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K-Drama Julia Hoang Korean dramas (K-dramas) are an increasingly chosen form of entertainment in adolescents, notably East Asian American adolescents. K-dramas grew globally in popularity following the Korean Wave, coined in 1990s to represent the worldwide spread of South Korean culture. Despite that each K-drama has no more than 24 episodes, with each episode being approximately an hour long, the range of stories that K-dramas portray tap into many cultural and societal themes to which many viewers can connect and relate in their own lives. Today, through streaming sites such as Netflix and Disney+, K-dramas can be easily accessed from across the world. Korean dramas have become increasingly more popular in the West, with KDramas such as Squid Game and Crash Landing on You recently becoming hit series on Netflix. K-dramas can help us understand the experiences of young people as K-dramas have developed in appealing to an adolescent and young adult audience and East Asian adolescents also lean towards watching K-dramas for representation. Appealing more to an adolescent and young adult audience, K-dramas now reflect cultural and societal issues within Korea and across the globe. For example, SKY Castle depicts the struggles of a student and family life, expectations in academics, and mental health and depression. The complexity of issues and themes that are reflected in K-dramas allow for the youth audience to connect with and better understand themselves through these stories. Additionally, East Asian adolescents, in in search of accurate representation, lean towards K-dramas as opposed to Western depictions of East Asians. In the Western film industry, East Asian actors are still often seen playing stereotypical roles or are underrepresented. Even though there has been more inclusion of East Asians in Western media in the more recent years, there is still quite a lack of accurate representation of East Asians. There is still a dissonance between how East Asians are portrayed in media as opposed to real
