Reclaiming Korean queerness through the gender bender drama: Analyzing gender fluidity in “Coffee Prince” and “Secret Garden”

Abstract This thesis engages in a “queering” of two South Korean television dramas, “Coffee Prince,” or “커피 프린스 1호점,” aired in 2007, and “Secret Garden” or “시크릿 가든,” aired in 2010, by exploring the complex representations and visuality of gender fluidity in tandem with queer, Marxist, and postcolonial theory. “Coffee Prince” and “Secret Garden” were two dramas that found widespread popularity, but are unexplored in terms of greater theoretical and societal implications as well as queer themes. In engaging with a “queering” of these two dramas that were not seen as explicitly queer, I aim to root queerness within Korean identity and culture, therefore engaging in a radical re‐evaluation of queerness as inherent to, and supported by, Koreans, despite the fact that queer people are actively marginalized and oppressed in modern‐day Korea. This article is overall split into two parts, with each part focusing on one drama, with specific subsections in regard to each drama. I will begin with analyzing “Coffee Prince,” first establishing the ways in which the drama plays into the visuality of yaoi or BL to garner female viewership, then analyzing the drama's homosexual implications, and finally examining in detail the labor‐related circumstances of Eun‐Chan's masculinity. In the second half, I will shift focus to “Secret Garden,” exploring the ways in which Ju‐Won and Ra‐im's inability to communicate as a result of class aligns with Marxist ideas of alienation, how Ra‐im's class status and labor necessitates masculinity to be her public persona and femininity a private one, and finally the capacity for their body‐swapping to foster understanding across class boundaries as well as connections to Korean shamanism.