Laugh and Learn by Watching Funny Korean Dramas

In my last post, I shared popular Korean dramas and explained why watching them is a great way to improve your listening and reading skills (thanks to subtitles). In this post, I’m going to share similar content with you but more on the funny side ;).

These funny Korean dramas are both entertaining and helpful when it comes to understanding the language and improving your reading and listening.

Funny Korean dramas

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim (김비서가 왜 그럴까)
Youngjoon (portrayed by Park Seojoon) is an ambitious vice chairman of a major corporation, a narcissist and a perfectionist. His life and work cannot function without his talented secretary, KMiso (portrayed by Park Minyoung), who spontaneously announces one day that she will resign from her position. What is wrong with Secretary Kim, why would she resign from such a highly reputable job working with the most perfect man in the industry? Shortly after, misunderstandings arise as Youngjoon tries to stop her from quitting. The show is based on a novel of the same title, which was published in 2013. 

Couple or Trouble (환상의 커플)
Couple or Trouble is a romantic-comedy based on the 1987 Hollywood film Overboard. It’s about a woman named Anna Jo (portrayed by Han Yeseul), an arrogant, rude heiress who falls victim to a bad case of amnesia, and ends up becoming a live-in nanny for Chulsoo (portrayed by Oh Jiho) to take care of his three orphaned nephews. The romantic comedy series earned popular ratings and received recognitions in Drama Awards. 

A Gentleman’s Dignity (신사의 품격)
A Gentleman’s Dignity is a romantic comedy show produced by the same team who also produced Guardian and Secret Garden. It’s about the careers and love lives of four friends in their 40s. The show weaves between dynamic characters who end up in funny situations and an unexpected plot twist. The show has received high ratings and has won numerous awards.

The Fiery Priest (열혈사제)
Haeil (Portrayed by Kim Namgil) is a hot-tempered priest who tries to find the truth about the death of an elderly priest who got murdered in a case of political corruption. The corrupted police Daeyoung (Portrayed by Kim Sungkyun) and prosecutor Kyungsun (Portrayed by Lee Hanee) try to stop him, but they eventually realize that the truth has to face justice, and they help the priest and reveal the truth. Although the plot sounds more like a thriller, The Fiery Priest mixes both comedy and crime.

Reply 1997 (응답하라 1997)
Reply 1997 portrays the life and hardships of the 6 main characters. The timeline jumps back and forth between their past as 18-year-old high schoolers in 1997 to the present. The show portrays the late 1990s when K-pop culture began to bloom. 

Welcome to Waikiki (으라차차 와이키키)
Welcome to Waikiki is another funny Korean drama featuring a story of friends running a guest house called Waikiki. The show has been praised for its portrayal of the typical lives of 20 year old Koreans, including negative issues surrounding unemployment, but in a comedic way. 

How to Import Your Favourite Korean Dramas from Viki into LingQ

In case you don’t know, Viki is a great resource for learning Korean using Korean Dramas (Japanese and Chinese dramas are included as well).

Take a look at this:

Pretty cool, right? You can watch the video and study at the same time.

LingQ, has recently announced that you can import videos from Viki and study them on LingQ as well.

But why use LingQ instead of Viki? The BIG reason is because you can study using the best Korean dramas on LingQ’s mobile app. Viki’s mobile app has yet to incorporate a learning feature and also, their learn mode is only available for people who live in Canada or the United States! If you’re in Korea and want to study using Viki, you’re out of luck…

To import Viki content into LingQ, just use the LingQ browser extension (Chrome,  Safari, or Firefox) and click import. Wait a few seconds and voila, you’re lessons is ready to go.

You can access the lesson on LingQ. What’s great is that LingQ splits up the transcript using timestamps. So when you read a sentence (using sentence mode at the bottom of your phone screen), you can click the speaker icon and LingQ will play the audio that directly relates to that sentence. Pretty incredible if you ask me.

How to Import Your Favorite Korean Dramas from YouTube into LingQ

Not too long ago, LingQ shared a post that explains how you can import K-Pop Lyrics into LingQ using YouTube and create interactive lessons so you can learn Korean faster. I’ll quickly show you how to import clips of your favourite Korean Dramas into LingQ from YouTube as well.

Once again, you’ll need to download the LingQ browser extension: Chrome,  Safari, or Firefox

Then, head over to YouTube and search for your favourite Korean drama and click on the LingQ extension. Your video must have captions in order for it to work in LingQ.

Open your lesson and now you can study using LingQ by reading the transcript, listening to the audio, and watching the video… all in one platform.

Please note, since these transcripts are auto-generated, they may not be 100% accurate (which is why I prefer using Viki’s content). To fix this problem, you’ll need to find the transcripts from another source. Lucky for you, this website should have what you’re looking for.

Download the transcript, convert it into text and you can add them into your lesson. (Click edit lesson and paste your text in the box).

Good luck!

Enjoyed this post? Check out polyglot and LingQ cofounder Steve Kaufmann’s blog post to learn about the similarities and differences between learning Chinese vs Japanese vs Korean!

***

Julie Yoon has been teaching Korean and English in formal and informal settings for ten years. She has been learning French as a third language.