Episode 31: Gyeongseong Creature Episode 1 (Media)

Korean. American. Podcast

This week Jun and Daniel discuss Korean culture through a recently trending popular K-drama on Netflix: Gyeongseong Creature Episode 1, which takes place in 1945 with Korea still under Japanese occupation. Our hosts use this drama episode as a vehicle to discuss differences in how a Korean American might view and receive the show, compared to a Korean Korean. How is Asian representation in the media perceived in Korea? Why is the show’s title clever? What similarities are there between the Holocaust and the Japanese occupation of Korea? What symbols and words in Korea carry the same weight as a Nazi swastika or the n-word? What nuances, from a style of glasses to subtle language cues, would a Korean viewer pick up that are lost on Western audiences? How distracting are bad accents to a Korean viewer?

If you're interested in any of these questions, tune in to hear Daniel and Jun discuss all this and more! Also in this episode, Daniel shares his love for Korean media and how deeply Asian representation in media matters to him, while Jun nerds out architecture, which he has a graduate degree in (from a college in Boston).

NOTE: While this is not an episode review per se, as we focus more on cultural aspects depicted in the drama rather than the plot and characters of the drama itself, this episode still may contain spoilers. If you have not watched Gyeongseong Creature Episode 1 and do not want anything spoiled, consider yourself warned!

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Chapters

1. Episode 31: Gyeongseong Creature Episode 1 (Media) (00:00:00)

2. [Ad] What It's Like To Be... (00:08:03)

3. (Cont.) Episode 31: Gyeongseong Creature Episode 1 (Media) (00:08:41)