Korean Wave TV Dramas and Turkish Remakes of K-Dramas: The Politics of Intercultural Communication and Cultural Meanings of Modernization

Television, through drama and series, is the most powerful and pervasive storyteller and culture producer of our time. The culture-producing function of television and the culture constructed by TV are most clearly visible in national adaptations of globally produced programs and formats. For more than a century, Korea and Turkey have been trying to modernize and integrate into contemporary civilization while preserving their own culture. In recent years, Korea has succeeded in producing its popular culture within the national culture industry and spreading it around the world, and this popularity has been called the Korean Wave. In Turkey, there is a high interest in K-Dramas, one of the cultural products of the Korean Wave. The reason for this interest is that the modernization efforts and cultural characteristics of the two countries are similar. The basis of this similarity is the social desire to preserve its culture while modernizing. The subjects of K-dramas are mainly family and romantic relationships, and identity problems of the youth. These are cultural manifestations of the process of social modernization and are addressed in television dramas. In this article, Dr. Romantic, the most popular K-Drama of recent years both at national and global level, and its Turkish remake Town Doctor (Kasaba Doktoru) are analyzed from the perspective of cross-cultural comparison. This analysis is done around the strategies of cultural adaptation. The analysis with these strategies shows how these nations interpret their idiosyncrasies, interculturality and modernization As a result of the analysis, it is argued that Korean drama portrays scientific, professional, ethical and personal conflicts without taking a clear stand in favor of any of them, while Turkish remake emphasizes romance and melodrama and advocates a conservative modernizationist policy of interculturality.