Issues with the Korean Drama Industry

So for those of you who are avid drama watchers like I am We've all had that experience where about half way through a drama Things start getting really weird and the acting start sucking and the plot goes haywire and you're like "What is going on ?! This drama was so promising !" For today's video w'ere gonna be talking about why this might be happening in Korean dramas and we're also gonna be talking about some of the factors in the Korean drama industry which are unethical and unhealty for the cast and crew involved. Now as a disclaimer what we're gonna talk about today, does not represent every single Korean drama out there. What we're gonna be talking about is only what we found in our research as well as what we've discussed with some our friends who are actually working in the korean drama industry, on some of the biggest dramas that you very well know which I sure as hell I'm not going to name because definition laws in Korea are really bad so just say; you know some of these dramas but I'm not gonna name it and you know you can't make me. So le'ts start with the script writer, shall we? One of the biggest issues with korean dramas is that the script writers don't often have a clear vision of what they're trying to put out there.

They might start out with a clear concept, but after about 5 episodes are finished, things start getting fishy. For example, let's say that a drama is suppose to air on March 1st. Production should probably start around the middle of January and from the middle of January up until the begining of March we're gonna make 4 really solid episodes. But once the TV show starts being aired, then the rest of the show is gonna be dictated and based on your response.

And  from March on wards pretty much the show doesn't have as much time as it had in the first 4 episodes, nor as many resources And everyone starts getting really really tired by the end Which is why it's starts really dropping  off. I just can't believe that at some point, as a writer You have this concept of the plot, and then Netizens online are like, "I want these people to get together" or "I don't like how this is going." And you just agree with them for some reason! And you just change it like why?! That's crazy! That's terrible story-telling! I mean like Game of Thrones; All of your favorite characters are dying, Have died, or will die, And the writers don't give and sh*t about what you think They're gonna give you the show and you're gonna love it. And guess what; you do love it. Now not only is the script constantly changing The writers are also writing the script maybe Like a few days up to a few hours before they start filming This is all scrambling at the last minute to try to get everything done.

So the cast and the crew are often Sitting around,  waiting For pages of the script to come through Literally, like we live in digital media city in Seoul And this is where most of the filming happens. And we always see the film crew at like, midnight 1 a.M., 2 A.M. Just sitting around, waiting for the script to come in. That's insane! It's terrible! It makes no sense And what's bad about this as well is that When the writers hand in the script Often times they don't even hand it in chronological order so at the begining of the day They might film scene 6 of an episode.

But then they'll get the papers for scene 3 Many hours later As the writer's writing it. But the problem is that the actors will think to themselves "Well, if I would've known what happens in scene 3 I would've acted differently in scene 6." So the actress can't really portray a consistent character at all which is why the characters start being really weird And bizarre most of the time. Okay now I've gotta say like as a Korean drama watcher I can attest that this is happening a lot especially between a lot of like, weird love plots Or decision making skills where Somebody obviously did not like someone or was not interested in them and then suddenly like, 6 or 7 episodes in They're interested in them and you're like "I never saw that growing, blooming Like, I saw no connection." There is no character growth There is no character development It's just like, regurgitation of a line on the spot And the actors can't really put themselves in to the role. One of my favorite examples is from the actor who starred in "Queen of Ambition".

He complained that they had been shooting the series finale 30 minutes up until it was aired. So you're filming the ending the ending hasn't aired yet and then 30 minutes beforehand You might as well just live stream it at that point How do you even have time to put together something good to do any good with it? You're just rushing it and it's just like high school essays just about. Or university essays! Well I was in university, so I dunno about you Now we're hoping that this last minute script thing is gonna change soon, because I recently heard in November there was an announcement that Kim Woo Bin and Suzy are gonna be in a new drama and it's going to be entirely pre-produced and shot before it airs. So that whiny babies on the internet can't ruin the script anymore This is gonna be supposedly a lot better.

