Korean drama Snowdrop which made its broadcast debut last weekend with two episodes has found itself amidst controversies and speculations. The show, which is produced by one of the Korean pay television networks JTBC, is also available for streaming on Disney+ in selected Asian countries. Snowdrop is a romantic political drama set in 1987. It was a time when South Korea was facing a students’ uprising which demanded complete democracy.
The drama stars Jung Hae-in and K-pop band BLACKPINK’s Jisoo in lead roles. According to Soompi, after the two episodes of the drama were aired last weekend, a national Blue House petition was created asking for the drama to be taken off-air. The petitioners, Soompi reported, were not happy with the way the pro-democracy activists have been depicted in the drama. It should be noted that South Korea faced a tense political period in the 80s when several demonstrators were killed during protests for democratic rights. Uprisings like the one that took place in the city of Gwangju were particularly brutal, where many young students were shot and murdered by the Korean military, and falsely accused of being North Korean spies.
According to Soompi, the petition mentioned, “There are definite activist victims who were tortured and killed during the democratisation movement because they were [falsely] accused of being spies without any grounds. Creating a drama with a plot like that despite this historical truth undermines the value of the democratisation movement.”
What particularly irked some viewers was how the male character Su Ho is being shown as a real spy when many activists were actually killed for being falsely accused as spies. In response to these critical comments, JTBC issued a statement on Tuesday. The network has asked its viewers to let the upcoming episodes explain the full story. “Most of the misunderstandings regarding concerns of ‘history distortion’ and ‘disparaging the democratisation movement’ criticised by many people will be settled through the progress of the drama’s plot. The drama includes the production team’s intent of no repetition of an abnormal era in which individual freedom and happiness are oppressed by unjust power,” JTBC’s statement read.
JTBC also clarified that there is no spy who leads the democratisation movement in the drama. The network added that both Hae-in and Jisoo’s characters were not shown as participating in or leading the democratisation movement in the first two episodes, and they do not do so in any part of the upcoming episodes.
