How Healer and other Korean dramas quietly deal with abandonment, possible self-care strategies

It was sometime around July 2020 that I learnt about the fantastical world of Korean drama, better known as K-drama. What began as the premise to be cued in, slowly found its way into my online classroom lectures, as off-hand references. Soon enough, I learnt that underneath over-the-top plotlines, glossed over with spoonsful of mush, magic and cutting-edge technology, a few Korean dramas also quietly deal with the phenomenon of abandonment, as well as possible coping and self-care strategies. But let’s look at the more fundamental question of why we connect with Korean drama at a time like this. In the COVID era, an uncomfortable emotion has started to dominate our daily existence. It is difficult to pinpoint it in the course of our daily activities, yet it thrives — with or without companions, partners, families or a community. It sits awkwardly, tucked away in an unexplored corner of our headspace. When we approach it, we tend to walk around eggshells, lest it finds an outlet. This is my reading of the difficult emotion labelled as abandonment. It is hard to live with but harder still to ignore. Isolation acquires new meanings in the era of digital divide and intimacy, more so in a country where ‘social distancing’ is synonymous with gender, caste, class, and ethnic fissures. Meanwhile, most of us dwelling in the middle-class urban milieu took time to figure out the normalcy of switching off the real-world interactions and embracing the digitally accessible work-from-home platforms. Such a transformation required the need to search for newer conduits of functioning. Thus, bingeing 16-20 hyper-real K-drama series turned out be a perfect dose of self-care. A few Korean dramas spin off abandonment motifs as a mild build up to the central narrative like the 2019-2020 South Korean series Crash Landing on You. In this show the lead actress Son-Ye-Jin, heiress to the family business, decides to give up her claim and focus on her own independent fashion and beauty company, Seri’s Choice, as she feels abandoned by her step-brothers, step-mother and father. The real focus is on the love story spanning across North Korea and South Korea. Another example is that of Vincenzo, a 2021 South Korean series. Here, Song Joong-ki plays an Italian lawyer and mafia consigliere of Korean descent, who was abandoned by his mother at the age of eight. Also, Ok Taecyeon and Kwak Dong-yeon’s half-brothers harbour a conflicted relationship regarding the ownership of a family business because both feel abandoned by their father in a way. The larger narrative, however, is about gaining control over hidden gold bars and a Korean crime bureau document about corruption. Shows like When the Weather is Fine, a 2020 JTBC series and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, a 2020 South Korean series deal with the subjects of deep-seated trauma, abandonment patterns and modes of self-care as the principal narrative. Moments built on emotional bonding or tropes of shared childhood trauma help balance out the whimsical, melodramatic, and suspenseful undertones. [caption id=“attachment_9689671” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  A still from Vincenzo. Image via Twitter/@kdrama[/caption] The popular 2014-2015 television drama, Healer, written by Song Ji-na, starring Ji Chang-wook and Park Min-young in the lead has a unique approach to abandonment and coping mechanisms of self-care alongside the engrossing narrative. Let’s start with some central characters first. Seo Jung-hu is an illicit night courier, who uses the alias Healer. He has top-notch technological and fighting moves. Renowned for his success rate of solving any ‘matter’, the only thing he refrains from is murder. He is good at his job, yes, but things are easier for him only because of his brilliant hacker aide, Jo Min-ja. She is a former detective specialising in cybercrimes. Then there is Chae Young-shin, a journalist in the making, who works at a B-grade entertainment news agency. Her secret desire is to become an ardent reporter like the famous Italian war-correspondent, Oriana Fallaci. Also, Kim Mun-ho, a famous broadcaster, who showcases a daring approach to reporting about injustices and is ready to take on big media tycoons and politicians for truth to prevail. It is a 1992 incident brings all of them closer. Abandonment affects each of these characters differently, too. For the night courier, he was abandoned by his mother at a young age, when she remarried to get a fresh start. The teenage boy gets rescued by one of his father’s friends and is led towards this profession. Jo Min-ja had to abandon her sick, dying little boy for the sake of cracking a politically motivated cyber-crime. She quit her job when she was asked to hush up the leads for which she had given up her family life. Similarly, Chae Young-shin was abandoned by her mother due to circumstances beyond her control and was later adopted by a loving man, who now runs a café as a hobby, but is a lawyer by profession. Due to past abuse in foster homes, Chae Young-shin suffers from panic attacks whenever encountering violent incidents. Nonetheless, violent episodes ultimately allow her to pursue journalistic dreams, unearth the truth about why she was abandoned by her mother during childhood, and build intimacy with her protector-former childhood playmate-lover, Healer. Kim Mun-ho, on the other hand, carries the burden of secrecy, false testimonies and broken friendships. He had abandoned truth because his own brother had been at the helm of a major conspiracy that goes back to the year 1992. Also read —  Of fathers, living, and Itaewon Class: Viewing grief through the prism of Park Seo-joon's Netflix show Furthermore, self-care strategies are located in each of the characters through the vocations that they have chosen to pursue. Each of these characters, knowingly or unknowingly, have used their experiences with abandonment to overcome challenges that life has thrown at them. Despite the undercurrents of desertion that shape the larger part of the narrative, you still have to watch it to know what exactly happened in the year 1992. The smooth action interlaced with scrumptious romance makes it worth all the bizarre, exaggerated anecdotes throughout the plot. We know that COVID-19 is an illness that expects people to maintain social distance and practice social isolation. In a way, it leaves us all in our moments of grief, death and pain. It gains a collective resonance as a statistical representation at best. The pandemic has been wreaking havoc since the beginning of last year. In India, subsequently during March 2021, the second wave hit. We are experiencing a catastrophe of the highest calibre owing to the lackadaisical attitude of the government. However, what Korean dramas can offer in these times is also the realisation that it is important to acknowledge the various forms of abandonment that passes one by. And it is equally important to work towards personal breakthroughs and come up with notions of self-care.