Yeah. Now the last minute writing of scripts is just one of the issues that factor into the bad quality of some Korean dramas but another huge issue is how often these shows are published. Often times, Korean dramas have two episodes per week, which is not like what we're used to. Like for our favorite TV shows like Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones or what not usually  you only get one episode per week.

If you watch Sherlock- You get nine episodes in the entire year. Not nine, three episodes! Oh right they made nine. They only made nine for the entirety of the entire thing. But I want you to think about this.

They are making two episodes per week, each episode is roughly 60 minutes two of those is 120 minutes, that is a Hollywood movie. That's a two hour movie every single week done with the same cast, done with the same crew. This is exhausting and soul-crushing work. Now because they have to produce so much content per week, that means there isn't a lot of time for things like sleeping or resting, or eating, or going home to your family or having a nutritious meal or having any hobbies.

All you do is pretty much work on set 23 hours a day. It becomes so extreme that it is totally common and acceptable for actors to have IV drips in order to get their energy back because they aren't consuming any food and they are totally exhausted. There have been many examples of people passing out on set, getting an IV drip, and going back and everyone's like "Good job! You can do it!" So you guys know Song Ji Hyo from Running Man. There was an example of her filming on set and she had only slept four hours in three days and she ended up passing out from exhaustion.

So she went to the hospital for an IV drip and the doctor was like, "You really need to take some time off to rest." The doctor told her specifically, you need to rest. But you know what? She went back to set Then supposedly had an allergic reaction to the IV. And had shortness of breath and all this panicking, sent back to the hospital, the doctor's like, "You really need to not do this." I'm not joking here, I went to university for this s**t! It's my degree! Stop! And she passes out again on set. Now what's weird about it is that when everyone found out about this online, people were like, "She's so amazing, look at her pushing through." What really upsets me about this is when you see people online saying stuff like, "Fighting!" Or "You can do it!" And they keep on encouraging their favorite actors to work through inhumane and completely unethical situations.

People instead should be saying, This isn't right. I want you to quit and I want you to take care of yourself because I care more about you as a human than your character or television. Back in 2011, there was an actress who was the main star of "Myung Wol the Spy". You guys might remember this.

She couldn't take the stress anymore of filming those insane hours Left! She fled the country, She went to the states and she was there for 48 hours and people ripped into her. They said it was irresponsible of her What about her crew? It's selfish. Instead of saying to her, Good for you for standing up against these terribly s****y and unreasonable condition. They thought of her as selfish for this which completely blows my mind.

Now you guys might be feeling really bad for the actors, which I agree with, but I'll tell you who I feel worse for. The film crew who have it significantly worse than the actors in my opinion. Now here's some data as of 2013: 74.2% Of all crews work more than 13 hours per day Only 1.3% Of them work eight hours a day That's a regular shift, only 1.3% Of the crew work a regular shift. 1.3% That even rounds down to 1% Yeah, 99% of people work more than eight hour shifts per day.

And what's royally f****d up about this is that only 9.2% Of them get overtime pay 91% of them do not get paid overtime. And when they say over 13 hours, we're not talking 14 hours, we're talking like 23 hours a day Let me give you an example of this. What happens for some film crews is that they will start filming everyday at 7AM, If they are supposed to film more than 24 hours, then they are going to work up until 6:45AM the next day, 23 hours and 45 minutes and then the production staff will say, "Okay, shift is over. Come back in an hour or so." So they are essentially working more than 24 hours but they are skipping that overtime pay by getting screwed over by the production team.

And here's the kicker as to how s****y this is: these people are working insane hours, sometimes 23 hours per day, for months and months on end, You know how much they get paid? $1,000 Dollars a month. For 23 hours a day, $1,000 dollars a month. Now you might be thinking to yourself, how can this be legal? So first you have to understand some terminology. You've got the broadcast companies themselves.

