I don't know about makjang dramas, but reading your post was very entertaining. You have a very engaging writing style :)

So true. Real life is actually even more makjang than dramas. I haven't watched an actual makjang for a while now but reading your post made me miss it. Any recommendations?

Yaaaas Flames of Ambition. imo the difference between makjang and high drama comes down to whether the people behind the scenes (and the actors lol) really believe in or care about the world and the people they're creating, or not. However wretched or perverse his subject is, Jung Ha-yeon always writes from the heart. And the performances! Shin Eun-kyung, nuff said.

This was a really fun post. Even though I don't really enjoy makjangs, I definitely did enjoy reading it! Thanks for sharing.

A lot of people use the term makjang to negatively refer to a drama, but makjang isn't a bad thing at all. Some writers don't know how to write it well, but makjangs are so good when done right.

Is garlic ice cream a real thing? ?

#FocusingOnTheWrongThingHere

I tried the exercise you mentioned and it's actually true! I recalled about three events and none of those contained my mom nor my dad's face. I'd like to think that a child's brain is like a flash drive and mine happened to hold a memory of only 1MB.

This is great! Sometimes makjang dramas are my guilty-pleasure dramas. And it's interesting how those dramas captured my attention and made me stay until the end to know what's the ending. I remember watching Scandal, and I binged watching that drama in 3 days because it's entertaining. The angsts and feels are so good.

I'm working in a field that requires me to listen to someone's else life story, many of them have life more makjang than makjang dramas. Because I have watched many makjang dramas, I realize watching those make me more grounded and think matter-of-fact-ly when I'm working, not get carried away and become too emotional. Makjang dramas become one that prevents me from crying while working because some those 'makjang' real life stories are just sad..... TT

I would not know about birth secrets and amnesia but real life can be really interesting and dramatic at times. ?

Makjang dramas are not usually my go-to dramas but when I do stumble upon one. It can be a real fun watch.

I've encountered many supposedly makjang things in real life,

I know a family, a new couple that gets married before the man caught up in gambling things but he is a public worker, it's like in national asset but not a big position, the wife makes a deal with the police and the gamble owner and she takes the blame and go to prison so the man career isn't jeopardised.

I also see know a family who has 4 kids but the youngest kid is actually the grandson of the mom, the 1st child got pregnant in high school but the things is, they don't tell the 3rd and the 4th and we all know when everything is so loud in that house.

Another one is from my mum's friend, she adopted the baby girl 25 years ago and when she was 19, she wants to know why, she lets her go, apparently it because her biological family is too poor but the problem is they still didn't want her even if they aren't right now, I don't understand much but the girl back to her adopted mum when she was 23.

I also see a girl (A) get dumped by his longtime boyfriend because his mum doesn't like his family, she 's been doing that for years and they still going strong until on the engagement day. Her father is sick and can't go but the wannabe MIL saw the father walk to the bathroom and take something to eat, he still sick but badly need to pee and eat, so he withstands the pain.

The guy's mum make a fuss and shame to the girl family like "apparently he isn't gravely ill and he doesn't want to attend the engagement", the girl is a doctor, she knows better but they broke up. Just 2 weeks after, the guy married a chaebol, a governor's daugther, rumour says it, the mum's prepare everything. Funnily, the guy just hated this whole thing and even sleep in different room with his wife on their honeymoon, 2 month after, the wife asks her father for divorce because her husband treats her as invisible and they get divorce [the mum of the guy still crying because of their present for marriage is a land that just picked for a development, means it has 10X the original value].
I also heard the guy's father gets a stroke and she really value the girl and she ask her specifically to treat him from home, she comes, idk why and I feel like this is a whole lot different story if I can ask them what exactly happening.

Thank you @night owl I enjoyed reading this post , very interesting. I haven't watched makjang dramas, but I've recently begun family dramas, so I think slowly my tastes change and diversify and see dramas in a different way.

Thanks for the article. Indeed real life is stranger/more making than dramas. I remember a few years ago on dramabeans comment section on drama You're the best Lee Soon Shin, some commenters sharetheir family birth secret which was stranger than fiction!
I was on the soompi thread for 'The Scandal' an remembered some of those discussions on childhood amnesia/memory.
The baddest MIL trope, another fav making trope, I have seen in kdrama is the 100 year inheritance and th still-airing You're too much kdrama is another dramatic one!

