How I became Koreanized (Part 3 - Final)

This third part to my Koreanized story will be the final one. I left off saying that I watched my very first Korean drama, 'My Princess'. Check out part 1 and part 2 to see my whole story.

When I saw 'My Princess' on Netflix, the little girl inside me who wanted to be a princess was attracted to it. The idea of a princess in a first-world country in the modern world seemed exotic. The drama was so much like anime with it's totally unrealistic plot lines and bubbly characters. I gasped at the closed mouth kisses and got angry when the main guy was being mean to the main girl. You can definitely see how memorable it was based on my blanking of the names. Which brings me to my next point.

Aren't they cute?

Daw. How could I forget you?

Seeing many more K-dramas after 'My Princess' has made me realize that it was kind of crappy. The acting was a little - cough cough just plain - bad, and I now know that closed mouth kisses are NOT the only type and definitely not the best type. Another example of how little an impact this drama left on me is how I completely forgot 이기광 (Lee Kikwang) is in this drama! For a K-Pop idol turned actor, he's not that bad. Plus I don't even think I knew who he was back then, so I can see how I forgot - or didn't know - of his role. I will, however remember certain scenes like the princess almost falling off of the fountain ledge and into the main guy's arms or their first kiss on the steps in the cold. It was my first drama, and thus it will always stay in my heart, just like my first anime will too.

As I pointed out, I watched more and more K-dramas since 'My Princess' and they have pretty much replaced anime altogether. Since my K-drama switch, I've only watched one anime series, and it wasn't so outstanding that I wanted to watch more anime. I see anime as my pre-teen me and K-dramas as my teen me. Disney as my child me if you're wondering.

When I started to watch more subbed anime, I tried learning Japanese. But my desire lessened when I started watching K-dramas. So naturally I started to want to learn Korean when I started watching K-dramas. I first learned 한글 (hangeul), the Korean alphabet (and if you want to know how I did that, I made a post that you can see here), then I started learning the language itself. Specifically in 'My Princess' I got annoyed with not knowing why their romanized names didn't sound like how their name was pronounced. Why did Park sound like Paak, and Lee sound like plain E? I answered most of my questions when I started learning the language.

I think that I'm pretty much caught up to the present now. I know that without the support of my friends, my passions wouldn't speak as much as they do. I'm not too crazy about telling my parents about my passion. They both know that I study Korean, but they don't know about my decision to teach in Korea one day. In general I am very quiet about my Korean passion to my family and anyone I meet. Maybe that's why my desire to make a blog about it was so strong.