Pronatalist propaganda in k dramas

Hey, before the video starts, can you go grab some tinfoil real quick and make yourself cute little tinfoil hat? You’re gonna need it, because have conspiracy theory: Korean dramas are full of pronatalist propaganda now. It feels like every other romcom has to include slow-motion montage of characters holding babies and surprise pregnancy subplots are suddenly appearing out of nowhere. K-dramas are pronatalist psyop, priming the audience to want to get pregnant! don’t think this is far-fetched theory, considering Korea is famously the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world, and has been for several years in row. The country went from 6,33 children pro woman in 1960 to 0,78 in 2022 and the average age at which women have their first baby is 31 and not in their early twenties, so it is not surprising that pronatalist messaging is being pushed in mainstream Korean media. K-dramas are reflection of their time and right now it’s time to get pregnant! Back in the day the typical ending for romance drama used to be wedding in the last episode and post-credit scene showing them raising children. The classic happy-ever-after was gradually pushed out by the more progressive feminist ending in which the characters are just dating. But recently, there has been noticeable increase in baby-themed k-dramas about characters who were not planning to have children that have to have them anyway. hate this trend, because am childfree: don’t have and don’t want any children myself, which begs the question: why am watching k-dramas about pregnancy? Maybe some shows were not made for people like me. But don’t think that’s true, would argue that childfree women are exactly target audience of these k-dramas. There is also another problem with the “just don’t watch them” argument: not all of these shows are upfront about the fact that they are pronatalist. lot of times the unexpected pregnancy plotline is introduced around episode 7 and the audience feels like they were tricked into watching right-wing propaganda. The good news is, figured out the formula! know how to predict the appearance of surprise pregnancy subplot far in advance. In this video we are going to analyze pronatalist tropes in recent k-dramas, contextualize them within the history of reproductive rights in Korea and while we do that, in the back of your mind, think about whether this propaganda is effective? And if you’re thinking “cool topic, just wish you would upload videos more often!”, do actually, on Patreon, where talk about every single movie and TV-show that watch. Whether the unexpected pregnancy comes as plot twist halfway through the show or it is heavily implied in the title and the synopsis, all pronatalist k-dramas use the same set of tropes. If you know what to watch out for, you can already see the pattern emerge within the first episode or two. The biggest early giveaway of pronatalist k-drama is what call “baby jobs”. One or several characters have job that is somehow related to children. The protagonists work at baby magazine, or at children’s education company, or they sell baby products. It could also be children’s photographer, YouTuber making content for children, pediatrician, or an OBGYN who delivers babies every day. Baby jobs are great excuse to show little kids in every episode without it being weird. Why are the protagonists suddenly in hazy slow motion montage holding babies? They have to do it for work. Another tell-tale sign of pronatalist k-drama is the presence of orphans and foster children. One of the protagonists could be an orphan, and if they are lucky, they could even meet their regretful birth mother by the end of the show. Also watch out for characters constantly going to an orphanage to volunteer, that’s also an indicator. If there is protagonist who confidently says that marriage is totally overrated, expect them to get married very soon. Pronatalist k-dramas are obsessed with humbling characters who say that they never want to have children and love living alone in their squeaky-clean apartment with expensive designer furniture. Wouldn’t it be so funny if toddler smeared ketchup all over it? Pronatalist shows are also pro-sex, ideally unprotected sex. Protagonists in these k-dramas make out with people they just met and have spontaneous one-night-stands, they openly discuss their sexuality with friends, they buy erotic lingerie and toys. Desire is depicted as something natural that society needs to stop shaming women for. For me one of the appeals of k-dramas was the fact that there are almost no surprise pregnancy subplots. This is partly because of how conservative k-dramas are; nobody is getting pregnant when it takes the protagonists 14 episodes to hold hands for the first time. Pronatalism, the social bias toward having children, is inherently conservative, and yet paradoxically pronatalist k-dramas are not prude. They are sex-positive, but in respectable way that still leads to pregnancy and marriage. No Gain No Love has whole subplot about polyamorous