Self-mockery of hallyu in the Korean drama My Love from the Star (Byeol eso on geudae) and the role of the seventeenth-century novel The Dream of the Nine Clouds (Guunmong)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe fields of Korean classical literature and Korean TV drama do not often intermingle. Viewers of K-dramas can sometimes watch their protagonists thumb through certain books onstage, but these books are usually of foreign origin and do not belong to the so-called canon of traditional Korean literature. As a covert parody of the The Dream of the Nine Clouds, My Love from the Star is an exception. It does not only explicitly allude to the novel, but shares semantic and structural parallels with it. In order to illuminate the intertextual references between the two works, I combine John Fiske’s concept of intertextuality with Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody. The tension between the novel and drama generates a dichotomy between tradition and hallyu that eventually leads to the self-mockery of hallyu itself. The fact that My Love from the Star was not widely recognized among hallyu fans as a parody of The Dream of the Nine Clouds might ironically support the drama’s mockery of the superficiality of hallyu. It might also prove that the pleasure viewers derive from a drama has less to do with the communication of meaning than with the way they are moved by it.