K-dramas and their never-ending obsession with amnesia

When it comes to K-dramas, there are many tropes that have been done to death - the ugly duckling to pretty girl transformation, the rich guy falls for the quirky yet kind girl, and the love triangle, to name a few.

But while these are easy to digest, nothing feels more cliche than the repetitive use of amnesia as a plot twist in almost every drama.

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Crazy Love dives into amnesia just in its second episode

The recently debuted K-drama, Crazy Love, starring Krystal and Kim Jae-wook, is only two episodes in and amnesia has already emerged as a decisive factor in its plotline.

As the story proceeds, Kim Jae-wook’s character Noh Go-jin is the mean boss to the seemingly timid Shin-ah (Krystal), who discovers that extreme stress from her work has given her last stage brain tumor.

She decides to break into her boss’ house and stages a fake attack, only to throw her resignation letter in his face. While she leaves Go-jin unharmed, someone else runs him over with his car.

And of course, the best route the protagonist can think of to catch whoever wants to kill him is to fake amnesia, which prompts Shin-ah to pretend that she is his fiance.

From here on, it is evident that amnesia will be driving the plot of Crazy Love. It is disappointing to see that in a world of K-dramas where shows like Our Beloved Summer, Squid Game, and Vincenzo exist, writers are still coming up with plot twists that introduce the redundant memory loss arc.

This is not the first, nor will it be the last show to give its characters amnesia just to introduce the needed conflict in the storyline.

Right from the famous Lee Min-ho show, Boys Over Flowers, which put K-dramas on the international fan radar, shows have consistently reverted to memory loss or its updated version, the short-term memory loss (Devilish Charm) as a plot device.

But that does not mean that some shows haven’t tried to be as creative as possible when putting their characters through the hassle of losing and regaining their memory.

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Amnesia in W-Two Worlds, Goblin, and many other K-dramas

While it is often tiring to see a character getting hit on the head by a goon or by a car and forgetting who they are, some K-dramas have infused freshness in this done-to-death trope.

The best example that comes to mind is W: Two Worlds, where Lee Jung-suk’s Kang Chul is a webtoon character created by Yeon-joo’s (Han Hyo-joo) father. One day, she is sucked into the webtoon and realizes that the fictional world has taken on a life of its own.

Eventually, the two fall in love, but it messes with the webtoon world’s rules and imbalances it to the point where secondary characters start disappearing.

This prompts Kang Chul to request Yeon-joo to go back to her real world and rewrite the comics, which will ensure that none of the events that led to the chaos in the webtoon ever happened.

This means Kang Chul also forgets that he discovered that he is a webtoon character, the truth about his family’s death, and above all, his love for Yeon-joo.

Another fitting example of K-dramas using amnesia in an innovative manner is Goblin. Here, Kim Woo-bin (Lee Dong-wook) becomes a Grim Reaper because of the atrocious sins he committed in his last life.

He is doing good in his new “job” until he meets Sunny (Yoo In-na) and falls in love with her, which in turn starts unlocking his memories about his past life.

There are many more K-dramas like the ones mentioned above — Duel, Extraordinary You, Oh My Ghost, and Two Cops — that have shown us how they can stick to old plot devices but can turn a cliched concept on its head at the same time.