Why Reply 1988 is one of the best Korean dramas ever

If you wish to dive into the black hole called Korean pop culture, I suggest you start from here.

“Aigoo Kim Sajang!”, “Aigoo Sung Sajang!” This is how the two characters, Sung Deok Sun and Kim Sung Kyun (real name of the actor as well), of this 2015 Korean drama address each other in a comical fun way in the first episode of Reply 1988, and I was ready to spend my days of unemployment lying on the couch with my laptop binge-watching the entire series.

Into the first episode of Reply 1988 and you are captivated by its comical, nostalgic aura that stays with you throughout the series. The protagonist, Deok-sun, and her four friends in the Ssangmundong neighborhood embody what eighties South Korea was for the young. Denim on denim, slip-on sneakers, pre-internet age of analog, when things were simpler yet harsh. As Deok Sun says, “We didn’t have much but our hearts were warm”.

In the first episode, the four friends can be seen going to each other’s house to send the dishes prepared by their mothers, which establishes the relationship that the families have, as Jung Hwan says, “why can’t we just eat together?!”

The TvN drama, that came out in 2015 has taught me much more about South Korea than any other Korean drama. The show took me back in time when landline phones, Walkman, cassettes, and video games were the norm. Deok Sun, Sun Woo, Teak, Jung Hwan, and Dong Ryong are five friends who have lived in the Ssangmundong neighborhood of Seoul since childhood and the drama traces their friendship from high school to adulthood. Also, Deok Sun and Jung Hwan’s elder siblings Bo-ra and Jung Bong add their own youthful presence to the show. Sung Bo-ra also represents the student protests that were quite prevalent in 1980s South Korea under the dictatorial regime of President Chun-Doo Hwan.

However, the drama is not just about these five friends but also about their parents and their friendship, from playing Go Stop cards, to cooking together, and supporting each other financially and emotionally when the times are tough. It is also a portrayal of father-daughter, and mother-daughter relationships. In one of the episodes, the Ssangmundong aajjumas praised Deok-sun and Bo-ra when their mother was going through menopause and said how daughters are more helpful in such times. But wait until you see what Jung Hwan does for his mom when she goes through it as well.

The show also gives us a brief glimpse of the political environment of the 80s when students were protesting for real democracy in South Korea. In the first episode, Bo-ra who is a sophomore student at Seoul National University asks her younger sister Deok Sun who is a picket girl for Madagascar’s Olympic team, “Are you that proud to be a part of the government’s plan? Do you even know the hidden agenda of our government? Do you know how many residents were dispossessed due to the Olympics?” Bo-Ra is a fearless student protester and a feminist icon of sorts. She does not hesitate in speaking her mind and raising her voice against the authoritarian regime of South Korea. In one of the episodes, she even saves Jung Bong from getting bullied by some notorious high school kids. She points at the American brands they were consuming and showing off, at which point even Jung Bong is seen hiding his Nike logo t-shirt under his jacket. Bo-Ra is seen driving, smoking, dating a man younger than her, almost goes to jail for protesting, and she breaks all these stereotypes at a time when South Korea was going through political turmoil.
One of the most insightful Twitter threads that I recently read on Bora’s entire character arc is by @AskAKorean.

Reply 1988 is rife with 80s pop culture references, the 80s advertisement jingles, Seoul Olympics 1988, MBS College Music Festival of 1988 when Shin Hae Chul sang his blockbuster To You. The series introduced me to some of the greatest Korean classics, like Hyewadong by Zoo, Youth by Sanullim, and other artists like Lee Seung Hwan, Sobangcha. The entire playlist of Reply 1988 is a history lesson in music which I also found to be more appealing than modern-day K-pop.

Above all, Reply 1988 is a story about friendship, about love, about youth, and about the good old days, and a very close-to-reality depiction. The drama really grips you from the first episode and will keep you engaged till the very last episode. It urges you to cherish your youth and value time and relationships.

After the series ended I felt a kind of void was left which needed to be filled. This led me to do some research on the 80s South Korea when the power-hungry dictators like Park Chung-hee and Chun-doo Hwan were murdering their country’s democracy with the help of the USA. It was the time of the Cold War and the USA was already humiliated after the Vietnam War and it just wanted to resist communism come what may. I came across the Gwangju Uprising and how the United States of America played a big role in helping the then-dictator Chun-doo Hwan in suppressing the student movement that demanded a proper democracy.

On further research, I came across 2016 Man Booker Prize winner Han Kang’s novel on the Gwangju massacre, Human Acts, which is one such account of the country’s fight for democracy. The novel presents the Gwangju massacre in its very emotional form, through its characters.

You can also watch movies like 1987 When The Day Comes, Taxi Driver, which is set against the backdrop of the infamous massacre. However, there was a relentless protest led by the students before Gwangju Uprising, known as the April Revolution in the 1960s during President Syngman Rhee’s regime which was suppressed in an equally brutal way. Daniel Tudor in his book Korea the impossible country writes, “On April 19, students marched from Korea University to Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential
mansion. Soldiers opened fire, killing two hundred of them.”

The modern history of Korea is something that not many people are aware of maybe because the US played an active role in stifling democracy in one of its own partner countries. Also, because much attention was being paid to the Cold War and the so-called vices of communism in the eighties.

Reply 1988 is the third and most recent installment in the early Reply series (Reply 1997, Reply 1994) created by Lee Woo-Jeong and directed by Shin Won-ho. The creators are known for their slice-of-life dramas, unlike typical Korean dramas that have a conventional villain, a budding romance of a too-good-to-be-true hero, and a damsel in distress actress. The heart and soul of Reply 1988 are its characters played by very talented and actors who took us back in time even though most of them were born in the 90s.

In 2020, the Reply creators gave us Hospital Playlist, another drama tracing the friendship of five surgeons in Seoul and their daily ordeals of dealing with patients and their relatives. Unlike dramatic scenes of blood-spewing patients and doctors jumping on the operation table to resuscitate them, Hospital Playlist is one of the most realistic depictions of the daily lives of surgeons, and resident doctors who barely get any time to eat, sleep or think about dating.

I would recommend these dramas to anyone who wants to delve into South Korean pop culture.