Pretense — My Lovely Regency K-Drama (and a Glimpse into Old Korean Pastimes)

It’s here! My new book, Pretense! Buy from Amazon and Other Sellers.

From the blurb, Pretense may seem like a typical Regency romance—ballrooms, pretty gowns, a rigid social hierarchy, an arrogant rake, and so on.

It is typical … but of another genre entirely.

After years of watching K-dramas, I decided to write one in book form—except set in Regency England, a historical period I’m far more comfortable writing about.

So I borrowed the character arcs, the emotional scaffolding, the initial setup, the secondary couples, the weavings of comedy and drama—all of it—from K-drama storytelling.

I can’t reveal every trope woven into Pretense (spoilers!), but here are a few of the vibes you’ll feel while reading.

 The Veteran War Hero

Descendants of the Sun

A decorated soldier with emotional wounds beneath the surface—competent, restrained, and deeply loyal.

The Reluctant Hero

Guardian

Reliable but weary. This hero always saves the day, even if he’s not happy about it.

A Strong Heroine Trying to Make Life Work

Start-Up, Crash Landing On You

The young woman—a blend of determination, kindness, humor, and quiet steel—resolved to pursue her aspirations while juggling the chaos life throws her way.

The Embarrassing First Meeting

Bon Appétit Your Majesty, True Beauty, The Red Sleeve (kinda – they initially meet as children)

The awkward spark, the mutual mortification, and now they must work together. Oh, the tension and fireworks!

The Viable Second Male Lead Fighting for Her Heart

The Greatest Love

Earnest, steadfast, sincere. The man who could have been the right choice—but arrived slightly too late… or simply wasn’t her match.

Hung up on the wrong man

Strong Woman Do Song Soon

The headstrong (and physically strong!) female lead chases the wrong man, unaware of the love right in front of her.

Past Trauma Shaping the Present

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim,  Healer

Flashbacks, memory gaps, fears, family wounds, and childhood burdens shape the way characters move through the world.

Getting Stuck in Pretending

Business Proposal, So I Married the Anti-Fan, Captivating the King

A small lie that snowballs. Characters must keep pretending, complicating everything, including their feelings.

Love as Responsibility

When Life Gives You Tangerines, Extraordinary Attorney Woo

Characters driven by the desire to protect and care for family, even when it strains or redirects their romantic choices.

Friends and Secondary Romances

Business Proposal, Because This Is My First Life, Fight For My Way

Romance in K-dramas rarely stops at the main couple. The secondary couples get their own heartbreaks, moments of growth, and happily-ever-afters.

Quirky Supporting Characters Bring the Joy

Even when the leads are crying or their lives feel hopeless, there is always a quirky character waiting to bring levity.
My inspiration: Hotel Del Luna—a cast of quirks, mischief, and unforgettable personalities.

Food. So much wonderful food.

All of them. Truly. It’s ubiquitous.

***

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course. There are so many wonderful K-dramas I haven’t yet seen. If you’d like to add your favorites, or if you spot other tropes woven into Pretense, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear what resonated with you.

As you know, this blog is a collection of shiny historical objects that catch my eye. So it wouldn’t be a proper post without an excerpt!

Today, we’ll look at historical Korean theater and other pastimes, drawn from Quaint Korea (1895) by Louise Jordan Miln—a source I’ve excerpted before for women’s lifestyles and fashions in Joseon Korea. And as before, I’ve removed as much of the Victorian snobbery as possible to let the history shine through.

Enjoy the excerpt below!

Korean dramatic art, if it is at all akin with the dramatic art of Europe, approaches most nearly the art methods of the high-class music halls, and the best French variety theatres. Every Korean actor is a star, superior to, indifferent to, and independent of scenery.

More often than not, the Korean actor is not only the star, but the entire company. He plays everything—old men, juveniles, low comedians and high tragedians, leading ladies, ingénueux, and rough soubrettes—plays them with little or no change of costume, plays them in quick succession, and wholly without aid of scenery. And very clever, indeed, he is to do it.

