My name is Robert Kim, and I am seven years old.

My name is Robert Kim. I am seven years old. I live in Seattle, Washington with my parents and two older sisters. I am not very good at telling stories, so please look into the flashback bubble with me.
It is above my head. No, on the other side. A little more to your left. Look up a little bit more. A little more. Yes, there it is. Now, when I say go, the flashback will start playing. Are you ready? Okay. One, two, three... GO!

Flashback start.

"Robert, why were you late to school today?" Mrs. Jones asked. Robert was sent to the principal's office today due to being tardy. It wasn't his fault, and yet there he was; standing with his hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, being interrogated. 

Now, Robert's principal, Mrs. Jones, was not your typical headmistress. She was cheerful, kind, somewhat young for someone of such authority, and her office was a dead giveaway to where her interests lay. Robert's elementary school principal was a Korean drama enthusiast. One could tell from the multitude of Korean drama DVDs neatly arranged on the shelf behind her desk and the various k-drama merchandise – mugs, mousepads, keychains, you name it – all laid out in an orderly manner on the desk. The signed poster of Song Joong-Ki (from his most recent drama, Descendants Of The Sun) behind the door to her office might have also made it a little more obvious than it could have been.

Oh, Joong-Ki, you handsome devil you.

Needless to say, her office made it crystal clear that she was indeed a fan.

"Now, Robert, don't be afraid. I'm not going to punish you. I just want to know why you were late to school." Robert was fidgeting now. He didn't know what to say. He wanted to tell her the truth, but he didn't know how to. "If you don't tell me why, I'm going to have to call your mother, Robert." She said in the most pleasant way possible. 

"Mommy..." Robert trailed off, distracted by the Kim Soo-Hyun bobble-head on one of the shelves behind her desk. "Your mother what, Robert?" He quickly averted his eyes from the figurine and went back to staring at the space on the floor between his tiny feet. 

Robert's hesitation started churning some overly imaginative gears in Mrs. Jones head. She was mapping out all the possibilities in her head that she had observed from her precious dramas.
Robert rubbed his cheek in what seemed to be a solemnly manner and a scene flashed in the back of her mind. "Did your mother, perhaps, hit you?" She was a principal, it was her job to know if a child was being mistreated. "Maybe, with a vege–" Her imagination was getting to her. She could not stop replaying the legendary Kimchi slap scene in her head. 

She had just watched the episode last week and it was still fresh in her mind. Little Robert, shook his head so hard it looked as if it would fall off, in response to her question.

     

     Focus, Marrie Jones, focus! Don't let your imagination get to you! 

"Then what is it, Robert?" The headmistress was starting to grow a little restless. Robert's reluctance to speak up was provoking her imagination to run wild and she was becoming impatient. 

"Mommy couldn't wake up this morning." A tidal wave of likely conclusions came crashing down onto her already overworked gray matter and it was starting to affect her better judgement. In an ideal situation, Mrs. Jones would calmly ask Robert to rephrase his statement and perhaps think it through before giving a proper response. However, poor Mrs. Jones was not really being herself today (it must be due to the lack of sleep from all that late-night drama binging) as she let out a booming, "WHAT?!" accompanied by an exaggerated startled expression. 

     Is she in a coma? Is she going to wake up and be diagnosed with amnesia? She couldn't possibly have switched bodies with someone could she? Did she faint from anemia? All these preposterous thoughts sped through her mind and her feral imagination started working on overtime. Her ridiculous notions distracted her from the shocked child standing right in front of her and she failed to notice that he was on the verge of tears. 

"WAHH!" A rather loud wail was what snapped her out of her reverie and she started panicking. Robert was crying and there she was, dwelling in her silly presumptions. 

"I'm so sorry, Robert," she said apologetically as she stood up to walk around her desk and crouched down to give Robert a well-deserved hug. "I scared you, didn't I?" She nods her head while Robert responds with his own minuscule head-bobs. 

"Mommy's alarm clock broke and she forgot to wake me up, so I came late." Well, that explains it. 

All those unnecessary and foolish made-up notions for nothing. 

"Okay then, that's all I needed to hear." Just then, the bell rang and the sound of boisterous children resounded through the office walls. "Well, will you look at that? Just in time for recess! Go on, Robert, go outside and have fun with your friends!"