characters, which is pretty progressive, but this is also who gets pregnant and engaged by the end of the show. The unexpected pregnancy subplot is one of the central features of pro-natalist k-drama, although it is not necessary; Dynamite Kiss for example doesn’t have one. But usually it goes like this: character who was not planning to have baby ends up getting pregnant and has to decide whether they want to keep it (and they always keep it). In Positively Yours and My Sweet Mobster the pregnancy is result of one-night-stand. It seems like these characters don’t use any protection, which is actually pretty realistic: only 3% of women in South Korea use oral contraceptives, which should be all the more reason to use condoms with stranger by the way. But female characters who are intentional with birth control still can’t escape the pregnancy in pronatalist k-drama. In No Gain No Love the character gets pregnant while switching to different birth control method, despite also additionally using condoms. In Woori the Virgin, Korean remake of Jane the Virgin, the female lead is intentionally abstinent. She is very confident in her choice not to sleep with anyone until marriage and she even has green flag boyfriend who respects her boundaries, but the plot still insists on getting her pregnant by accident at the gynecologist’s office. feel like this show is trying to romanticize the concept of woman losing her bodily autonomy. It’s not coincidence that this show came out after the 4B movement started gaining popularity… Our Universe goes even further, there is no surprise pregnancy, and still the protagonists can’t escape being forced into parenting. In pronatalist k-drama made in the 2020s childfree character’s happy ending lies in embracing parenthood, that’s how we know they matured and became real adult. The thing about the surprise pregnancy subplot is that by itself, it is not enough to fill 16 episodes. Most of these shows intentionally don’t show how hard pregnancy and childbirth are, they conveniently skip that part and only show the final result, when the mother is skinny again, which would describe as “dainty pregnancy propaganda”. The unexpected pregnancy is minor subplot that is usually resolved within 2 episodes. Once the woman decides to keep the baby the storyline is basically over, which is why it works better in shows where side character gets pregnant, like in No Gain No Love and in My Sweet Mobster. K-dramas in which character is expecting, need lot of other conflicts to pad out the runtime, that’s why so many of these shows have useless love triangles nobody asked for. Pronatalist k-dramas with an unplanned pregnancy subplot do let the characters think about whether they want to be mothers. It’s not decision the protagonist takes lightly; she spends lot of time thinking about her options. These shows also always emphasize that it is her choice; the father explicitly says that he will support whatever decision she makes. To add some drama to it and to make it look like fair debate, the female lead might even briefly consider an abortion, but all these k-dramas always come to the same conclusion: keeping the baby is the right thing to do. Propaganda is most effective when it pretends to be balanced, but the evidence somehow always supports the advocated viewpoint. Going through with pregnancy is absolutely valid choice, but in k-dramas this is the only choice woman ever makes. If she really had options, there would be at least one example of character in k-drama who gets an abortion, but cannot find any: it is taboo topic. The only Korean piece of media in which character wants and actively seeks an abortion that know of is the 2021 indie movie Young Adult Matters. The protagonist, homeless teenager, is trying to get rid of her pregnancy through various dangerous means, because she can’t find doctor who will perform an abortion for her. She finds nice religious family who is willing to adopt the baby, but tragically she gets painful and life-threatening miscarriage late in the term. Is this movie trying to show broken system, or is it reveling in punishing the protagonist for not wanting to be mother? The reason she can’t get an abortion is because in Korea they are in legal grey area. Since 1953 abortion was illegal, but it was widely encouraged and practiced between the 1960s and 80s, as part of the government’s antinatalist policies, aimed at reducing the fertility rate in order to receive international development aid. Abortion was tool of population control: family welfare workers who were trained by the government toured rural villages in “family planning vehicles” and coerced women to get permanent contraception. Poor women and single mothers were systematically forced to get abortions and women with disabilities have historically been the main target of forced sterilization. The 1953 law went largely unenforced: abortions were not punished, they were promoted as birth control and provided for free. These services were available not because reproductive health was considered fundamental