is never just an umbrella. When a character offers one to another, the gesture says what the words cannot:" I've got you." I watched that kind of care expressed differently in every country I ever lived in — Colombia, Indonesia, Brazil, Portugal — but the genuineness underneath was always the same. It just wore different clothes.
The fantasy dramas really get me — the ones where otherworldly beings descend to earth and have to learn what it means to be mortal. To love something they will inevitably lose. I understand those characters in my bones. I was always the one arriving from somewhere else--always termporarily but also always knowing somewhere underneath that the goodbye was already scheduled with a date on a calendar. These stories don't feel foreign to me. They feel like my autobiography depicted as storytelling.
One drama in particular — My Mister — has stayed with me longer than most. In the final scene, two people who have quietly, profoundly shaped each other meet in a cafe. There is warmth. There is maturity. There is happiness. And there is restraint — that beautiful K-drama restraint that Hollywood would never allow. You spent the entire series wondering if love would declare itself. It never did. And it was perfect. Not unrequited love exactly. Just a little longing, left carefully in place, like a single candle kept burning in a window.
The constant reminder of having to say good bye reminds me of that 10 year old boy realizing he would never see any of his friends again. This was before internet, smart phones and technology that now connect all of us. The feeling of permanence of those good byes is something that my children might never know-- The sense of that permanent loss was crushing... I am not sure there is a single person that they cannot look up through social media and find today. Not a judgment, just an observation. It is quite wonderful when you think about it.
I guess while I can get lost in the stories, the script, the performances and the symbols, at the end of the day, I find myself feeling like home. Yes... Comfortable, as if understood by an unseen audience.
Back to the 10 year old boy who fantasized about becoming a ghost — floating back through the rooms he'd left, watching his friends grow up without him — never really stopped. He just got older and found a different way to travel. Late at night, when the house is quiet, he follows strangers through Seoul. He watches them carry their pain alone until they can't anymore. He watches them love sideways, through food and umbrellas and footsteps listened to in the dark. And something in him exhales, a knowing sigh.
Because the longing, it turns out, was never a wound. It was always a language. One I have been speaking my whole life, waiting for someone to speak back.
And then a writer in Korea did.