As she watched little Robert run out the door with glee, she smiled to herself and shook her head.     

      Looks like it might be time to cut back a little on all those dramas, Marrie. 

When the door swung shut, she looked up at the Song Joong-Ki poster behind her door and let out a sigh, "Don't you think so too, Joong-Ki?"

Flashback end.

Mrs. Jones is nice. She let me go for recess with my friends! I ate chicken nuggets. They were dinosaur shaped. Mrs. Jones' office had a lot of funny things. I like the doll that had the bouncing head. There was a cool picture of a man behind her door too. Mommy, please don't fix your alarm clock because I want to go back to Mrs. Jones' office again!

Robert Kim.

My name is Melissa, and my sister is my brother? (Part 2)

Yes, I get a part two. Why shouldn't I? The owner of this blog and I go way back. We're buddies, so don't be jealous and let's just get on with the story.

 
 
    "Your sister wants to do what?" My best-friend Lisa came over to the house the day after Gina received the text from Alex telling her that he basically had no idea who she was. With her ego crushed to smithereens she was ready to execute payback by concocting a plan that consisted of her dressing up as a boy and joining the men's soccer team at school in which Alex was a part of. Inspired by the character named Jae Hee from the Korean drama called To The Beautiful You, my sister Gina went out and bought some much needed apparel (basically a wig) in order to complete her transformation and was now trying on her new getup.  

    "She want's to dress up as a dude, join the men's soccer team and–"

    "And beat him at his own game!" There she is, girl of the hour. "How do I look?" Gina stepped out of the bathroom sporting a pixie-cut wig, baggy Nike t-shirt and basketball shorts. "Do I look like a soccer player or what?" She beams.

    "Umm, your sister does know that she's dressed like a twelve-year-old basketball player and not a–" I cut Lisa off by holding a hand up to her mouth.

    "You look great, sis! Are we going to have to call you Gino instead of Gina now? Hehe... Heh...." I'm a horrible liar. "Well, Lisa and I are going to go get some snacks. Be right back!" I push Lisa out the door of the bedroom I share with my sister and lead her towards the kitchen.

We reach the kitchen and I embark on my mission to locate my mom's hidden candy stash. As I search through the cupboards, I can feel Lisa's disapproving stare digging into my back.

     "Don't look at me like that, Lisa. I'm just trying to be a supportive big sister."

     "Sure..." Don't judge me, Lisa. You know I hate that you're always right.

After Lisa left, I decided it was time to be honest with my little sister. She was never going to pull it off. To The Beautiful You was in drama-land, this is real-life. Even then, Jae Hee still looked nothing like a guy.

     "Hey, Gee-Gee," I said as I sat next to my sister on the sofa. She was watching a To The Beautiful You episode rerun on TV (I was behind by a couple of weeks so I usually watched the show on my laptop).

     "What's up, Mel?"

     "You know it's not going to work right." Got to get straight to the point.

     "Yeah... I kno–"

     "I mean, you don't even look anything like a dude! That, and you can't even play soccer. Plus, you– Wait, what? You agree with me?"

     "I'm not that delusional, Mel. I may be a little psycho at times, but I'm not that stupid. It's plain to see that this plan clearly isn't going to work. Besides, Alex isn't even that cute." Wow, my kid sister's growing up! "Also, what's the point in going through all that work. I have a reputation to uphold. And think of all the wardrobe changes I would have to make! All that make-up I have to apply over and over again. That and wigs make me sweaty and gross so forget it, he's not worth it." I take that back. She's still the same Gina.

The next day, Gina came home from school and told me all about how Ryan, her friend Kelly's boyfriend whom which she got Alex's number from, mistook her request and gave her the Biology lab assistant's number instead. He apparently thought she had asked for it because she needed help with her assignments. So, my sister, being the ever so bold and direct person she is, decided to do it the old fashioned way. After her Biology class, she bee-lined directly to Alex's best-friend Tom and asked him out right in front of Alex in order to make him jealous. Needless to say, that definitely worked. Immediately after that display, Alex had called her aside and confessed that he had liked her and would like to take her out on a date.

     "I turned him down though." She said, disinterested.