right, but as tool to serve the interests of the state. Government policies dramatically shifted in the early 2000s, when Korea moved toward low fertility rate, which is perceived as an existential threat, because suddenly there are not enough economically active people to fund the health and welfare systems. The low fertility rate is blamed on women and their unwillingness to sacrifice their bodies for the state agenda, but Korean women didn’t just randomly decide to be lazy, this is the direct result of government intervention. The call is coming from inside the house. Also in the 80s, when fetal sex-detection technology became available, people started doing sex-selective abortion, favoring boys. This trend peaked in 1990, meaning that there are less women in the generation that is currently of childbearing age. To boost fertility, in 2005 Korean government revived the criminal code on abortion and contraception was no longer covered by national health insurance. Between 2008 and 2010, the cost of having an abortion in clinic skyrocketed to 10 times its previous amount and lot of gynecologists refused to perform them altogether, because the government started punishing the providers. It’s important to point out that stricter abortion regulation does not improve fertility rates, if anything it does the opposite: maternal mortality increased in Korea when access to safe abortion was restricted. Meanwhile IVF has been integrated into the healthcare system, the costs are covered by the national health insurance. The budget of The Infertile Couple Support Policy makes up over 50% of the total budget for the government’s childbirth-promotion-related policies. Remember that scene in Dynamite Kiss, in which the main couple goes to babysit quadruplets in slow motion? They don’t say the quiet part out loud, but this is basically an ad for IVF. The only way to have 4 babies at once is through embryo transfer and the fact that this couple kept all 4 is depicted as heroic. Anytime you see twins in pronatalist k-drama it’s an ad for IVF. There is an unusually high amount of twins in Korea, the country has the second highest multiple-birth rate in the world: the worldwide average is 15,5 per 1000 births and in South Korea the number is 26,9. This is not good thing by the way, twin pregnancies are more dangerous for the mother and for the child. In the late 2010s feminist groups, doctor’s organizations and disability activists successfully challenged the law and in historical decision in 2019 Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that the ban on abortion was unconstitutional. Even though abortion is no longer criminal offense, it was also not integrated into the public health system: there are still no guidelines or protocols, so the service is not properly regulated. It’s also unclear if the national health insurance is supposed to pay for it and which pharmaceutical companies can import and sell the abortion pill. Since then, only one new law that is meant to support unwanted pregnancies has been implemented: the Protected Birth Act, which establishes nationwide ‘crisis pregnancy counselling system’ that allows women to give birth anonymously without any records; abortion is not an option within this system. And lot of these centers are affiliated with Catholic and Christian religious organizations. Regardless of whether abortion is legal or illegal at specific point in Korean history, it is still the state that decides whether abortions are available or not. In Woori the Virgin the female lead almost goes through with an abortion, which is shown in scary way: she is being restrained in dark operating room and decides to not go through with it in the last second. was fully ready to roast this scene as exaggerated scare mongering, but then remembered that in Korea it is illegal to import Mifepristone, the abortion pill, so surgery is actually the only way to have an abortion in this country. It’s also notable that in lot of these shows the characters end up keeping the baby, because it is not just pregnancy, this is the last chance to ever have baby, so the stakes are very high. In Woori the Virgin the father of the child just recently beat cancer, and the baby came from his last remaining sperm sample from before chemotherapy: if the female lead doesn’t keep the baby, he will never have biological children. In When the Stars Gossip there are also lot of last available sperm samples. The husband is dead, so the last batch is the only chance for his widow to get pregnant. And within that last sample, almost all attempts at insemination fail, only the last one works, it’s very dramatic. In My Baby, the protagonist desperately wants to become mom, but there is also an added sense of urgency, because she is 39 and single and her chance of getting pregnant is only 7%. She also has endometriosis and needs surgery which would delay possible pregnancy even more and she is not getting any younger. In Positively Yours the female lead has been told that she can’t have children, so the fact that she even