What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
Jewel in the Palace: Korean Food Culture and Traditional Medicine
Royal cuisine, Joseon-era medicine, and food as social hierarchy, through the drama that made a court kitchen the setting for a whole society
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
KPop Demon Hunters: K-pop and Korean Popular Culture
Why K-pop travels, and what its production model reveals about Korean popular culture and identity on a global stage
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Crash Landing on You: Korean Division, North and South
A romance across the DMZ, and what it romanticises about a division that isn't a plot device
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
When Life Gives You Tangerines: Family and Generational Culture
A multigenerational Jeju family drama, and how duty, marriage, and independence have shifted between generations
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Coffee Prince: Changing Attitudes Toward Sexuality and Gender
A gender-disguise romance from the 2000s, read for what it assumed its audience already believed
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Misaeng: Incomplete Life and Korean Workplace Culture
A contract worker at a trading company, and what the show gets right about hierarchy, seniority, and hours
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
SKY Castle: Korea's Education Fever
Private tutors, university admissions, and the extremes a satire has to reach to feel exaggerated
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Mr. Sunshine: Korean Independence and the Colonial Period
Late Joseon and the onset of Japanese colonial rule, and what a historical drama is for
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Reply 1988: Everyday Life in 1980s Korea
A working-class Seoul neighbourhood under authoritarian rule, and what nostalgia does to that memory
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
The Art of Sarah: Materialism and Consumer Culture in Korea
A counterfeit-luxury scam thriller, and why status goods carry so much weight in the story it tells
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
My ID Is Gangnam Beauty: Plastic Surgery, Beauty Standards, and Appearance
A high-school transformation story, and the debates around cosmetic surgery it walks straight into
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
New Recruit: Military Culture in Korea
Conscription and barracks life, and why compulsory service sits at the centre of so much everyday Korean masculinity
Week 12 · 10 May 2027