     "But, why? He finally asked you out! Isn't that what you wanted all along?"

     "He just wasn't that cute up-close." I'm exasperated. I just cannot believe how shallow she can be sometimes! All that uproar and she just dismisses it all in the end because he's not cute enough. Who am I kidding, this is typical Gina behavior after all.

     "Whatever, Gee. As long as you're happy now." I'm such a nice, big sister.

I return to staring at my laptop on the desk. My beloved Minho, a.k.a. Tae Joon in the drama, is acting out his crying scene flawlessly and I'm swooning, when all of a sudden, I feel Gina's head come up beside mine to look at the screen.

     "You know, Minho's pretty cute. Maybe I should ask mom to let me go to South Korea for Summer vacation. Who knows? I might just bump into Minho on the street or something when I'm there."

Oh no she didn't.

      "GINA LEE, DON'T YOU DARE!"

Gina, you are so dead.

Melissa Lee.

My name is Melissa, and my sister is my brother?

My younger sister Gina has always been boy crazy. Even at the age of five, she was already making boyfriends at the park, stealing my boyband posters and writing love-letters. Gina has also always been extremely attractive, both physically and personality wise. So, put them both together and you get a perfect combination of gorgeous teenager that wants the boys, and gets the boys. I on the other hand, was always more of the wallflower that observed boys from a distance and fantasized about having happily-ever-afters with fictional characters. But that was then, I'm twenty-two now. I passed the boy-chasing, daydreaming stage a long time ago.
She's seventeen now and besides the increase in height and "annoying-ness", I wouldn't say much has changed. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister but that does not deny the fact that she can be an absolute pain at times.

Recently, I've been keeping up with this Korean drama called To The Beautiful You. 
The drama is about this Korean girl from the United States named Jae Hee who one day watches this track and field competition on TV. As she watches the competition, she starts to feel an attraction towards one of the high jump competitors named Tae Joon. Because of her admiration towards him, she decides to transfer to Korea and attend the same school as Tae Joon after he suffers from an accident that could potentially end his career as a high jump athlete. But, because Tae Joon attends an all-boys high school, Jae Hee must disguise herself as a boy in order to enroll into the school and the story starts off from there.
I started watching it because the love of my life, Choi Minho, (he's so dreamy~) is staring as Tae Joon, the main male lead.

Oh, Minho~ You and your gorgeous neck.

Of course, Gina, being the ever so clingy little sister she is, had to watch it with me too.

    "This is such a good drama!" Gina squeals.
 
    "Uh-huh." I grunt. Hey, I'm trying to concentrate on Minho's gorgeous face here!

    "Oh my gee, Mel! Alex just texted me!" Oh, Minho, you have such pretty eyes. "Mel! Are you even listening to me?" Yes, Minho, tell me more about how you're a star athlete. "MEL!" she waves her phone in my face.

    "What?! You're blocking my Minho!" I press pause on the remote.

    "Remember I told you about this hottie, Alex, who's in my Biology class?"

    "No, but what about him?" I distract myself by picking at my cuticles.
 
    "He plays soccer? Is a dreamboat? I got his number from his soccer teammate Ryan who's Kelly's boyfriend?" I respond to her babbling with a blank stare. "Okay, whatever. Anyway, he texted me!" She's jumping up and down. Something I've seen her do about a hundred times before.

    "Well, what did he say?" I'm not that mean. This may be her eighty-fifth crush, but I'm still interested.

    "I don't know! I'm too nervous to read what it says! Can you read it for me, Mel? Pretty please!" She's looking at me with those puppy eyes again.

    "Sure, sure. Whatever." Why am I so weak?

    "Thank you, Mel! You're the best!" I grab her phone and push her away before she can slobber over give me a peck on the cheek.

Gina: Hey Alex! It's me, Gina, from your Biology class. ;)

Alex: Umm... Who?

I put the phone down slowly and she's looking at me in anticipation. Oh boy, is this going to be a blow for her ego. I should have never agreed to this.

    "Well?" She's raising an eyebrow at me. I just smile at her. My sad, pathetic little baby sister.

    "Urgh, just give me the phone." I observe as she unlocks her phone. Her eyes scan through the messages and there it is, the eye-twitch. Wait for it... One, two, thre– "WHAT?!" Here we go. "HOW DARE HE?!" I nod in mock agreement. "Who? WHO?! WHO HE SAID!"

