In sickness and in love : autumn in my heart and the embodiment of morality in Korean television drama

Abstract

The modern ideology of romantic love is a prominent theme in Korean television dra- mas (K-dramas). In this paper, I focus on one particular drama, Autumn in My Heart (2000), and the real life love stories of young Korean women. By examining the moral discourses of love within the drama in conjunction with the personal experiences of my informants (echoing the ways my own informants spoke of their love stories in the con- text of the dramas), I argue that the melodramatic form that emerges from such a study exposes a certain ambivalent attitude to the ideal of modern romantic love. My informants and the narrative plot of the drama in question articulate an embodied moral discourse that conceives of illness as a moral consequence of romantic love with a consequent detachment of the individual from the moral community of kin.