I've almost entirely given up on reading any new Korean stories. I want to preface this with saying that no, its not only Korean works that do this, in fact Chinese works may very well have more annoying power abuses and corruption. The only reason the Chinese ones go under the radar for me is that I read way less Chinese authored stories, and *generally* its the worse stories (from what I've seen) that rely on arrogant rich people, and even then the MC doesn't beat around the bush and slaps em straight in the mouth, no patty-cake. In most Korean settings from my preferred genres, there is 9 times out of 10 a politician or conglomerate family that abuses power alongside dozens of other people, with seemingly nobody (or maybe 1 person, tops) that is actually, I don't know, in their position of power to benefit the populace. Also, the amount of assassination attempts is crazy, I mean half of all stories written start with one. I'm curious to know, is that how South Korean citizens actually see their politicians, and are all these ridiculous allegations and assassination attempts things they actually observe in society there, or is it just some overbearing troupe that a lot of writers fell back on over the years? I've tried searching it in the past, but little comes up.
South Korea's population protested their president into impeachment for corruption during 2016-2017. This probably affected the webnovel scene alongside everything else. As for assassination, it's is probably to be expected for more melodramatic political settings, TBH.
Ooo, that is very interesting info that I wasn't aware of. Thanks doubly for the Wikipedia link, very interesting info to read over. Most of the stuff I read with these kinds of settings were made before 2016, but it definitely is helpful to know that there have been some actual, pretty severe cases of events like the ones they portray in novels.
Far as I know a big reason for it being in KR novels is because of the fact that in Korea a lot of the financial sector is controlled by a select few rich families, called chaebol, which comes from the fact that the goverment to boost the economy some years back gave them some deals that honestly just made the families able to take over Korea's finances to a large degree. These chaebol families have often gotten into legal problems but for some reason they pretty much always seemingly get away with it. One incident where it didn't work out as intended was when a daughter of a chaebol family threw a tantrum aboard a plane which is known as the "nut rage" incident. Basically she was given her nuts in a bag instead of them being served on a plate which resulted in her arguing with the cabin crew for 20 mins, assaulting the person in question and then ordering him to leave the plane. Which forced the plane that was about to lift of to return to the gate so that cabin crew could get off. The word entitled isn't enough to describe some of the chaebol to be honest. Spoiler: More info on the incident (quoted from wikipedia) On December 5, 2014, Heather Cho (Korean name: Cho Hyun-ah; Korean: 조현아), a businesswoman and daughter of the then Korean Air chairman and CEO, Cho Yang-ho, boarded Korean Air Flight 086 registered as HL7627[1] at John F. Kennedy International Airport, destined for Incheon International Airport in Seoul.[2] Prior to takeoff, she was served macadamia nuts in a closed bag rather than on a plate.[3][4][5] Upon being served the nuts in a bag, Cho rebuked flight attendant Kim Do-hee[5][6] and called over cabin crew chief Park Chang-jin[6] to complain.[5] It was alleged that, under Cho's orders, the chief was forced to kneel down before her and beg for forgiveness. Cho repeatedly struck Park's knuckles with the edge of a digital tablet, and immediately dismissed him.[7] Cho ordered the chief to get off the plane, requiring it to taxi back to the airport's gate. The incident created a delay of approximately 20 minutes for the flight with 250 people on board. The chief allegedly initially agreed with executives to refrain from making public statements and disclosing the incident to officials, but when he and the flight attendant heard about Cho's apparent attempts to spread false rumors of sexual relations between the flight attendant and chief, he decided to file an official complaint.[4][5][8][9] Korean Air issued an apology to passengers, but attempted to justify Cho's action, saying it was in accordance with her job of inspecting in-flight service and airplane safety. They apologized for the inconvenience.[4][9] Initially, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board was investigating the case.[4] An aggrieved first class passenger contacted the airline about the incident she observed, and received a model airplane and a calendar in the mail by way of apology. It was also discoverd in tandem with this that Cho had already been involved in a similar incident the year before but then managed to cover it up compared to this time. So since it's so common and it pretty much happens all the time from what I heard it's become a common trope since it reflects reality and ppl can get a kick out of seeing a chaebol get busted in novels. I'm not quite as sure about CN but seeing the news about CN that has been going up lately makes me guess that it's pretty similar. I mean the last few years on average about 3-5 million women were kidnapped per year and the numbers are now down to about 1 million a year which the government bragged about. Most of the women are kidnapped out of the bigger cities to the farm lands because of the lack of women. The law even states that kidnapping and imprisoning a woman for breeding only gives about 2-3 years prison time at most and the government even included in the law that they "encourage" that if the woman wants to stay the kidnapper should get of scoot free and they should get married. When a student tried to make ppl aware of this by graffiti he was sentenced to a year in prison I believe. So it at least to me seems like there is a lot of power abuse there but it is a dictatorship after all so.
If your an author and your trying to find a villain for the story that people will relate. Corruption is a good one. Many, even normal people face these trials. So it’s not a stretch to envision a powerful person being corrupted. I take it with a grain of salt and move on. Asking for something really original. Is asking a lot because I can tell you most of the angles have already been played out. In order to have something relatable and relevant needs to be understandable. Which means most have acknowledged the possibility. Here’s a good quote.
Tbh.. theres no other use of politician to be introduced to the story other than to be villains that makes the story a bit darker..
eh~ it no so complex stuff, this cat get where the author come with such idea~ if you pay lil bit attention toward politic stuff basically East Asia politic still riddle with nepotism... consider the audience target their population should know more about it~ CN quite adept with their own history while on modern counterpart the war against corruption still on going~ SK well other already mentioned about chaebol~ JP on other hand their fiction more diverse theme on general, they rarely pin point about political stuff tho~ if must be picky maybe more about fantasy~
As wise people once said, Power corrupts the mind. Those who hold power would tried to used it as much as they can while those who didn't have it would succumb to it while cursing the unfairness of the world or resisted it and rise into power themselves. Those who succumb become slave who can only curse while those who resist may fall and died, or rise and become one of those corrupt people. Those in power would become corrupt, no matter how kind or wise they're they would become corrupt. No matter what. This is just how the world works.