productioninterview
Gangnam style Veteran kids entertainment creator and showrunner, Sarah Haasz, talks about Gangnam Project, a deeply personal tween series she describes as “K-drama lite”, which releases in Spring 2024. At 16, Sarah Haasz, fresh from a trip to her relatives in Korea, decided
Set in Korea, the 10-epi-
to write a book about how difficult it was to be what she calls “be-
sode half-hour tween drame-
tween generations”. Born in Korea and raised in Canada, she says she
dy is about Hannah Shin (played
“had it all mapped out... being pulled into different directions and not
by Julia Kim Caldwell) a spirited
being accepted”.
Canadian-Korean teen with dreams
The being-between theme repeated at various points in her life.
of becoming a K-pop star and connecting
One aha-moment she talks about came in her Twenties, on another
with her Korean heritage. When she accepts a sum-
trip to Korea. When her family in Korea asked about her partner and
mer job as an English tutor at an elite K-pop training school in Korea,
whether they were going to marry, she said: “I have a boyfriend but
she finds herself at odds with the K-pop universe she is thrust into.
he’s not Korean. They’re like, ‘Oh, okay’, as in, that’s fine.”
Directed by Filipino Canadian film and television director, Romeo
In contrast, her parents in Canada were concerned. “My parents
Candido (The Next Step), along with Justin Wu and Gloria Kim, Gang-
were afraid that my relatives would have a hard time accepting me
nam Project was co-commissioned by Canada’s CBC Kids and CBBC.
marrying someone who wasn’t Korean. [They] had the 1975 ideals
Haasz is the series’ showrunner along with Candido.
from when we moved to Korea... so that’s all they knew, they were stuck in a time warp,” she says. More than two decades later, these experiences form the basis of Haasz’s series, Gangnam Project, which releases in Spring 2024.
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“For over 30 years I wanted to tell my story as a first-generation immigrant from Korea living in Canada, who journeys to Korea to explore her roots and experiences an identity crisis both comically and dramatically,” Haasz says.
contentasia december 2023