That would be like KBS, SBS, JTBC. These are the ones, like MBC. They broadcast the TV shows. Now these broadcasting companies will have a few of their own people working on the show, but they will also hire an outside production company to actually make the show for them.

Now that company is independent from the broadcasting company. They are the drama production crew and then they will go on to hire the rest of the staff. Now the vast majority of people that are hired by the production company are temporary workers on temporary contracts. So from our friend's drama that they were working on, on a set of 50, only five of them were working for the major broadcasting company and 45 of them were actually temp workers hired from the production company.

Now since the majority of the film crew is on a temporary contract, that means they have no legal right to unionize themselves and call for better working conditions. So basically if any of the temp workers want better work conditions, they'll just get fired, and somebody else will be hired that will accept these s**t work conditions instead. So if you're asking how the exploitation of the film crew is legal, The big companies aren't liable for this, they're just paying the production company for a product for a final drama and to them, it's not their concern if it's given to them ethically or humanely, they're just paying money for a product. No, wait, you may be saying Why don't people actually protest against this? How come they haven't come together? There are unions for the actors and there are people that are protesting, the problem is that it hasn't made change.

Back in 2012, actors in South Korea held a protest in Yeouido to ask that the broadcasters pay for their outstanding wages because they still weren't paid yet. The Korean broadcasting actors union has actually asked for a standard contract that would guarantee these three things: 1. Actors would be paid within 15 days of airing 2. They will not be forced to film more than 18 hours a day 3.

They will guarantee that scripts come at the latest, three days before shooting However, the broadcasters said this is impossible because it's unrealistic. Yes! It is unrealistic for you not to film at least 18 hours a day. This is outrageous according the broadcasting companies. Can you believe it? How does the rest of the world survive like this?! Oh I dunno, there are tons of TV shows that are super popular- No that's unrealistic, that doesn't happen.

Breaking Bad... Modern Family... No that doesn't happen. No way.

Now this isn't to say South Korea is the worst country in the world when it comes to filming conditions. We have friends that work in the film industry in lots of other countries as well, and they have their own share of problems as well. LA and the Hollywood scene, We've heard so many scary stories We've had lots of friends that have actually fled the Hollywood scene as a result. Yeah.

But one of the things I will say is that over time, the complaints that people have been having, about work conditions or not being fed, safety slowly people start to chip away at it, until they make a union, or until you have to have this on set. And I think that change needs to start happening in Korea. And some of you have asked, Why we don't do that much Korean TV. Well, I think you might kind of understand a little bit as to why.

Now we've had some good experiences on Korean TV definately but the bad experiences were super scary and awful They have really soured a lot of our experiences and we're really scared to do a lot of Korean TV. So you might understand why we don't do that much of it anymore. Yeah, so if you want to read about our stories about the experiences we had, which I realized we've never shared with people, Yeah. You can click here and look at our blog post, and we'll tell you those kinds of stories So here's our question for you guys: for those of you that work in the film and TV industry, whether it be in Korea or outside Korea, are these experiences similar to you? Or have you had different, better, worse experiences? Or if you've read anything about this online in your countries, we'd love to see what it's like in your country as well so please leave a comment so we can have some points of comparison here.

Now for those of you that are avid Korean drama viewers, we can feel this point here, What drama do you think went from good to awful just abruptly? And we're not talking about The Heirs, because that was awful from the get-go. From the start to finish, it was just terrible Hey Lee Min Ho! I'm your white friend! Is that a bag of cocaine? Let me snort all this powder that you have! Oh no! It's bean powder! I'm allergic to bean powder! All Americans! Squeeze boobs and put things down shirts That one doesn't even count. Episode 1. Oh my god, so bad I  don't wanna talk about that I made it pretty far into that I watched that drama with a glass of wine I don't understand how you have the patience I didn't finish it.

Because it was Lee Min Ho. I love Lee Min Ho. S: I'm Sorry. M: He was my favorite in Almost Paradise That's a big Lee Min No.