At the AIA Colloquium, Karolina Kluczweska and Katja Freistein presented a jointly authored paper that takes an analytical look at K-dramas to examine gender inequalities in Korean society. Based on the fact that women in South Korea earn up to 31.5% less than men and are socially disadvantaged in many ways, the fiction of television series is taken as a starting point to reconstruct social perceptions of this issue.

The silver spoon mentioned in the title is a metaphor commonly used in South Korea to describe a person’s place in society. K-drama series are particularly suitable for this purpose, as they are mostly written by women and various types of narratives can be distilled from this specific cultural product. The two selected a total of 40 series produced between 2011 and 2021. They presented some of them as examples and presented the fellows with seven identified strategies for how women in these series achieve social advancement: firstly, through hard work and integrity; secondly, through education and improving their skills; thirdly, by dropping out when the career path becomes too stressful; fourthly, through autonomy instead of relying on men; fifthly, through female solidarity and friendship; sixth, female role models and networks, and seventh, connections to men. These research findings, as well as the methodology and approach of the paper, were discussed extensively by the fellows.