    "I know, I saw." Can I go back to watching Minho now?

    "He has to know who I am! I'm Gina Lee for crying out loud! Every guy my age within a hundred-mile radius is dying to go out with me! Who? I'll show him who! He's going to notice me. He has to." She's got that murderous look in her eyes. I should be afraid, but it's nothing I haven't seen before. Her over-the-top outbursts are pretty common. Gina's never been too great at dealing with rejection.

    "So, what are you going to do this time?" She's had one too many crazy schemes. So I'm kind of excited to see what plays out with Alex.

    "I'm going to beat him. At his own game." She squints at the TV screen.

    "You mean soccer?" I'm confused.

She's still squinting at the TV. The drama is paused on a scene where the lead female character, Jae Hee, is standing with her – newly cut – short-hair and back exposed to show her chest binder.

Oh, no. She's not thinking that. She can't be. Don't do it, Gina.

    "Gina... Please don't tell me you're thinking about doing what I think you are. Please..." She smiles sneakily at the screen and then looks back at me. She's got that smug look of content that never fails to send shivers down my spine.

    "Oh, my dear sister, I'm going to beat him alright. And I know just the way to do it."

Save me, Minho.

My name is Jenny, and my roommate is crazy.

My name is Jenny. I live with my best-friend and roommate Amy in a tiny shoebox apartment in Manhattan. We're both fresh-out of college, me with a degree in music and Amy with one in theatre.
Lately, Amy's been obsessed with Korean dramas. She says she watches them for research purposes, she is a theatre major after-all. I guess observing other actors and actresses do their thing would be beneficial, even if it is in a different language. Facial expressions and the ability to portray an array of emotions are the most important right?

    "Our new neighbor just moved in."
 
    "Oh?" Amy's never really been interested in anyone besides herself. Her family and I are the only other exceptions.
 
    "Yeah. She's Korean and super nice! I just spoke to her the other da–"
 
    "What? Say that again." Amy had a crazy look in her eyes.

    "She's super nice?" I wasn't sure whether I liked that look or not.
 
    "No, the other part." Amy was starting to scare me.

    "I spoke to her the other da–"

    "You said, she's Korean." Oh. Was that all?

    "Yes?" I was wary. Her eyes still looked glazed over.

    "OH. MY. JENNY!" Okay? "Our neighbor, is Korean?!"

    "I just told you tha–"

    "Korean! I'm going to go say hi!" Amy was already sprinting towards the front door.

    "Wait, right now?" The sound of the door slamming shut was the response I got.

When Amy returned, she told me that she was a hundred and ten percent sure that our next-door neighbor, Hye-Ri, was in love with the CEO of a large corporation in South Korea.
According to Amy, Hye-Ri was living in the ant-sized apartment next door because she was trying to keep her lover safe by giving in to his deranged mother's demands for her to move out of South Korea and leave her son alone.

    "She told you all that in five minutes?" Okay, I was convinced. Amy had lost it.
 
    "She didn't have to! I could see it in her eyes," I could see the lunacy in your eyes too, Amy.

Amy also didn't fail to mention that the possibility of Hye-Ri's lover being her twin brother, separated at birth, should not be ruled out completely.

    "I'm telling you, Jenny, it's all too obvious. She needs our help. We have to–"

Amy's rambling was interrupted by a knock on our door and I immediately rushed over to thank whoever had saved me from my roommate's insanity.
It was Hye-Ri. She was smiling. She greeted me with a slight nod and then peered her head to the side to focus on Amy who was standing behind me.

    She put her focus back on me and said, "Your friend left rather abruptly. Is she okay?" I looked back and saw Amy standing in the middle of the living-room, mouth agape.

    "Umm... She's alright. Why? Did something happen?"

    "She knocked on my door and introduced herself. I invited her to come in and then went to go get some snacks for her to try. When I came back to where I had left her, she was gone," she said. She was clearly very confused. "I thought she might have left due to an emergency, so I decided to bring these over for you guys to try anyway," she was holding a plate of multi-colored treats. "They're Korean rice-cakes! I made them myself," she said as she passed me the plate of goodies.