***

The Korean actor gives his performance on the bare paper floor of some rich man’s banqueting hall, or at the street corner … The Korean actor has no stage setting, he has no properties, and he never heard of supernumeraries. His theatre—for, after all, I am inclined to withdraw what I said, and to maintain that wherever an artist acts there is a theatre—his theatre consists of a mat beneath his feet, and a mat over his head, and four perpendicular poles separating the two mats. And yet the Korean actor shares very largely the polish, the definiteness of method, and the convincing artisticness of the Japanese actor. (Susanna’s note: the author, an actress, esteems Japanese theater and actors)

Korean acting would now equal, if not excel, the best acting of Japan. As it is, the Korean actor is remarkable for his versatility, for his mastery of his own voice, his mastery of facial expression, and his comprehension of, and his reproducing of, every human emotion.

 A Korean actor will often give an uninterrupted performance of some hours length. He will recite page after page of vivid Korean history; he will chant folk-songs; he will repeat old legends and romances, and he will give Punch and Judy-like exhibitions of connubial infelicity and of all the other ills that Korean flesh is heir to. And he will intersperse this dramatic kaleidoscope with orchestral music of his own producing.

Perhaps he has pitched his theatre of mats in the full heat of the noon-day sun, but even so, he only pauses to take big, quick drinks of peppery water, or of a very light, rice wine, in which good-sized lumps of hot ginger float.

If the actor is performing at a feast of some mandarin or other wealthy Korean, he is, of course, paid by an individual employer; and the audience which has, in all probability, been amply dined and amply wined, sit near him, sit at their ease, and in an irregular semicircle.

If the performance is given in the street, it is purely a speculation on the part of the actor. The audience sit about on queer little wooden benches, or squat on mats, or stand. And when the actor knows (and this is something which an actor always does know, the acting-world over) that he has struck the high-water mark of his momentary possible histrionic ability, he pauses abruptly and collects such cash as his audience can or will spare. The result is usually very gratifying to the actor. The audience want to see the play out, and the player won’t play on until he is paid.

A street audience appreciates the play highly, appreciates it none the less, perhaps, because it—the audience—eats and drinks from the first scene until the last. It is an interesting sight to see in front of the temporary temple of a Korean actor a concourse of men with eyes a-stark with pleasure, and faces a-bulge with refreshment, but it is a sight which is not too open to the criticism of the people in whose own theatres ices and coffees and sweetmeats are hawked about between the acts.

It always seems to me that we insult art grossly when we tacitly admit that we cannot sit through a fine dramatic performance without the stimulant of meat or of drink. The Japanese also eat between the acts, but then they have the excuse of sitting through performances that are sometimes twelve hours long.

We lack that excuse in Europe. And though the Koreans munch and sip through the intensest moments of a Korean theatrical exhibition, no dramatic performance in Korea lasts, unless I mistake, for more than three, or at the utmost, four hours.

A Korean actor, to attain to any eminence in his profession, must be able to improvise, and probably in no Eastern country, certainly in no Western country, is the art of improvising carried to so high a degree of perfection as it is in Korea. The Korean actor also approaches somewhat to the Anglo-Saxon clown. He must be quick with cheap witticisms, glib jests, and jokes that would be coarse if they were not above all stupid. He must be ready with topical quips, for the Korean crowd will have its laugh, or it won’t pay. This branch of his trade he is seldom called upon to ply when he performs at private entertainments.

***

It is a favourite pastime both in Japan and Korea to watch trained dancers.

In Korea fights are the occasions of great national joy. In Japan skillful wrestlers and fencers give really artistic exhibitions … but in Korea a fight is a real fight. Blow follows blow; limbs are bruised, dislocated, and broken.

