However, in contemporary Korean melodramas, minimal music has replaced the typical throbbing and seductive tunes.
Fifty to seventy percent of films produced in Korea are classified as melodramas and they typically portray the neglected corners of society and its exaggerated feelings and circumstances work to arouse empathy in the viewer.
It is partly captured in the word han, which is a deep-seated feeling of sorrow, bitterness, or despair that originates in oppression or injustice which accumulates over time and remains unexpressed in the heart.
However, there is more of a tendency to evaluate the rapid transformation of social relations by looking back and consulting the old order of things.
When Korean melodrama characters realize they've lost it all, the film usually takes them back to a fleeting memory of past happiness and then ends, eschewing resolution.