got pregnant is miracle and this is probably her only chance. The added sense of urgency definitely contributes to her decision to give up her dream of studying abroad to become mom instead. This show also walks it back by the end, because in the last episode, at the 100th day celebration she is pregnant again, which is waaay to early to have another baby, her body hasn’t even recovered yet. Whoever told her she can’t have children lied, because clearly she gets pregnant easily and on the first try. guess the stakes were never that high. common character archetype we can see in pronatalist k-dramas is the regretful woman who gave up her baby when she was young, and now she quietly lives with this guilt eating her up from the inside. If there is an orphaned character who never met their parents and childless woman who gets awkward and sad around babies in the same show, they are probably related. The regretful mother is contrasted with the single mom who didn’t have support system either, but she never regretted her decision to keep the baby, it’s the best thing that ever happened to her. can’t prove it, but think this trope is actually about regretting abortion, they just don’t want to show character who had an abortion. Unlike hypothetical fetus that was never born, the character who was abandoned as baby is full human with feelings that the regretful mother can literally meet, to finally understand what she missed out on. In these shows the parents who chose the baby are happy, and the ones who didn’t are full of regret. The dichotomy between good Korean woman and bad Korean woman is present in in lot of k-dramas. In my video essay about the rich mean girl archetype, already discussed the contrast between the humble poor female lead and the hyperfeminine villain. The good woman gets the man and the bad woman gets rejected. The good woman is naturally skinny and the bad woman has an eating disorder. Across different k-dramas and subgenres see this binary reproduced over and over again. And unfortunately, this divide is also present in k-dramas when it comes to depicting what kind of woman gets pregnant with wholesome baby and what kind of woman gets miscarriage. think this is the most inappropriate iteration of this trope, this is straight up evil, and am not even sure screenwriters realize that they are doing it. The evil hyperfeminine villain doesn’t get to be pregnant, the humble female lead gets to become mom. In Positively Yours the male lead’s sister is the only one advocating for an abortion, of course she is: she is the main villain of this story. She herself also had traumatic miscarriage years ago. In Woori the Virgin the red-haired villain tried getting pregnant through sneaky manipulative plan but she is evil and doesn’t get to have the sperm, the abstinent good girl gets pregnant instead. The rich arrogant woman in When the Stars Gossip has an ectopic pregnancy, and the less glamorous female lead has healthy baby. In Young Adult Matters the homeless queer teenager who does sex work to earn money gets traumatic and pretty graphic late term miscarriage. These shows do have specific idea of what kind of woman should be pregnant and what kind of woman you need to become once you are pregnant. In Positively Yours there are comedic relief side characters who are horny for each other, they actually have way better chemistry than the leads themselves. Because this is pronatalist k-drama the manager with sleeked back hair and power suits is pregnant by the end of the show. The strong and confident girlboss morphs into soft cutie patootie who wears pink, because that’s what motherhood is. Contemporary pronatalist Korean dramas are not anti-feminist. They are not advocating for the return to some mythical traditional past that never existed, instead they depict modern independent women who have fulfilling careers, who try to quote on quote “have it all”. These k-dramas take women’s concerns seriously and critique misogynistic social structures. No Gain No Love has scene about how inappropriate it is to get the “so when are you going to get pregnant” question in job interview. Dynamite Kiss discusses the topic of women being pushed out of the work force after having child, as if this experience is worthless. The female lead in Positively Yours is also struggling with the extra pressure baby will put on her career. She is doing what is called “compensatory work devotion”, which is when women don’t want to use maternity leave and benefits and instead double down and work harder to compensate for their absence. South Korea already has the highest gender wage gap in the OECD, so taking the available 90 days of paid maternity leave makes you look like you are not serious about your job. The protagonist in Birthcare Center, works literally until her water breaks and also doesn’t let herself catch break. My Baby has an editor-in-chief character, who has to give up her career to take care of her children. But in the same breath the management puts pressure on the female lead for not having children. Is she