During the first month of the year it is legal, and is the height of Korean good form, to indulge in as many fights as possible. Antagonistic guilds, numbering hundreds of men, face each other at some convenient and appointed spot, and in the sight of thousands of enthusiastic spectators, fight out an entire year’s debt of envy and hatred. Men engage in the roughest of personal combat; men who during the other eleven months of the year scarcely fight upon the gravest provocation.

A considerable fight between two Korean women of the poorest class is not unknown, and some of them fight extremely well. Mothers often devote considerable time training their small sons in the art of defence, and of fisty attack.

Every Korean town, almost every Korean village, has a champion fighter. Prize-fights are to Korea what the race-course is to Europe. The spectators bet until they have nothing left to bet with, and then very often start an amateur fight of their own.

Korean gentlemen do not as a rule fight, nor are they apt to attend a public fight. They often, however, go to very great expense in engaging professionals to give private exhibitions of their prowess.

 There is one rather comical side to a Korean fight. Every Korean wears an abundance of big clothing, and the antagonists never dream of disrobing in the least. And so two fighting Koreans, from a little distance, look as much like two fighting feather beds as anything else.

Debt is said to be the cause of nine out of ten of the fights that are not exhibitions of skill. In Korea, as in China, it is a great disgrace not to pay all your debts on, or before the New Year; and any Korean who fails to do so is very apt to find himself involved in a pugilistic reckoning.

Club fights and stone fights are very common. When a stone fight is proposed the friends or admirers of the combatants spend some hours in collecting two mounds of small rough stones. Then the battle begins, and it is a battle. Sometimes it is a duel, and sometimes fifty or even a hundred take an active part in it, pelting each other as rapidly and as roughly as possible.

***

Koreans are the heartiest eaters in the world. So, naturally enough, they sleep profoundly. They seem to be always eating. And nothing short of a royal edict, or a bursting bomb-shell, will interrupt a Korean feast.

Japanese beer is their favorite beverage. And for this let me commend them. For never in Milwaukee, never in Vienna, have I drunk beer so good as that which is made at the Imperial brewery in Tokyo.

Koreans devour incredible quantities of fish; herrings for a first choice. The herrings are caught in December, and are not eaten until March. Water-melons are the fruit most plentiful and most perfect in Korea. They are superb.

***

But the most important, and the most popular of all amusements in Korea is that of eating and drinking. [Drinking] is seldom or never indulged in by women, and even the [Kisaeng] are sobriety itself.

The Koreans drink everything and anything of an intoxicating kind that they can get. They are improving, however, in this respect, of late years. Japanese beer is somewhat displacing the heavier rice liquors, and among the very wealthiest people both claret and champagne are popular. But the Koreans eat as much as ever they did, and no other people extract so much genuine enjoyment from eating.

The Koreans season their food more highly, and use more chillies, more mustard than any other people in Asia. They are very fond of the taro, a smooth, small, sweet potato. They devour sea-weed by the pound, and eat lily-bulbs by the bushel. Here is the mênu of a very elegant Korean dinner:⁠—

Boiled pork with rice wine.

Macaroni soup.

Chicken with millet wine.

Boiled eggs.

Pastry.

Flour.

Sesame and honey pudding.

Dried persimmons and roasted rice with honey.

Both the Koreans and the Chinese, at least those who can afford it, use very much more meat than do the Japanese.

***

The Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans are all inveterate picnickers. They are all intensely fond of Nature, and of feasting out of doors.

***

Sleeping is another great national amusement in Korea. I know no other people that seem to take so much positive enjoyment in sleep, and who go at it so deliberately and systematically. They positively regard it as a pastime.

***

Kite-flying and top-spinning occupy a good deal of the time of old and young in China, in Korea, and in Japan. Kite fights and top battles are of very frequent occurrence, and are really very pretty to watch.

