When Life Gives You Tangerines#
One household, watched across the decades#
Today’s drama#
Pokssak Sogatsuda (폭싹 속았수다) — a Jeju Island family from a hard postwar childhood to the adulthood of the next generation.
The span is the point: we watch what “family” was expected to mean change underneath people who didn’t necessarily choose the change.
Three questions#
- How have Korean family structures changed across the decades the drama covers?
- How does economic development — migration, new work, new money — reshape family relationships?
- How do different generations in the drama understand duty and independence differently from one another?
A single household lets us watch what “family” was expected to mean change underneath people who didn’t choose the change themselves.
Take from this week#
- family as a structure with historically specific, changing expectations
- filial responsibility, and what it has and hasn’t meant across generations
- generational difference as a source of both continuity and conflict
- how quickly a “traditional” norm can turn out to be recent
Before next week#
Watch the assigned Coffee Prince episodes. Bring one assumption the disguise premise makes about its audience.