even qualified to work in magazine about babies if she doesn’t have her own baby? Women will be criticized, no matter what they choose. And Hari, the protagonist, is not even childfree, she really wants to get pregnant, she just wants it in the wrong way. She is looking for sperm donor, but that is too scandalous, she was supposed to find heterosexual husband like everyone else. In South Korea only 1.9% of births occur outside marriage, so if people marry later or just don’t get married at all, they are also not having babies. In Europe and America getting pregnant and living together without getting married has been normalized, change that did not happen in Korea, where having baby out of wedlock is still highly stigmatized. Also all the benefits for new parents are only available to married couples, the needs of single parents are ignored. Korean pronatalist propaganda is also always pro-marriage propaganda, these two can’t be decoupled. lot of these shows depict the struggles of single mothers and single fathers, but they are not really trying to destigmatize single parenting, instead they are trying to pair them up with childless characters who are always excited about their crush having kid. Single parents need to get back into the dating pool as soon as possible and get married again, so they can have another child with the new partner. Pronatalist k-dramas are very pro-stepparent, they want every child to have happy two-parent household, even if the characters arrive there in an unconventional way. feel like these shows are trying to rebrand marriage and parenthood as quirky. There are lot of “not like the other pregnant girls” characters who do the crazy thing like faking marriage or keeping baby from one-night stand. Positively Yours pitched itself as shotgun romance, but they are not really doing anything in reverse, this is just basic office romance about dating your boss. It’s very “having child and getting married is actually very punk rock if you think about it”. By the way, where do men fit into this conversation? My Baby does pretty good job depicting fathers and their struggles. For example, there is scene in which single dad can’t find safe and clean room to change his child’s diaper. If men are supposed to step up, they also need access to these spaces. The topic of infertility is also taken seriously by this show. But My Baby is an exception, most of these k-dramas don’t spend lot of time on men’s issues and brush them under the rug. In the pregnant from one-night-stand trope it is notable that the man is always rich and successful CEO. Rich enough that he doesn’t need to worry about whether he can afford to have child, he can afford it even if he never works ever again. It conveniently absolves these k-dramas of the need to engage with the reason lot of Koreans don’t plan to have children: because it’s really expensive. What stands out about depiction of fatherhood in pronatalist kdramas, is that they are all supportive green flag partners. In the independent-feminist-gets-pregnant fantasy scenario, the man is very educated on the topic of pregnancy. He has read all the books about babies, he goes to pregnancy yoga classes, he knows everything about morning sickness and how to ease it. He also knows all the little tricks and massage techniques that will help alleviate her pain. He is obsessed with his wife, he would drop everything just to make her comfortable. He will even deliver the baby himself if he has to. This is not the kind of man that “babysits” his children, he is parenting. Of course he will stay home with the kids while his wife goes back to work: he is pulling his weight at home and it is sexy. The female character who gets pregnant in pronatalist k-drama can do it by herself, she has bestie who will help her raise the kid, she doesn’t need man. She is not going to get married just because she is pregnant, she will only be with the male lead if he is father material. He needs to show that he is reliable partner for her to want to be with him. am not sure what to make out of this trope: is it optimistic, because it models positive examples of fatherhood? Is it trying to tell women to not settle for less? Or maybe the male lead is written like this to convince the female audience that this is what parenthood is always like. Don’t worry about it, the man will probably step up… When the Stars Gossip is 2025 Korean romance drama that, unlike other pronatalist K-dramas, is far more ideologically conservative. The story is literally set on space station, but space is also metaphor for the future of Korea; there is lot of space womb imagery and metaphors. This show is about the fears of population decline and low fertility. The main characters are astronauts doing fertility experiments in space. The male lead has to secretly fertilize an egg for rich family and bring the embryo back to Earth for transfer without anyone noticing. This show spends 14 episodes making the audience root for fertilized egg and then dramatically destroys it with scary red liquid. The female lead is