K-Drama Loves Adopted Boys

I’m not sure why, but it’s extremely rare in K-drama for male love interest to grow up with his biological parents. This does not seem to reflect Korean culture in real life. Wikipedia says that Korea doesn’t have a strong culture of adoption, and Korea was the origin of America’s international adoption industry after the Korean War. Yet something makes this a compelling trope for K-drama.

In K-drama, the boy was usually abandoned or orphaned at an older age rather than as an infant. This is always a major trauma, although often subject to amnesia. It does not seem to be a romanticized idea of the woman meeting all of a man’s emotional needs; in many cases, the boy has landed in a loving and supportive adoptive family. It is often tied to the nearly mandatory secret childhood connection. If your parents died in a car accident or a fire, it’s a safe bet your one true love lost their parents in the same tragedy. Since most K-drama parents die in traffic accidents and fires, this means that many female leads are also adopted. But I have yet to watch a K-drama where the female lead is orphaned, and the male lead’s biological family is intact. So the trope seems to be specific to male leads.

The reason is a mystery, but as the length of the example list below shows, something makes adopted boys more lovable.

Suspicious Partner – We learn early on that the male lead became a prosecutor to carry on the legacy of his father who died in a fire. We see him interacting with his mom but (spoiler alert) learn mid-story that both his parents died in that fire, and he was raised by his mom’s best friend and her husband, who is the father-figure lawyer providing comic relief. More spoilers: The female lead’s father died in the same fire, which he is blamed for starting. This is a secret childhood connection iteration that seems to be unique to actor Ji Chang Wook – love interests whose parents are falsely accused of killing each other (see Healer below).

Snowdrop – This modern historical drama breaks a lot of K-drama rules. We learn early on that the male lead is a North Korean spy, and his father is the head of North Korea’s intelligence agency. But a flashback in episode 10 reveals that his father actually picked him up off the street when he was an orphaned child looking after his little sister.

Her Private Life – Love interest Ryan Gold has an American name because he was adopted internationally at the age of nine or 10. In an awkward Westermarck Triangle subplot, his “rival” is the leading lady’s semi-adopted brother.

I’ll Come to You When the Weather is Fine– In this beautiful, literary story the boy next door has quietly loved the heroine his whole life. He has a much nicer family than the heroine, whose mother spent years in jail for murdering her abusive husband. But his loving, protective family is his second family. When the leads met as children, he was living with his birth family in a hand-built shack on the mountain. First his mother, then his father abandoned him. He wandered the mountain alone until his adoptive family found him and took him in, but he’s always been a little strange since.    

Meow, The Secret Boy – In this animal welfare PSA disguised as a K-drama, the male lead is a stray cat who transforms into a hot guy. In his cat form, he was adopted and abandoned multiple times before the heroine takes him in. She is recovering from the heartbreak of being ghosted by the second lead, who has an attachment disorder because he too was an orphan, adopted and returned multiple times as a child.

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo – Bok Joo starts out infatuated with the unattainable older brother before transferring her affections to the better-matched younger one (another trope I’ll write up one day). But whenever a heroine has sequential crushes on brothers, it always turns out that the younger one is actually an adopted cousin. In this case, the older brother’s mom took in the younger child after her sister moved to Canada to remarry, leaving her son behind.

Cinderella and Four Knights – In this reverse harem drama, an every-girl heroine ends up living in a mansion with four male cousins. Three of them are spoiled rich boys, but the fourth one grew up poor like her. After his single mother died, his rich grandfather plucked him out of an orphanage to compete with his cousins to inherit the company. You won’t have trouble guessing which boy she falls in love with.

Moon River/The Return of Iljimae – It’s a cuckoo banana pants historical based on a 1970s comic strip. Filled with ninjas and superhero feats, the main character is the illegitimate son of a high ranking official, left to die as an infant. Adopted by a family in Qing China, he grows up to become a Robin Hood figure back in Korea.  

Romance is a Bonus Book – We never really find out about the male lead’s biological family, but he considers the famous missing writer to be a father, and as the show progresses, we see that his filial duty to this character is strong. The second lead has grown up without a father.

Chicago Typewriter – The male lead was abandoned at age 10 and grew up bouncing among a series of useless relatives.

Hyde Jekyll Me – This deeply flawed older drama accomplishes both abandoned boy and evil elder tropes when the CEO dad refuses to negotiate with his son’s kidnappers, therefore abandoning the boy.

Healer – The heroine, who has a loving father, was adopted at age eight. But her love interest lost his father at the same time (see Ji Chang Wook’s special secret childhood connection above) and was later abandoned by his mother. His grandmother raised him until her death. He had a criminal father figure as a teen, who was replaced by a criminal handler – definitely not a mother! – when he turned 18.

She Was Pretty – It’s kind of a spoiler, but yeah, someone in this show was adopted and moved to America at age 12.

Rookie Historian – The love interest is a prince. But instead of being trained for politics or war, he is locked away in a quiet corner of the castle and left to his own devices. Eventually we discover it’s because the king is not really his father….

Who’s your favorite adopted K-drama love interest?