Korean Reality Shows

I don't consider myself a big reality show watcher. I'm roughly familiar with the characteristics of the genre, back when the first such productions appeared on MTV, or when Hungarian commercial television began to introduce licenses like Big Brother, Survivor, and similar ones, I watched them with great interest.

My first impression was that the initial moments (days) are interesting, but then the dynamics are taken away by the fact that the organizers structure the days with various programs, parade celebrities, and give idiotic tasks instead of letting the conditions and human behavior be observed in their raw reality.

There is something perverse and voyeuristic about this, or some kind of human experiment in a bad sense, but the truth is that this is the part that would have interested me. However, I quickly stopped watching these productions because:

• The whole thing was over-directed.
• They increasingly chose extreme characters who were displayed in a circus-like manner.

The overall quality and value system went in a direction where practicing psychopaths stood out (including the TV crew) and the whole thing had an unacceptable message to me that this kind of behavior pattern and lifestyle is completely fine.

So after a while, only themed reality shows could hold my attention, such as cooking competitions and the smarter survival shows (where instead of feeding disgusting animal innards, you could actually follow them building primitive huts for themselves or finding food in the wild). I also liked home and car renovation shows.

I quickly formed the judgment that these thematic shows sometimes engaged me and were well-done, while the bottom of the genre was the relationship-based or basic human interaction-focused reality shows like Big Brother. To me, they were only slightly better than music talent shows, which also went in a celebrity-generating direction. The media created future tabloid props for itself and sold it as a reality show. (They were right in the sense that they represented their own reality.)

After moving abroad, I lost my connection with Hungarian media, but I saw more or less the same trends internationally. The Estonian talent show didn't interest me just like the Hungarian one, and the English, American, Brazilian, and French relationship and dating shows were filled with the same psychopaths as back home.

About 10 years passed over my head like this, occasionally looking into a thematic reality show or talent show, but I can't recall a single one that I consistently watched.

However, something has happened recently. On one hand, even after two years, I don't feel like I have settled down and gotten used to Asia. This world is very different, very new, strange, and special to me; every day there is still something I marvel at. This is no different in the world of media. Singapore is not the best example of this because the media here is particularly poor as an industry or as a creative genre. The local world is too suppressed and regulated. However, there are refreshing examples in the surrounding area. This includes Taiwanese media, Hong Kong's film and media world, which had remarkable traditions until recently, but I think the South Koreans are the biggest players in the field.

Whether it's artistically inspired, deep social dramas, action movies, sci-fi, romantic soap operas, pop music, music talent shows, or as I've recently noticed, reality shows, the Koreans really know something. They are also very popular here in Singapore, perhaps Taiwanese media is doing better because they are linguistically closer to each other. However, K-pop and Korean films are also very popular here.

So, after many long years, I stumbled upon the Korean versions of these relationship reality shows, and I must admit, I was impressed. I've been thinking for days about what captured me so successfully.

I would like to highlight two productions:

• Singles Inferno
• Change Days

I don't know where similar Western productions stand, as I mentioned, I left them about 10 years ago. What I first noticed is that although the title and editing shots are very similar, they brought together very different people in Korea.

I think what surprised me at first was the unusually polite, in many cases, awkwardly measured, nature of most opening scenes. The characters come in one by one, bow deeply in front of each other, and sit down politely. Then they don't say a word, sitting there like a statue, and a lot of time passes before one of the young people fans their face, saying how awkward this whole thing is. It really is.

But somehow, this moment grabbed me, I became interested, and I didn't turn it off because for some reason, I found it authentic. After all, what do we see? They enter a space (in this case, they sit around a campfire on an island) where they have to sit down among complete strangers in the crossfire of cameras, and they have to get together within a foreseeable time (while millions are watching them). If this isn't awkward, what is?

In similar Western shows, at this point, we see the vacuum-mouthed, fake-breasted, heavily tattooed suburban nail technicians (who later become porn actresses) hugging each other with artificially high-pitched voices, calling each other Babe, while the muscular and tattooed car dealers call each other Dude or Bro and immediately pop open a drink. I was expecting an Asian version of this. Yakuza and triad members with bleached blonde hair, tattoos all over, muscular by Asian standards, cosplayers who stepped out of manga comics, and local tough guys who have aged out of or are trying to break into Asian porn. I mean, that's what the editorial teams are looking for.

Instead, it quickly turns out that these shy, downcast-eyed girls are piano artists, medical students, painters, and the mushroom-haired boys, who are barely distinguishable from each other, are plastic surgeons, brokers, gentlemen tailors, or master chefs. So, it seemed that while Western shows deliberately aim below average for reality show participants, giving the whole thing a circus-like, zoo-like feel, Korean (and I've seen a Japanese example too) productions specifically throw in above-average, successful, exemplary characters.

This makes the restrained, politely bowing atmosphere even more understandable because these people really live in this world with such behavior patterns. In the Japanese show (I can't remember the name, but it was on Netflix too) there was a young person who was completely cut from the entire production at the family's request because it was embarrassing for them to see their offspring there. In the Korean show, during one of the introductions, the young guy tells his family name and notes that he belongs to the 35th generation of the clan. This was very familiar to me (and that's when the whole thing started to interest me). In Singapore, compared to the European world, young people are very much bound. 

The island is small, everything is monitored via cameras, everyone sees everything that young people do on social media or in the parks between houses. My wife says that in Singapore there are no such reality shows (there are, but they don't run like the Koreans) because if you put an 18-year-old girl in a show here, you better be prepared to deal with the dozens of aunts, uncles, the entire extended family, the whole ethnic community, speaking their dialects, watching everything with eagle eyes.

