This article demonstrates that the process of defining Korean drama as idol drama or Qiongyao drama with realist or melodramatic orientations by different agents for “self-aggrandizement” is embedded in gender and ethnic/class tensions as a result of postcolonial nation formation and globalization. The profit motive underscores the definition of Korean drama as idol drama, which is articulated through discourses of modernization, gender, nation building/Chinese hegemony, and globalization. The culture industry's invocation of “cultural proximity” enables a definition of Korean drama as Qiongyao drama with realist or melodramatic orientations. Gender politics is central to this process as it depends on and, hence, reinforces the gender hierarchy which privileges realism over melodrama. The genrification of Korean drama relies on the construction of indigenous drama (and rural obason) as the Other. The different meanings that are attached to this Other by the “nationalistic” scholars/critics, audience/critics, and fans/critics are predicated upon an evaluation hierarchy which privileges Chinese hegemony, neoliberal globalization, and masculinity. This hierarchy, however, is the legacy of Taiwan's nation formation which works to subordinate the Minnanspeaking rural women culturally.
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