The relationship between men and women that subverts imagination in Korean dramas / "Assistant Officer"

Writing this Korean drama from the perspective of the structure of the relationship between men and women should be inconsistent with most people's discussions, but I think it must be a very crucial part for Korean dramas to be followed by female audiences.

As a rookie in Korean dramas, I don’t pay much attention to the love routines that the audience knows well, so the romantic but irrational or miraculous love in the early years is always such a coincidence, like winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. I didn't really watch the story (later turned into Women's Revenge), until I watched a lot of Korean dramas in the past year (from 2022), and I yearned for certain plots to happen.

In Taiwanese dramas, the structure of men and women has always been maintained in the structure of strong men and weak women, or in the plot of marriage, most of them have become performances where the mother has to be strong, or even when the female role is particularly prominent, it becomes a "strong woman". posture", as if the relationship between men and women is bound to form the opposition of "one strong and one weak".

The first Taiwanese drama that made me feel that "men can also be weak occasionally" was "The House of Building Blocks" by Zhi Theater , but the so-called "weakness" is not the kind of men who are inferior to women, but a kind of "I am not It has always been the performance of the strong ; in the traditional concept of men's "protection" of women, if there is too much, it will often form a kind of arrogance of "I am the strong". It is natural to become such a character in the process of cultivation! But women don't have to be protected (everything)!

The male and female protagonists Jang Tae-joon (Lee Jung-jae) and Jiang Sun-young (Shin Min-ah) in "Auxiliary Officer" are just a group of structures with a relatively balanced relationship between men and women. This completely reverses the thinking given to people in past romantic love stories: the relationship between men and women between partners can maintain such a complementary balance. Even in the workplace, Korean dramas often have performances that balance the relationship between men and women, without particularly emphasizing which gender!

But the strange thing is, shouldn't South Korea be a society where "women are still traditionally suppressed under patriarchy"? Why are there so many equal rights plots in the drama? Sometimes I wonder, "That's impossible in reality, so it's all written in the screenwriter's pen." Or, this is the real life in Korea, where the younger generation has gradually moved towards such a state?

The story of "Auxiliary Officer", which took place in the halls of Congress, of course also has gender issues, but in terms of the whole plot, "gender" is only one of the items of "unequal power" in this drama. The wrestling between the public and members of Congress to government officials from members of Congress is all a struggle between powers/grabs between powers; people who dream of changing the world, walking into this core of power, will inevitably become people who play with power. Sometimes it needs to compromise, and sometimes it needs to change its face to truly become a manipulator. The mentality changes again and again have become the most exciting part of this drama: Do people want to go down with the same people, or go up and turn away from the power to become self-sufficient? Can a person really get out of the dyeing vat without getting a single speck of dust?

The final result of the role of Jang Tae-joon is still too utopian. He left the vat of dreams in a chic way, and entered the auxiliary role under the highest power in the political world, the "Cheong Wa Dae". No matter how you look at it, I feel that there should be a next part or an extension to others. The story is right! And Shen Miner's short hair in this drama also gave me a rare subversion of female styling and appearance settings in Taiwanese dramas (it turns out that the heroine can have short hair, and women can also be soft and thin), but this should also be Taiwan. There are often stereotypes about women's appearance and temperament in drama (or society)! I will write another day.

In addition, that is, the placement of this drama is too much, a little XDDD

"Auxiliary Officer 보좌관" / 2019
(In fact, it shouldn't be divided into two seasons, it's just that the launch time is not together)
Screenwriter: Lee Dae-il Director: Kwak Jung-hwan Starring: Lee Jung-jae, Shin Min-ah, Lee Ilya, Kim Tong-joon

Image source: JCBT official page of "Auxiliary Officer"