I remember the day I met my first Korean boyfriend like it was yesterday.
I was in a coffee shop in Seoul when he approached me. He was tall, with dark hair and big, bright eyes. I couldn’t believe my luck when I found out he was a fellow student, studying in Korea.
We hit it off immediately, spending hours talking about our lives and our shared love of Korean dramas. I was completely smitten with him, and he seemed to feel the same way. We started dating, and for a while, everything was perfect.
But as time went on, I started to notice that things weren’t as perfect as they seemed.
My boyfriend would get angry with me over the smallest things, and would often lose his temper and shout at me. I tried to brush it off as cultural differences, but as time went on, his behaviour only got worse.
One day, he hit me. I was shocked and devastated, but I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t want to believe that the man I loved could be capable of such violence, but I knew deep down that I needed to get out of the relationship.
I googled and found out that domestic violence in Korea is extremely common.
I left him that day, and I never looked back. I realized that the romanticized versions of relationships I had seen in Korean dramas were just that – romanticized. They were not real, and I was better off without them.
I moved on with my life, and eventually found a kind and loving partner who treated me with the respect and kindness I deserved.
I learned from my mistakes, and I made sure to never let myself be fooled by the false promises of Korean dramas again.