The eternal battle: Jdrama vs Kdrama PART 1

If you follow us in Facebook, then you already know that I'm enjoying my one week holiday back at home, :3 but that also means no wifi so I hope you forgive me my late post.

To be honest I was really hesitant about writing this post - as it has torn the "drama fandom" into constantly battling "K-drama fandom" and "J-drama fandom". I find it rather funny as I enjoy both of them (even  though I watch more Japanese dramas) and with this post I hope to stay more "academical" about the analysis of them both. The point of this post is to show the typical differences between Korean and Japanese dramas. Of course there are dramas that do not fall into these measurements.(This is only Part 1 so only a little  part of this topic is being discussed). But I am ready to get the hate-comments.

1) PLOT(career, love and relationships)
Japanese dramas are more down to earth - in many cases it is because Japan does a lot more “career-dramas” in which the plot is simple: a person doing its job. End of story. 

RESCUE - drama about rescue workers

If you checked the list of dramas of the airing season – I can bet that 50% of them are “career-dramas” (it is only 2% for Korean dramas). There has been the faze of medical dramas (Code Blue, Juui Dolittle), detective/police dramas (JOKER, BOSS, Deka Wanko), teacher dramas (Gokusen, GTO, Dragon Zakura) and of course the legal dramas (Legal High, Hokaben) and they keep coming and coming. Even though they all have moments of comedy and romance and so on, those are never the main points of the storyline – in many cases the romantic sidelines are never developed and basically stay the same from the beginning till the end. If not career-drama, then usually Japanese dramas tend to be rather slice-of-life. Yet even in romance dramas the fairy tale stories are quite rare - Japanese romance dramas are realistic about characters emotions. Yet most romance jdramas lack of actual skinship even between couples - when it happens, it is usually unintentional or done because of male characters overwhelming emotions (I am not going to go further into this as I bet none of you want to read about "the theory of Japanese uniqueness" - I wrote an essay on the topic "Skinship in Japanese society"-just some months ago - got an A :D) Of course Japan also has its perfect melodrama stories, but as they belong to the "older part of dramas" it almsot makes me feel like the era of Japanese melodrama ended some years ago.
On the other hand Korean dramas are the opposite: most of the dramas airing are centered on romance and relationships (as I mentioned earlier - 2% of dramas airing in one season are "career-dramas" - others are about romance and family). 

You're beautiful - a good example of cinderella stories

When work is brought into the story it is always to build up the love story. Even when the synopsis says that it’s about “young people trying to make their dreams come true” – the main emphasis still goes on love and relationships. And don't we all love those Cinderella stories of rich arrogant main lead and the poor hardworking girl that somehow through all the screaming and tears fall in love? Oh and also skinship is much more frequent in Korean dramas (have you ever counted how many times "hand grabbing" or "pulling clothes" happens in Kdramas? well a lot more than in Jdramas!).
So in summary: While Japanese dramas focus on person and how she/he manages in the society, then Korean dramas are about love and family. Of course there are a lot of exceptions for both of them. Now that I think about it - it would be fun to do a research about why there's this kind of difference - and my "academical brain" went flying again -.-

2) FACTS (average length, beauty shots and budgets)

The average length of Japanese dramas is 11 episodes (45 minutes each). The average length of Korean dramas is 16 or 20 or 24 episodes (1 hour each). So basically you can watch one Japanese drama with 9 hours while for Korean drama it is at least 16 hours. It does make a difference. 

as much as I love staring at Jung Yong Hwa
his beauty shots in Heartstrings were too much

I've heard a lot of people say that as Korean ones are longer, they have more time for character and story development - I'd say that for many dramas it just gives extra time for unnecessarily complicated relationships and for “beauty shots” – things I loathe in Korean dramas. By beauty shots I mean those long annoying scenes where character just looks at some uncertain direction while dramatic OST is played over it – sometimes it’s even two characters doing it at the same time close to each other WITHOUT seeing each other – and we are not talking about this happening once in a drama – it’s more of a once in a episode thing. Probably those are the 15 extra minutes that Japanese dramas do not have.
Also I have to mention the difference in budgets. Korean entertainment business has a lot more money to spend - meaning more shooting locations (you think filming in California was pocket money  for the making of "Heirs"? It's probably the drama with biggest budget in years - if not in the history of dramas), a cast full of notable names (the bigger the name, the bigger the paycheck), 

"Chiisana koi no Uta" by Mongol800 in Proposal Daisakusen
was part of the story as Rei borrowed their album from Kenzo

longer episodes (the filming of every scene costs money - the more one has to film, the more it costs - and every NG is wasted money) and of course more promotions. Japanese ones do not have that big budgets. It can also be seen while comparing the OST's. In Japanese dramas usually the opening and ending are done by an artist and the other ~20 soundtracks - that are all instrumental pieces - are done by the musical director - of course at times 2-4 more lyrical songs are added to the OST but mostly then they are somehow related to the story. Korean drama OST consists of about 10 songs by different artists and more 10 instrumel pieces. Remember that every singer wants its share (even using "old songs" means paying for the copy rights).
In summary: Korean drama industry has the means to do longer dramas, but that doesn't always mean better quality. And of course the basic calculation of lengths: 1 Kdrama= 2 Jdrama.

At first I wanted to do only one post about it, but it got so long that Cypsis said, it's better do cut into parts. So sometime later I will post also other parts of this post (I still have to analyze CHARACTERS, EMOTIONS, VISUALS, etc).
I hope it was interesting to read. If you have anything to add or something that you disagree about, feel free to comment! :D