Korean Drama In China

A Korean wave has been sweeping the world for several years. Even nowadays Chinese entertainment industry has developed a lot and has been the most prolific producer of TV dramas, Korean drama is still a preference for many TV fans in China. What makes the Korean drama popular in China? Compared with the production of Chinese TV series, the Korean dramas hot is mainly because of the difference of production strategy, original soundtrack and content of TV plays between Korea and China.

To begin with, Korean TV series has [have]a totally different shooting order, which makes it more [del]easily [easier]to develop than Chinese drama. In Korea, almost no Korean drama broadcasts after the whole drama is finished. Shooting companies and TV stations

A research from University of Chicago mentions that “ [P]Film music can influence character likability and the certainty of knowing the character’s thoughts, which are antecedents of empathetic concern and emphatic accuracy.” (Hoeckner, Wyatt, Decety, Nusbaum, pg146) According to the theory, OST is a really essential part in dramas. Korean dramas pay much attention on background music to better express the plot and characters aiming at attracting the audience. They take music as peripheral product of the dramas, by inviting many idols or singers to sing the songs or produce the film score, which can be a special propaganda of the drama as well as enhancing its economic values. However, the drama OST area is still a barren field in China. Composer Wang Liguang, who wrote music for A World without Thieves ever said that background music’s value has been largely overlooked in China.(Chen,2012) One of the serious problem [s]in China is that some producers of Chinese dramas do not know the importance of OST and do not want to pay more for better music. Thus, in China, the composers of background music can only get very little pay. This makes fewer and fewer people continue producing music for dramas, which leads to some problems like roughly made music, or even plagiarism. In some way, this decrease the quality of Chinese dramas a

Cui Baogui, a professor at Tsinghua University, ever said in an interview that the tightening grip of censors had affected the attraction of Chinese dramas. Also, in this interview, Zhu Chunyang, a researcher at the Journalism School of the Shanghai-based Fudan University mentions:“ [P]Few Chinese dramas arouse the interests of viewers outside China. Even Chinese viewers are fed up with the narrow-minded themes of the dramas.”(Liu,2007) The strict auditing system is be [del]to blame for the monotonous content like Counter-Japanese War or family ethics. Even the contents [if the content]are [is]positive, after watching for [del]many times, audience can easily get tired of them. What is worse, if a theme of drama becomes popular in China, many shooting companies will follow the trend. For instance, in about 2010, after a popular drama Jade Palace Lock Heart was broadcast, when people turned on TVs at night, they could see several different dramas talking about time-travel, which could not arise people’s interest anymore[not properly explained, I’m assuming Jade Palace Lock Heart is about time travel, but I don’t know]. Conversely, Korean dramas has less problem about content than China because their State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) cares more about whether the drama has sex or violence scenes but not whether the content of drama against [is