Confucian heroes in popular Asian dramasDecember 2013 and February 2014.^5 In early 2015 it became, at US$35,000 per episode, the
most expensive Korean drama sold in China.^6 The spectacular rise of TV dramas has deepened
academic interest in the study of popular Asian culture. From local production to global circu-
lation to transnational reception, the genesis and impact of this cultural trend have garnered a
wide range of critical attention (Lent 1995; Tsai 2003; Iwabuchi 2004; Chua 2004, 2012; Chua
and Iwabuchi 2008; Berry and Zhu 2009; Ryoo 2009; Hong 2014). Given the comprehensive
scope of Asian media studies, few, however, have offered specific criticism of the shared thematic
attributes in TV dramas. Chua Beng Huat, for instance, observes that “references to family ...
continue to have a very significant presence in Korean urban drama series, and strong versions
of Confucian filial piety are still often scripted into such series” (Chua 2004). Using equally
broad terms, Woongjae Ryoo writes: “South Korean dramas typically deal with family issues,
love and filial piety in an age of changing technology, and often reinforce traditional values of
Confucianism” (Ryoo 2009). These general comments treat the notions of “family,” “love,” “filial
piety,” “traditional values,” and “Confucianism” as catch-all concepts, too self-explanatory to
warrant critical scrutiny.
Careful analysis of the shows, however, reveals that the meanings of these abstract notions
change in different cultural contexts. This chapter examines the populist appeal of My Love from
the Star and Hanzawa Naoki, suggesting that these dramas create an ethical paradigm through
selective interpretations of Confucian thoughts to justify capitalist practice and political interest.
Confucian heroes in a capitalist market
Considered to be the ideological backbone of Chinese culture for 2500 years, Confucianism
experienced an ebb and flow in the twentieth century. During the May Fourth Movement in
1919, Hu Shih, Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu, and others criticized Confucianism as an obstacle to
Chinese modernization.^7 The first four decades of Communist rule that began in 1949 con-
demned Confucianism as a feudal relic, a regressive ideology that poisoned the Chinese spirit of
reform and revolution.^8 But the rise of Asian economic power in the 1980s, “led by Japan and
followed by the ‘Four Mini-Dragons’”—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—
generated a new global interest in the ideological and corporative partnership between capital-
ism and Confucianism, with the latter being recalibrated as “a dynamic force of modernity for
others to emulate” (Dirlik 1995).
The popularization of Asian TV dramas, especially the advent of Japanese mini-series and
the “Korean Wave” in the 1990s, has arguably tracked the academic and political reconciliation
between capitalism and Confucianism that began in Singapore in 1982 and later caught fire in
East Asia and the United States (Dirlik 1995). The economic advance of the Asian countries in
the 1980s compelled politicians and scholars to revisit the question of whether Confucianism
worked with capitalism and modernity, a much-debated issue after Max Weber’s famous theory
about their incompatibility.^9 The increasing financial strengths of the Asian countries coincided
with the crisis of global capitalism, which “in search of an ideology to correspond to its appa-
rently new decentered structure was to find in the Confucian option one possible alternative to
its new and not-so-new needs” (Dirlik 1995). These needs, as Herman Kahn spells out, include
“two related sets of characteristics imbedded in the ‘Confucian ethic’: ‘the creation of dedi-
cated, motivated, responsible, and educated individuals and the enhanced sense of commitment,
organizational identity, and loyalty to various institutions [be it ‘the family, the business firm, or
a bureau in the government’].”^10
Cashing in on the changing cultural climates and economic conditions evoked in these
conversations are TV producers who have since established a promotional model of selling the