I’m a Korean dramas (k-dramas) fan. The reason is simple: the South Korean storytelling industry has figured out a way to combine humanity with the best of their culture that travels far and wide.
Storytelling is effective in spreading ideas and making messages sticky. Ideas and messages often start the changes in culture. South Korea, like many other Asian countries, is a community-based society as we experience through the genre. For a long time, k-dramas has largely been focusing on love stories to encourage people believe in love and relationships. But I noticed the change in the most recent works as interdependence has emerged as one of the themes that the industry is communication with the world.
When complicated problems appear, a common challenge today, how to view the win and loss, care, and balance among all that are involved may create either harmony in the society or disasters and more pains. What has been done before might not be working again today…
The desired outcome that everyone wants in today’s conflicts, big or small, may require not only remarkable problem solving skills but integrity and understanding. One way to achieve it is through leading and connecting with people even the ones who we least expect from. Sharing the honest motivation and the goal might be the alignment to rally and act together rather than simply defining the line between “us” versus “them”, the way that has been done before.
There is no doubt that community still holds strong connections and power, but this perspective opens up the space and field on tackling tough challenges like the systemic failures that otherwise exist persistently and are not being resolved.
When we change the way that we see interpersonal relationships in a greater sense of interdependence instead of an immediate goal or the like and dislike, and rally as we can, we might be able to create important changes that goes beyond the shortsighted agenda and serves the whole.