I can remember a lot before I was five. I remember things before I was three. (However, I do have Prosopagnosia, so maybe the part of my brain that "ought" to recognize people I know has been turned over to the part of my brain that contains "memories before the age of five.")
But what I wanted to comment on was a friend (and no, this isn't me) whose father had a wife and daughter and then remarried another woman and had my friend and her brother. They had very little contact with the father's first family. And in her teens, she met a young man. They were attracted to each other and after dating for a while discovered that he was the son of her half sister--her father's daughter with his first wife. Doesn't this sound like a makjang? If I saw it in a drama I'd think, "no way!" But it is my friend's life. (She married him after visiting two different clergy, a medical geneticist, and a lawyer.)

It took me a really long while to actually watch or rather finish makjang-type dramas, because as the author has said, most of the stuff that I would start watching would hit too close to home. Birth secrets, completely random people who turn out to be related to you, deaths no one like to talk about, betrayal, affairs, etc. the whole gamut of issues portrayed in these dramas hold true for our family (especially those in the generation of my grandparents) hence it is quite difficult for me to find amusement there, particularly since those issues still have lingering side-effect on the younger generation—and no, unlike in K-dramas, some of them are better left unsaid albeit unresolved (out of sight, out of mind). The neighbourhood where I grew up in can be a breeding ground for every kind of makjang drama out there, had a writer come there and observed and immersed in the environment. Ha! Those over-the-top antics aren't quite far from reality, at least for me, so seeing them on the telly just makes my insides groan (‘Not here too!’). Having anxiety doesn't help either so normally these types of dramas are still clumped in the watch-for-the-sake-of-watching group. On the flip side, I do watch these kinds of dramas whenever I am in really low spirits or in a really dark place (consequence of anxiety/depression) since as twisted as it might sound, I am often able to pick myself up whenever I see the dramas, have a good cry and realise, ‘Life can be bad, but man, I still have my insert-whatever-here’ (memories, family, home, etc) or if I see the main character still persisting after all that have happened to him/her. Heh. It's a wee bit of a toss really but there a lot of good things about life that can be taken from these dramas.

Thanks for this contribution!!! It is a nice post.
Now, let me tell you: i have also heard some stories thay could fit into a drama, most exactly into a makjang (which by the way i dont watch at all anymore), and which "ending" is far from "watchable" or resolved, because as you said, that pretty much doesnt happen in real life... actually... in real life we have these long conflicts that burden us, and we long for the time it is ok... resolved like in a drama, but it simply doesnt happen!!! Life can also be frustrating.

On the other hand i also have to agree with other beanies who commented on the resolution of a makjang by being so easy, frustrating and absurd. I have to agree with that too.
The candy heroine is not candy and good and noble all the time, and i also cannot believe the evil ones have nothing else to do with their time than being evils...
These type of dramas could entitled this very interesting perspective you pointed out in your post, but they are most of the time half not good. LOL...
Thanks anyway for your very entertained post.

Great post! I loved your explanation. Becoming more aware of life's complexities lead to you being open to the strange, absurd but also familiar. I think Makjangs are the closest to Mexican novelas and American soap operas. ::cough:: Big fan of the tv show Passions back in the day. I might have also learned to record VHS just to watch. They had everything plus a witch.
These shows have crazy situations and intense acting but it can be super captivating. They can have complex heroines/heros who are sometimes awful or "bad guys/gals" winning over and over...like life.
In my family there are multiple secret birth parents, young deaths, inappropriate marriages/relationships, brain injury, addictive gambling, elder abuse with nefarious plans, drug use, ridiculous levels of jealousy and the list goes on and on. I've seen the "bad people"and they've been blood. Most of the time there is no satisfying comeuppance for them. Maybe a consequence or set back here or there but nothing that stops them permanently. Soooo I get the connection that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
I also understand why watching these types of shows can be frustrating uhh because from a reality perspective I get upset at these problems too.
Also I too love to dig deep into my tv shows and sometimes it is quite a lot of emotional energy to invest when watching alone.
I think it's like with you said nightowl watching in a group or with a friend shifts it to that outrageous fun place.

Makjang is everywhere arround Asian, from my country to Korea to India to China,..

I have to say: brilliant writing !!!
I will never watch an amnesia scene in a kdrama with an up-turned nose ever again !