My wife has been watching KDramas for at least 10 years, for me probably 3. We used to get 4 Korean TV stations here, although it is now down to two. She and I have used DramaFever and Viki as ways to access dramas, especially since cable has been cutting back access to Korean stations (surprise, our cable provider is also Time Warner). We have generally stayed away from the black market sites.
I haven’t watched American TV for a very long time, because I find American TV offensive and crude. Almost all American programming seems to push homosexuality and other sexually immoral lifestyles, and I am just not interested. Any time I see something bring up homosexuality I just turn it off.
I watched both Korean and Chinese dramas on DramaFever, both of which were of much higher quality and morals. I believe Warner Bros. bought and shut down DramaFever because it represented serious competition to American media crap, and I emphasize the word crap. DramaFever had 20 million subscribers, many of whom were Americans. All those folks had turned off American media for a better alternative on DramaFever. You can’t tell me that they couldn’t figure out a way to make money with that many subscribers. Also, DramaFever had a licensing lock on many of the big KDramas (which now appear to be gone forever). So they had to be making money from people who still want to watch those dramas.
We talk about censorship in China, but it is at least as bad in the U.S. if not worse. One of my Korean friends told me he believes Korea is actually freer now in terms of ability to speak freely. He said what is now going on in the U.S. in terms of political correctness and punishing people for saying something incorrect frightens him.
A Japanese friend recently turned me on to a Japanese alternative to DramaFever (no, it’s not Viki) that has Asian dramas subtitled in both Japanese and English. I will use that as an alternative now.
Well, it continues. I just tried to order a KDrama OST for my wife off of YesAsia (Hong Kong), and I get a message they no longer can ship to the United States.
Of all the KDramas I watched, I know of only “Secret Garden” with a gay character, but you never see him act on it.