Why does Korea make the best dramas in the world?

All I wanted to say was that obviously a foreigner's and native's pov would be different on this topic. And this thread is asking a foreigner's pov.

 Anajwo:

All I wanted to say was that obviously a foreigner's and native's pov would be different on this topic. And this thread is asking a foreigner's pov.

I'm pretty sure we're all foreigners here, some have more exposure to China than others.

Anyways, that was not your original claim, your original claim was about how chinese people's opinions are less relevant/valuable than international audience's because they're not exposed to foreign media. This is a fair argument except the assumption that foreign media is very restricted in China is completely false. Restriction of foreign content never really works, it will make its way into the country one way or another. The government cares most about media that has negative influence on the country's philosophies, the majority of foreign entertainment media is harmless.

China is probably the most diverse country in terms of media consumption, they watch everything from western movies/tv, japanese anime, korean drama, anything, same with music. It might even be the case that they consume more western media than their own.

The "low competition" that you speak of doesn't make sense, if they produce a drama similar to game of thrones but inferior, it would get destroyed. In a sense, every chinese drama is equally competing with the global market. Of course, chinese people may prefer a certain type of drama but they're still exposed to everything. Then by your logic, their opinions would be more valuable than that of most americans.

How do I know this? I have many friends who are international students from China.

either I failed to properly communicate in my first post (maybe a run on sentence) or you failed to comprehend. Either way I clarified myself. Why are you bringing it up again? I barely even stated my personal opinion on this topic - and the cdrama fans are trying to drag me down. All I pointed out was what I heard from other people. And that being, that there's less hyped up "good" c-dramas than the are "good" kdramas.

I'm from Hong Kong. We're basically famous for 2 types of movies/dramas: Wuxia and the Mafia (drugs lol). (I think this is why Japanese manga always think of the mafia when it comes to HK). Of course mainland china has Wuxia dramas too (too many remakes), but ours are WAYYY more famous, stretching all the way to Thailand.

After the 90s, the wave pretty much died down. Our dramas aren't popular outside of Hong Kong anymore for two reasons: Most people can't understand Cantonese, and our budget caused lower-quality works. Now, most of our dramas are either about: police and mafia, law and crime, family rifts and splits, metropolitan city and romance, and historical. Also, new channels broadcasting foreign media was added a few years back. Many started to watch korean, mainland chinese, and japanese shows (dubbed of course).

Our dramas were even dubbed and sold to countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam. I was surprised that my Thai friends know a few Hong Kong actors. Unlike other countries, we don't film much fantasy, paranormal, doctors, or student dramas anymore because of the budget. Many of our most well known actors went to mainland china to seek work.

 kookiejamz:

Our dramas were even dubbed and sold to countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam.

I was only aware of kdramas being aired on tv stations in surrounding countries. In Philippines they get em dubbed too. So I guess it's not just kdramas. wow so lucky t.t

 DancingGoat:

. What other countries on the planet make high quality dramas with top notch stories, characters, osts, writing, depth etc like for example Signal, Its okay, Memory, Chicago Typewriter, Goblin, Save me, Dear my friends? 

I have only seen Signal from that list. So I  have no idea if I wouid agree with you on the others.

All I can do in response is give you a list of some tv shows from around the world which I found to be excellent or at least very  good.

Some of these are old, But you don't sat if you are just looking for new shows.

Denmark

The Killing

Borgen

Sweden/Denmark

The Bridge

Sweden.

Midnight sun

Blue eyes

Norway

Occupied.

The Saboteurs

Finland.

Raid

France 

The Churchmen

Spiral.

Braquo

The Returned

Japan.

Soredemo Ikite Yuku (the only one I would class a masterpiece)

Change

Britain

Prime suspect

United States.

True Detective (season 1)

Germany 

Deutschland 83

generation war

NSU-German history X

Italy

La Piovra (octopus)

Soviet union 

17 moments of spring.

I think that's enough.

 Anajwo:

Is this what you're talking about me putting down the Chinese opinion? Where did I put down the opinion of Chinese?if so, my bad but I thought if you're exclusively seeking an opinion of a certain nationality you'd do it through a way you can directly reach majority i.e. a Chinese website. If op wanted solely the opinions of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese then just like those youtube videos he'd have to visit those countries or go on forums/sites exclusive to the natives of said country. Was that not obvious?

The point is, it's not about where you're from. If we're talking about the topic about what country makes the best dramas, I just think you should have decent knowledge about each country's drama industry if you're going to make a statement like South Korea makes the best dramas and no one else makes dramas comparable in quality.  The OP put this question out there for readers of this site and they can be from any country. Like Jay said, if anything some Chinese viewers may be better "qualified" to answer this topic because they generally watch dramas from a wide range of countries and don't only limit themselves to a select few. 

Now you in particular originally asked for what Chinese dramas are worth watching and how "international" viewers don't hype these up. This is my point, some of these KDrama fans only watch Korean Dramas and it's their main point of reference. They have little knowledge of dramas from any other country and still go out of their way to make judgments about another country's drama and by extension their people despite having limited knowledge about them. If this doesn't apply to you, then move on. You asked for "worthy" CDramas outside of historicals/crime procedurals and that is admirable if you indeed want to diversify your tastes. But the way you framed the question seems like you're biased and couldn't believe CDramas could be getting better in quality just because you don't hear them being hyped up about international viewers. I'm not saying they're not entitled to their opinion but if their only knowledge of CDramas is what's popular on sites like Viki/Dramafever then that's not really representative of what is considered quality Chinese Dramas. That's not their fault, that's what is available to them but if they just base their opinion on it and make sweeping generalizations about CDramas on a whole based on that, obviously that isn't right.

 Anajwo:

It doesn't matter how shitty a movie or show is - if you can convince the masses to watch of course you will have high viewer ratings or profits. The difference with US is that a movie needs to be of higher quality and look promising enough to entice people to watch it to make their money back. Obviously an average movie in China (vs average movie in US) will make much more money simply due to population size. Furthermore everything in China is so restricted (including the limitation of foreign content) so if there is a major network or production company that holds monopoly or competition is weak, I'd imagine they won't care much for producing quality content as long as they've got the masses watching.

Since I can't quote from multiple pages, you also said: "It all depends on availability. It's not that the the Chinese want to consume low quality television - but if mediocre is all that's available then they have nothing else to watch. "

This is what I was referring to, sounds like you miscommunicated, no matter how I look at it, you're saying chinese are in a restricted environment so they have to like what they're given, which isn't true. Any drama in China is to some extent, directly or indirectly competing with the likes of "Game of Thrones" or "Breaking Bad", which have always been more praised than all the top dramas in China.

Also, you shouldn't assume everyone going against your opinion is some huge cdrama fan, I happen to like kdrama and cdrama equally, but have to take the cdrama side in this argument because you're being biased towards it.

I won't bother with this anymore since you've clarified later that it was more about foreign vs native pov.

Let's close this off with what the other Jay said above.