you see them over and over again, and they get no better with age. here's my top 3. 1. the "klutz": i dont know why these girls are referred to as klutzy. in america, not being able to handle tasks like trimming your own finger nails (personal taste) would earn you a visit from adult social services or at the very least a concerned friend or family member. 2. the "nothing going for her" chick : this is a girl who isnt pretty (she's usually perfectly attractive to any one with a set of eyes,) isn't smart (ocassionally she's "klutzy" too) and doesnt come from a "good" family and some one must have told her this ALOT growing up cuz she repeats it all the friggin time(boys over flowers) and usually ends up with perpetrator number 3, who also feels the need to remind her of her inferiority (secret garden) regularly. 3. "THAT ass": that ass is some ass that thinks it's acceptable to tell a girl "i shouldnt love you b/c you're ugly poor and stupid but i can over look all that!" (playful kiss) i remember the first time i heard gu jun pyo tell kim jan di she didnt NEED to be pretty, smart or rich b/c he was all those things already (pretty-sooooo pretty- and rich he had but smart? tee friggin hee) the look of swooning on grass patch's face and the music playing in the back ground tell you it supposed to be a sweet tender moment, but all i could think was if ANY guy said that to me, yes even the epicly gorgeous Lee Min Ho, he wouldnt have to worry aobut it b/c i'd (expletive deleted) his (expletive deleted) and (explitvie deleted) give them back to him in a (expletive deleted) mason jar.
that evil mother/ father.

Honestly I am quite apalled at the demonization of parent figures in k-dramas. How many times can you do it? I think I had the most proboem with the mother-son relationship in Secret Garden and Boys Before Flowers and many similar ones, where the mother (or other times father) is very cardboard-like evil. It's not right, in my mind, to demonise them so much and those figures in standard k-dramas are seriously lacking multidimensional representation. Children are not always right but there is no reason for the parents to be demonised as stopping their children. I really have a problem with that. It was the same with Cain and Abel, it was a pretty good watch but it failed to avoid the sterotype completely, that's why it fell a bit flat for me for that very reason, but at least the rationale was somehow made more meaningful by the hospital settine ang it was there, unlike in Boys over flowers or Secret garden. And in BBf that mother was such a typical..well Witch throughout most of the drama, though it was somehow compensated at the end, it really didn;t feel multimensional to me.

(thank you for the thread, I so wanted to say this somewhere)

I do not mind klutzy girls myself, I kinda like them. Sometimes it;s not really klutzy. In Japanese hotaru no hikari- the girl is a good, hardoworking person but simply slob at home that doesn;t care about love, nor house work. I It started with a kiss we have a girl that's simply quite slow and ends up with the person that is cold-hearted but possibly needs her the most. I have a bit of leniency towards these kinds of sterotypes.

But less tolerance towards the parents sterotype, practically every drama demonizes them, there are few which do it in a more realistic way. I'm always a bit wary of the parent-child dynamics because of it, but for the most paqrt expect to see at least one evil parent figure in a k-drama.

But no matter what we say, these are standard premises and k-dramas need something to rely on for quick story impulse. And sometimes the traditional premises are simp,y the dsafest ones. Also, they are like fairy tales in that, fairy tales use a lot of these standard archetypes, like evil stepstister, bad mother, so I like to think about most korean dramas as fairy tales and more often than not I simply accept it as such, as long as the drama is well made and has a good overall effect, no matter what else I may pick out as flaws.
I tend to agree with both of you, but with one addition: Not just parents, but also Grandparents.