party pooper who snitches on the male lead, because she is trying to “protect her career as an astronaut” and wants to “uphold the ethical scientific standards of the space agency”. Look how upset iconic heartthrob Lee Min Ho is about an embryo in petri dish. This is who you are hurting when you get an abortion! To be fair, they did spend ton of money on this, several people almost died in the process, of course the male lead is upset that it was all for nothing. And this is exactly the point: the whole premise of the show - the space setting and the high stakes – exists specifically to promote the “life begins at conception” idea. In way the space IVF subplot is the perfect metaphor for the show itself. When the Stars Gossip had budget of 50 billion won and it took them 5 years to make it. Much like the characters in the story spend 70 billion won without single baby by the end, this show also wasted lot of money and talent on propaganda that convinced nobody to get pregnant. Well, there is actually one baby in this k-drama. You see the protagonists did do it in space and the female lead manages to travel to Earth and then back to the space station before she realizes she is pregnant. am not an ultrasound technician, but does this foetus look little too big? She is like 2 or 3 weeks pregnant at that point. And in the next scene it is even bigger. Depicting an early stage of pregnancy as full grown baby is classic pronatalist propaganda technique. The female lead is meant to go back home immediately, but she panics about hurting the baby and she just… stays in space. After spending 9 months on the station, she miraculously gives birth to healthy baby, but unfortunately she dies from the complications. guess this is cosmic punishment for getting rid of that embryo two episodes earlier. If space symbolizes the future in this show, then the future of women is to die in childbirth without proper medical assistance. cannot stand “the mother’s life is not important, just save the baby” stories in media. And what is the end goal here anyway? One year later they still haven’t figured out how to bring the baby back to Earth, it just floats on the space station. Does the baby even have bones? This ridiculous. The male lead himself is also probably going to die soon, because he has been in zero gravity for too long. think prefer the soft filter romanticized depiction of parenting compared to this. When the Stars Gossip is not promoting motherhood, it does not depict that special bond between mother and her child. Women don’t get to be parents in this show, they are just there to give birth. It’s giving “incubator”. The male lead’s mom also dies after childbirth and he is raised by other people. The female lead was abandoned as baby and her biological mother doesn’t have relationship with her. The woman who was supposed to get the space IVF embryo doesn’t get to be mother either. Men’s role in parenting is reduced to whether their sperm is good enough and women’s role is limited to giving birth. Raising the actual kid seems to be the least important part of parenthood. Someone else will probably take care of the child, don’t worry about it. also can’t stop thinking about the ectopic pregnancy subplot in When the Stars Gossip. In the first episode the male lead saves bleeding woman and brings her to hospital, where she is diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, which is when the fertilized egg plants outside the uterus. And just so we are super clear, this is not viable pregnancy whatsoever, this is medical emergency that requires surgery, which the protagonist handles correctly, but am not sure the screenwriter agrees. The rich dad of the woman in question threatens to murder the protagonist for killing the fetus and ruins his career as revenge. He thinks the doctor had no right to operate on his daughter and that he personally destroyed his family’s bloodline. The male lead says that he had no other choice than to operate, but he never really explains that there was never any chance of this pregnancy being carried to term. am not sure how we are supposed to read that scene… Does the screenwriter assume that everyone who is watching knows what an ectopic pregnancy is and we are all outraged by the audacity, or does this show actually think that this is debate with pros and cons? If it was any other k-drama would have given it the benefit of the doubt, but considering the rest of the plot, think it is bordering on deliberately spreading medical misinformation. This subplot just doesn’t sit right with me, everyone in this k-drama is so invested in saving the last bit of infertile sperm and non-viable fetuses. Technically, this show doesn’t say anything that is factually incorrect about ectopic pregnancies, but it does slightly twist the facts in order to promote the most hardline absolutist view of “life begins at conception”. This is very extreme position, even for pro-lifers. When the Stars Gossip does not want any exceptions, even if woman’s life is at risk. No money or human lives are more important