There is nothing surprising about the decorative Korean girl sitting in front of the campfire, looking down with her eyes lowered, politely bowing and slightly rising when someone new arrives. This is how they live their lives, this is their place, this is the expectation for them, they can't afford to be out of control for a moment.

Why do they still make reality shows around them?

Well, because in such an extremely controlled, suppressed, and expectation-filled world, the whole production becomes like a medieval chivalric romance, where sighs, forgotten glances, small signs and gestures, secrets, and lies prevail, and cathartic moments are signified by tears shed in seclusion and fingers entwined in the pool, which make both the hosts and the participants gasp in awe.

The Hungarian (and any Western) reality show quickly became a circus of psychopaths because it only took one season for Majka to be kissed by a summoned porn actress, Debreczeni Zita to be penetrated by a buffalo while her girlfriend sits by the campfire, and all the participants showering without bikinis in front of the cameras after two episodes. These are 15-year-old memories in my head from the first reality shows. I don't know where they stand today; maybe they attack each other with chainsaws, or nobody watches them like me because there's really nowhere to escalate.

In the Korean show (I haven't finished it yet), I don't see them raising the stakes. The girls bathe in the pool in 1920s-style swimsuits, and the word "date" means politely nodding and humming towards each other in a restaurant, sharing their emotions in long, flowery sentences.

Maybe it's the strangeness or the restraint, but this has captured my attention much more than Western productions. I started paying attention to the dialogues. I find myself rewinding three times to notice how they look up from their food when something is said.

Change Days is a psychological masterpiece, in my opinion. We actually see a couples' therapy set in a dramatic situation. In that show, they bring together couples on the verge of breaking up in a big house and start cross-dating them. I am naive and gullible; I can buy into these situations. My wife's first reaction was, "You don't really think they're not acting this out, do you?"

She might be right because as this strange world absorbs me, I also forget that millions are watching this, the participants know that millions will watch this, and there is not a single moment when they are not surrounded by camera crew members. How spontaneous can one be in such a situation? In a circus, you can only make a circus.

Yet, I find myself being easily drawn into the whole thing and completely believing what I see. The participants here are also ordinary people. They may not have as outstanding status as the other show's plastic surgeons or piano artists, but there are kindergarten teachers, math teachers, cosmeticians, or fitness trainers without fillers, tattoos, or overly muscular bodies. It's very difficult to remember their names and distinguish them from each other. It's clear that Korea (even further from Singapore) is far away, with its own fashion, and young people who care about themselves dress differently here too. But this makes them even more interesting.

The show is focused on couples living together (in pairs in a shared house) but during the day (if they decide) they go on dates with someone else (here, a date should be imagined again as eating together in a restaurant or going on a boat trip). Yet, even in this extremely restrained world, there is nerve-wracking tension from the fact that the members of a couple on the verge of breaking up actually break up a little bit every day but meet again every night and sleep together as if nothing happened. They have to ceremoniously hang their wedding rings on little statues every time they take them off and put them back on.

The tension is raised to such a level that the guy drives his girlfriend to a date with another man. He has to drop the girl off at the seaside pier, who stands there with her little bag, and the other man comes for her. The other man who, just minutes earlier, dropped off his own girlfriend/fiancée so she could date another couple's male member. And in the evening, all 4 couples (a total of 8 people in the story) go back to the house and sit down nicely around the table and have dinner together. Each couple, in front of the other couples, tells the story of their relationship, why they are on the verge of breaking up, and why they came here.

And to keep us entertained while they all talk about this at the dinner table, the girls' phones ring, with their newfound suitors inviting them on another date for tomorrow (or not, that's their decision). Just as the emotions were beginning to calm down, the original couples were busy sharing their problems from their own perspectives, the narrator's voice mercilessly announces which girl was invited again for a date and which one accepted the invitation. And with this information in mind, as if they had done their job well, they send (the original) couples off to sleep in their rooms.

Well, there's no camera-induced suppression, the awareness that the whole family, the whole clan, and the whole world are watching. There is no person who could handle their emotions in such a situation. In a Western show, I think blood would seriously be shed. Here, in this restrained, polite world, the tension escalates to such a level that you can cut the silence. Which is much more striking than any drama.

The series brought up such old memories, fears, youthful loves, and dramas in me that I could barely sleep from it. I watched myself, my heart breaking when one of them cried all night because her boyfriend invited another girl on a date, yet at the same time, I completely understood the guy whose girlfriend excitedly puts on makeup while he lies in bed like a pile of misery. Then it turns out on the date that the other guy is a thousand times worse than her boyfriend or, conversely, a thousand times better. The first day. Whatever happens, everyone goes home to their own partner at night and has to say something.

I really like that the visual world of the show doesn't bring that washed-out Instagram world at all. The rooms they live in after the first day look just like when we go on vacation. Half-unpacked suitcases, rumpled bedding, open tubes fallen in front of the mirror, clothes thrown onto the armchair, shoes around the door. There's clutter. In space and in souls. Those who weren't taken on a date stay at home. They sit outside together and cook while their partners are with the other couple's partner.

All of this without a single kiss, no touch, no revealing necklines, no bare upper bodies, the whole thing reminds me of an Ingmar Bergman film with very heavy dialogues. Nothing happens. They eat in the house or go to a restaurant to eat. That's all the action. The only thing that changes is the arrangement in which they do this and what is said there.

I didn't think that this genre could be done so deeply. I guess it takes the culture and world they live in for that. Every story is very familiar, very human, yet the whole thing feels like I'm seeing another planet.