LGBTQ+ in K-Dramas

Happy Pride month!

There are not a lot of dramas that have LGBT+ characters in them, especially that are not gay or lesbian. So, I picked a few things from my watched list that have characters from the community.

The blog is divided into three categories: vibes (if you close your eyes enough, you might think they're gay/lesbian), small role (they were there for a good time but short) and the mains (characters that are the focus of the series)

Please let me know if I've missed anything or if there's anything you'd like to add.

There was a trope in older dramas where the man is confused about liking another man, but it's still a woman. I only watched two dramas, like that, which is not a lot, but, weirdly, it happened twice!

The second couple in Ho Goo's Love is just like that. The guy is so sure that he loves Ho Goo, but later finds out that it was his twin sister all along.

Of course, I can't leave Coffee Prince from this conversation, where the male main character thinks that his colleague, whom he has fallen for, is a man. Again, it all ends up being fake, but maybe it still counts for something?

A recent drama that I want to add to this category is Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born. I heard that in the Webtoon, the relationship between the main character and her friend is shown, but there's only a small implication that there could be something more in the drama. It's a bit sad that we didn't have more.

Jeongnyeon has chemistry with every girl, but maybe that's Kim Tae Ri being Kim Tae Ri because I wanted her character from 2521 to end up with a girlfriend too.

I might have watched this drama ages ago, but the lesbian couple is still stuck in my head. Seonam Girls' High School Investigators. I'll be honest, I don't remember what the girlies investigated or what case it was, but it was interesting and probably the first on-screen lesbian romance.

In the end, it was all because of me. Because I fell in love with a girl. But it wasn't that I fell in love with her because she was a girl. I fell in love with this person. She just happened to be a girl. - Suyeon from Seonam Girls' High School Investigators

You can't compare the roles, but looking at Seonam investigators and Be Melodramatic, the latter got less screen time. Lee Hyo Bong is a gay brother of one of the main characters, but we don't get much backstory with him, just that he is dating another producer.

We're collecting crumbs here, I'm sorry.

Mad for Each Other tackles a bit with transgender issue and that people can dress however they want without being called a pervert. There is a queer character Lee Sang Yeop/Samantha which is the reason why the conversation is brought up.

He was a very nice character, and I wish we had got more chances to get to know him because his storyline would seem interesting.

When looking for something different, Itaewon Class is there. It's not a perfect drama, at least for me, but it did a great job of talking about transgender people. I think there is a lot of conversation around it being bad or good representation (I'm not the right person to talk about that), but it's the only character that is known as transgender.

Taking little steps is still progress!

Looking through the list of dramas I watched, I understood how there are still very few characters that could be fully included in this list.

BL dramas are more popular now, and there are more being created, but they are not on the big screen. Usually, it's only a web drama, and we have little time to get to know them.

I loved You Make Me Dance, Semantic Error, and SF8: Joan's Galaxy. Those are nice additions to the list, but I hope we get to see more and more diverse characters.