than an embryo. This is such baffling worldview: this k-drama cares about humanity on the abstract hypothetical future level and also on the atomic micro level, it cares about cells that could potentially maybe become humans, but it doesn’t care about humans that already exist. Pronatalism reduces people down to their potential fertility and productivity, as necessary vessels of (re)production. No other pronatalist show goes this far, all the other k-dramas are about how cute it is to have baby with hot responsible man. think When the Stars Gossip doesn’t do very good job promoting pronatalist ideas, the message is very on the nose, but get what they for going for. Actually, there is another Korean piece of media that does the space metaphor better. myself am surprised by this comparison, but The Great Flood, the 2025 Netflix movie successfully does what When the Stars Gossip was trying to do. They are two very different genres, one is coworker romance set in space and the other is post-apocalyptic sci-fi action movie, but in way they are the same story, just in different font. Both use space imagery as metaphor for the doomed future of humanity, both have scientist female protagonist who risks everything to save her child. Both have scene in which woman has to give birth in an extreme situation. And in both of them the key to humanity’s future lies in women finding their maternal instinct. think that The Great Flood does waay better job discussing ideas about the future of humanity and the way it is connected to women’s role as mothers. The messaging is more subtle; When the Stars Gossip is very literal and in-your-face. Or maybe just liked the movie more because prefer this genre. When the Stars Gossip is meant for the Lee Min Ho romance girlies and the The Great Flood is for the Park Hae Soo action girlies. The two genders. Also have you noticed the biblical references in both of these? In When the Stars Gossip the female lead’s name is Eve and The Great Flood is, well, literally about biblical proportions flood. Also in Woori the Virgin, the female lead’s catholic name is Maria. Historically abortion in Korea is political and economic tool for the government, the discourse was never tied to belief, religion has played minimal role in shaping abortion policy, and yet some of the recent pronatalist k-dramas have bit of catholic flavor to them. Now that we are near the end of this video, it’s time to go back to the question asked in the beginning: is this propaganda effective? It is notable that 2 of the mentioned k-dramas, Woori the Virgin and When the Stars Gossip are both considered the worst k-drama of the year for the year that they respectively came out in. Both shows had really low ratings in Korea and they were both poopooed internationally, so think it’s safe to say the audience doesn’t like being told to get pregnant. But some of these shows are more subtle. So subtle that they don’t feel like pronatalist propaganda at all, which means it is really good propaganda. If hadn’t been looking at pro natalist tropes with microscope for several months, never would have noticed that No Gain No Love is pronatalist, it is nothing like When the Stars Gossip. Another show that feels more educational than propagandistic is Birthcare Center, an 8-episode tvN k-drama from 2020 that is really unique; it does something have never seen any other k-dramas do. Unlike the newer shows in this genre, that conveniently skip the pregnancy part, Birthcare Center doesn’t shy away from the elephant in the room and actually depicts childbirth realistically. The first episode follows the protagonist during labor and we get to see all the ups and downs. This show is honest about the process, but it is also super funny and optimistic. The first episode is really good stand-alone movie, think everyone needs to watch this, especially people who want to have children. But did change my mind about being childfree after watching Birthcare Center and all the other k-dramas in this genre? No, of course didn’t. But even though watched these shows specifically to critique them, fully intending to dunk on these tropes, did find myself rooting for Hari and Yi Sang, the protagonists in My Baby. She really really wants to have baby, and he, at least couple of times in each episode explicitly says that he doesn’t want children, he doesn’t like them, he wants to keep living alone and he had this opinion for at least 10 years. couple like this is fundamentally incompatible. It is not romantic or sign of true love when childfree person is convinced to have child anyway, but in the universe of this show they should be together. This is super cute fictional couple and these are really good actors that portray likeable complex characters, of course am rooting for them and don’t like it. am not immune to propaganda and neither are you. My Baby uses lot of dramatic music to emphasize emotions and has lot of slow-motion scenes with soft filter; k-dramas do this really well which is why they are the perfect medium for pronatalist propaganda.