Modern Korea

Not every Korean drama wears silk robes. Squid Game, Misaeng, Reply 1988, SKY Castle — the biggest global hits of the last decade are set in apartments, offices and cram schools. But they are historical dramas too, in their way: every one of them runs on machinery built in the twentieth century. The chaebol conglomerate, the university entrance exam, the office hierarchy, household debt, the divided peninsula — none of these are timeless features of Korean life. Each has a construction date.

The posts in this section dig up those foundations. Why does personal debt drive so many Korean thrillers? Because of a very specific credit history that runs from the 1997 financial crisis through the card boom that followed. Why does a single exam day feel like national destiny? Because the modern suneung inherited the social role of a centuries-old civil service examination. Why do alley communities and coal briquettes carry such emotional weight in Reply 1988? Because both were the infrastructure of survival within living memory.

If the sageuk posts explain where Korea came from, these explain how it became the country the cameras now film: compressed development, and the bills — financial and emotional — that came with it.