South Korean soap operas hook foreign audiences

November 13, 2013 3:52 pm

South Korean soap operas hook foreign audiences

By Simon Mundy

Eyes bulging at the steaming plate before her, Lee Soo-­kyung eagerly wolfs down a mouthful of rice, unperturbed by the film camera hovering a chopstick’s length from her face. But the constant interruptions by Park Joon-wha give the actress, her pretty features offset by a frumpy collared shirt, little chance to enjoy the meal.“Eat as much as you can!” cries the director of the forthcoming soap opera Let’s Eat, scrutinising her from behind two video screens and his thick black-rimmed glasses. “If it’s hot then show it – let’s see you gulping! And bring her some more green vegetables to make it more colourful!”

As crew members top up her plate once more, Ms Lee discreetly spits a half-chewed morsel into a bucket by her side.

Making South Korean television drama is hard work, and not always glamorous. Yet the results are consumed avidly by viewers from the Mongolian steppes to the congested streets of Jakarta.

South Korea’s TV drama exports grew from $8m in 2001 to $155m in 2011 – the most recent official figure available – and industry executives say there is still room for expansion in Asia and beyond.

Despite the impressive growth, the soap-opera makers are in no danger of overtaking the multibillion-dollar sales of the country’s electronics groups such as Samsung, or shipbuilders. But their rise reflects thegrowing cultural allure of one of Asia’s richest nations – as well as its fiercely competitive business culture.

The lonely death this summer of the celebrated director Kim Jong-hak, in the bathroom of a rented apartment, was a reminder of the high stakes at the top of the country’s TV business. Mr Kim had invested millions of dollars in Faith – a 24-part drama about a plastic surgeon who travels back in time – only to find himself facing a commercial flop and an angry cast pursuing him for unpaid wages.

His suicide prompted soul-searching in an industry that has seen its budgets balloon in recent years. “When I started in this industry 20 years ago it would cost about Won50m ($47,000) to make a single 70-minute episode,” says Kim Young-seop, a content executive at SBS, one of South Korea’s three terrestrial broadcasters. “Now it’s more like Won450m.”

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SBS and its rivals, KBS and MBC, have begun to commission most of their TV dramas from independent production companies. The two parties typically split filming and salary costs but the broadcaster usually takes all the domestic advertising revenue. To make a profit, the independent producers must rely on export sales, sponsorship and product placement.

Hit soaps that have won fans far from Seoul

Winter Sonata
Amnesiac Joon-sang moves to the US, abandoning his girlfriend – only to run into her years later. Japanese success prompted the then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to complain that one of its stars rivalled him for popularity.

The Jewel in the Palace
Jang-geum, a 16th-century female doctor, is central to this drama, packed with conspiracy and palace intrigues. It was shown in more than 60 countries, with fans from Belarus to Sierra Leone.

Full House
The casting of singer Rain set a trend for pop stars to act in Korean TV dramas. It was remade in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

IRIS
One of the most expensive Korean dramas ever made, its plot delves into the secretive fight of South Korea’s security services against Pyongyang. It succeeded commercially, with Japanese distribution rights sold for a record $4.2m.

Queen of Housewives
Cuba has no formal relations with Seoul and continues to offer military support to North Korea. But that did not prevent it from broadcasting this family comedy four times a week on the state television channel Canal Habana.

Critics say this system unfairly skews financial risk towards the independent producers. But the ruthless competition between them has helped drive a dynamic industry with broadening international appeal.

Japan has been by far the biggest foreign market ever since the success in 2003 of Winter Sonata, a mixture of slushy romance and high drama that won a huge following among middle-aged women (see box). Executives see limited room for further growth there, however. The novelty has worn off among the Japanese, with sentiment towards South Korea also darkened by agrowing diplomatic dispute over the nations’ past colonial relationship.

So the industry is looking further afield. Broadcasters in Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates have given primetime slots to conservative South Korean medieval dramas. “In those countries they don’t want to see women in short skirts,” explains
Jo Han-sang, an overseas distribution executive at KBS.

Nearly a dozen of KBS’s dramas are currently showing on Romanian national TV, Mr Jo says, while Turkish producers have been buying the rights to remake some shows.

The industry’s export success echoes that of Mexican soap operas, or telenovelas – and SBS is targeting their Latin American heartland through a distribution deal.

But for now, the real money is to be made in Asia, be it from the established markets of Japan and Taiwan or the fast-growing demand in countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia. “US shows have specific genres – cop shows or medical shows – but we have universal stories,” says Park Man-young, a KBS producer.

“All of a sudden everything is about Korea,” says Leung Yuk-ming, a cultural studies professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University. But while TV may have started the “Korean Wave”, she adds, the centre of attention is now K-pop – the immaculately groomed, minutely choreographed bands that have an ever tighter grip on Asia’s teen market.

TV companies have sought to cash in by hiring the singers to appear in their shows. “We do like to cast an ‘idol’ who appeals to the international market,” says Suh Jang-ho, a content executive at the entertainment group CJ E&M, which used the pop star Yoon Doo-joon in Let’s Eat.

The likes of Mr Yoon do not come cheap. The going rate for an internationally popular star is now Won100m per episode, executives say. Cuts have to be made to accommodate the big names, notes Yoon Tae-jin, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University. “Suddenly the lead parts have no parents any more.”

However, the country’s idiosyncratic “live shoot” system means even the superstars are not given an easy ride. Producers typically shoot only the first few episodes of a drama before it goes to air, and they continue filming as the run proceeds.

This enables screenwriters to develop the plot according to the audience reaction, which is tracked on social media and discussion boards on shows’ fan pages. An unpopular character might be killed off, for example.

Yet the system often results in cast and crew working through the night as they battle to complete filming each episode before it airs.

“Let’s say the episode is being aired at 10pm – the filming might finish at 7pm on the same day,” says Park Tae-young, an executive producer at Samwha Networks, one of the biggest independent TV companies. “If the tape is delivered to the broadcaster late, then you just have a blank screen for one or two minutes. That happens from time to time.”

However much the budgets grow and the stars complain, producers show no sign of abandoning the gung-ho approach that characterised the growth of other South Korean export industries decades earlier. “If we filmed it before airing, everything would take longer,” says Mr Park at KBS. “Actually, it’s a crazy practice. But we’ve been doing this for years.”