    "I'm sorry, Amy, just had to, use the bathroom. Uhh, would you like to come in?"

    "Sure! If you guys don't mind."

    "Of course not! Please, come in."

Hye-Ri told us how she had come to the United States as an international student and graduated with a degree in business. She was now living in Manhattan because she had received a job offer here. If everything goes well, she would be sponsored for a working visa and as of now, that was her main goal. When I told her about Amy's over the top theories on why she was here, she just laughed. Hye-Ri went on to explain that Amy's hypothesis was not entirely preposterous. She did have a lover back home in Korea, and his mother was not very approving of their relationship. However, he was no CEO, and it's not that his mother hated her, it was just that she didn't agree with her decision to move to the U.S. She wanted her to stay in Korea and help out with their family's business, she wanted a housewife, not a business woman. But regardless, she shot down the idea of her husband being related to her in any way, let alone being her twin brother, faster than the speed of light.
In the end, we all agreed that we would definitely hang out again and Hye-Ri eventually became our third musketeer. Amy still kept watching her beloved dramas but she did stop coming up with absurd theories. Instead, she started picking up the language and would converse with Hye-Ri in Korean frequently.

    "Hey, Jenny."

    "Yeah, Amy?"

    "Hye-Ri never did talk about what kind of family business her husband's family was running, right?"

    "No, I don't think she did."

    "Hmm... You see, the thing is, I've been watching this drama lately and it was about a family of Korean mafias."


Oh no. Here we go again.

Jenny aka Jenny from the block.

My name is John, not Joon-Ho.

Korean dramas, or K-drama for short, are always fun to watch.
They're exciting, over-the-top, emotional roller-coasters that can sometimes be slightly traumatizing.

My wife Suzy and I both grew up in California. We've been married for three and a half years and I love her to death. Two years ago, we both made the courageous decision to move to South Korea to teach English. We now live together in a cozy one-bedroom apartment in the Mapo District of Seoul.

I'm not a fan of Korean dramas. The anticipation and suspense that is pretty much what makes a drama, well, a drama; is not my cup of tea. That and I still require English subtitles.
Suzy, on the other hand, speaks fluent Korean and is a sucker for K-dramas. She is absolutely mesmerized by them. She adores the five-hundred different camera angles switching back and forth, the slow-motion crying sequences with falling leaves in the background, the overused original soundtracks, and other lengthy (but oh-so-necessary) fillers that take up at least forty percent of the entire series.

My wife sees the world through drama-land colored lenses, especially now. Since we live in South Korea, that incredible imagination of her's has just been working overtime. She's somehow convinced herself that since we live in the homeland of her beloved dramas, we should be just like the characters of the series she indulges in too! Don't get me wrong, I love that she's keeping her mind active. But then again, I'm starting to suspect that she has a screw loose somewhere up there.

She started calling me Joon-Ho one day. "Don't you like it? Joon-Ho? It sounds so much better than plain old John. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you know what I mean," she said. "And don't you think Soo-Jin sounds so much prettier than Suzy? Suzy just makes me sound like an old grandma! The fortune-teller I saw the other said that changing our names would bring us good luck too!" You love her, John, remember that. Don't look into her eyes. Avoid eye-contact. Avoid, avoid...
"I think it suits us!" She's in denial, I have to stop her. "Suzy!" I didn't mean to shout. Honest, I didn't. "We're not even Asian! And we already have names! Why would we need or even want to change something we already have?" I'm just trying to state a fact.

Oh no, she's walking away from me. I was rude. She's angry. She definitely hates me now.
She– stopped?
"Aren't you going to grab my wrist roughly, hug me and tell me not to leave you?" she scoffs while spinning to face me. "Umm... What?" I was confused. Wasn't she angry at me? Why was she telling me to hug her all of a sudden? I mean, I know she was angry, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't going to leave me because of what I said. "Urrgh! You're so dense!" My feet move before I can question the situation any further and I give her a tight hug before she explodes on me again. "I'm sorry. Please don't leave me, Suz–" she's glaring at me. "I mean, Soo-Jin," I admit defeatedly. "Aww, I love you, Joon-Ho!" You're crazy, but I love you too, Suzy.

John.

Joon-Ho.