***

The Koreans are very fond of visiting, and of being visited…

***

Besides fishing, there are three manly sports in vogue in Korea, and I believe, three only; all others being considered undignified and ungentlemanly. The three are archery, falconry, and hunting. Indeed, I scarcely know if I am right in including hunting in the list. It is so very generally pursued as a business, and not as a pleasure. I believe that a few Koreans do sometimes hunt for sport, and very good sport they usually get. Deer, tigers, leopards, badgers, bears, martens, otters, sables, wolves, and foxes are abundant, and the peninsula is full of feathered life. Pheasants are as plentiful, as beautiful, and as toothsome in Korea as they are in China. And they have wild geese, plover, snipe, varieties of ducks, teal, water hens, turkeys and turkey-bustards, herons, eagles, and cranes; and the woods are full of hares and of foxes.

Archery is considered in Korea the most distinguished of recreations. Every Korean gentleman, from the king down, is, or tries very hard to be, expert at archery. They use a tight, short bow, never over three feet long, and arrows of bamboo. The Koreans are wonderful marksmen, and professional archers are among the most popular of public entertainers.

Falconry is almost as popular as archery, and every nobleman has at least one falcon. The falcon is invariably extensively and gaudily wardrobed, and has usually a personal attendant. Falcon competitions, both public and private, are frequent, and among the nobility are often made the occasion of elaborate entertainments.

The Koreans have a quaint little festival, called “Crossing the Bridges.” Söul abounds in queer little stone bridges. A moonlight night is chosen for the festival. Usually a man and a woman walk to the centre of the bridge, and make a wish for the ensuing year, or pray for good-luck, and search the stars for some augury of prosperity. They have a number of peculiar, picturesque customs in connection with “Crossing the Bridges,” but I fancy that with both men and women it is more an excuse for a night out than anything else.

***

But about the sign-posts in Korea. They are quaint, if you like! Each sign-post is shaped like an old-fashioned English coffin, and it is topped by a face…

They all wore the countenance of Chang Sun, a great Korean soldier. Chang Sun lived one thousand, more or less, years ago. His life was devoted to the opening up of his country to the feet of his countrymen. He intersected the hills of Korea with pathways, and to-day he beams upon every Korean wayfarer from every sign-post. Beneath his beaming face you may (if you are learned enough) read his name. Beneath his name you may read to where the road or roads lead; how far the next settlement, or the next rest-house is, and one or two other items that are presumably of general interest to the Korean travelling public.

***

There are no inns nor hotels in Korea. But the rest-houses are neither few nor far between. A Korean rest-house is a species of dâk bungalow. It does not fill our jaded European ideas of luxury. But it answers the purpose of the Korean traveller fairly well. He can cook there; he can eat there; he can sleep there; he can buy Japanese beer there. The average Korean is a sensible fellow, and wants nothing more. No, I am wrong; he wants two things more: he wants to compose poetry, and to paint pictures. The Koreans are a nation of poets, and of painters.

***

The great majority of Korean books (and they are not surprisingly many), are written and printed in Chinese. … Still, there is considerable poetry written in the Korean tongue (but in the Chinese character almost always), and we may consider the writing of this poetry as one of Korea’s national arts. “Poetry parties” are a popular form of Korean picnics. A number of friends meet at some unusually beautiful spot. They have been preceded by servants carrying writing materials and wine. Very gravely the competitors (for such they are) set to work. They sun and joy themselves in the beauty of the scene, they sip the cup that cheers, but alas! intoxicates too! and when they have enough assimilated the beauty of the scene and the gladness of the wine, then they write verses. The verses take the form of songs, or are ballads in praise of nature. They write of the bamboo, of the stars, of the storm, of moonlight and of sunrise, but never of woman!

***

Nature is after all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans; and to study Nature, to watch her, and to fall more and more deeply in love with her, is a Korean’s greatest amusement.

***

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Please pick up a copy of Pretense from Amazon or other sellers—and let me know where you spot your favorite K-drama moments woven into the story!

On a different note, I’m stepping back from romance writing for a little while to rest, reset, and let my creativity wander. More to come when it feels right.

And this K-pop song goes out to Daphne, the heroine of Pretense!