‘First, marriage, then love’

A new popular ‘keyword’ has appeared on the small screen.

Amidst a series of romantic comedies and romantic fantasy dramas being aired, all of the popular works are attracting attention by following this formula.

‘First, love, then marriage’, where the male and female protagonists do not have deep feelings for each other until they get married first, either by contract or through politics, and later feel love for each other.

Examples include tvN‘s ‘Queen of Tears’, which enjoyed syndrome-level popularity this spring, Channel A’s ‘Cinderella at 2AM’, ‘Because I Don‘t Want to Lose Money’, MBC’s ‘The Phone Call You‘re Calling Now’, and Netflix’s ‘Trunk’.

In ‘Queen of Tears’, Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won play a couple who realize true love after marriage, recording its own highest viewership rating of 24.9%, becoming the highest in tvN drama viewership ratings of all time.

‘The Call You‘re Dialing’, starring Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin as a couple in a political marriage, is the same. The drama, which first aired on the 22nd of last month, tells the story of a seemingly perfect married couple in their third year of marriage who live without even talking to each other.

In the drama, Yoo Yeon-seok plays Baek Sa-eon, a spokesperson for the presidential office, and Chae Soo-bin plays his wife and a sign language interpreter. The two gradually realize how precious each other is to each other after receiving mysterious threatening phone calls.

In the recently aired 4th episode, Yoo Yeon-seok acknowledged his wife’s existence in front of people for the first time in order to protect her, and expressed subtle emotions when he first heard his wife‘s voice, who had suffered from mutism.

Thanks to the addition of a thriller to the ‘marital romance’ setting, the drama has recently captivated fans around the world.

According to FlixPatrol, an OTT service ranking site, ‘The Call You’re Dialing’ ranked 2nd worldwide in the Netflix ‘TV Show’ category as of the previous day. It led global popularity, ranking 1st in over 33 countries from the 26th of last month to the 1st.

It also ranked 1st among all TV and OTT dramas in just 2 weeks after its broadcast in a topicality survey (Fundex). Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin drew attention by taking 1st and 2nd place, respectively, in terms of cast topicality.

‘Trunk’, which became a hot topic due to the meeting of Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin, puts ‘temporary marriage’ at the forefront.

It is a setting where they enter into a one-year contract marriage without love due to their respective needs and then gradually fall in love.

Immediately after its release, the American Time magazine highly praised, saying, “Seo Hyun-jin delicately expressed her complex inner self, and Gong Yoo presented intense yet delicate emotional acting”, and the Indian broadcasting company NDTV praised, saying, “It explores human relationships, trauma, and the consequences of an unresolved past. Seo Hyun-jin and Gong Yoo vividly portrayed the complex emotions and inner selves of each character”.


Reporter Lee Jeong-yeon annjoy@donga.com