Femininity in Korean Drama (K-drama): Reframing the New Woman Discourse in Bangladesh

The popularity of Korean dramas has had an immense influence worldwide, especially among the young women of Bangladesh. This chapter incorporates a mixed-method design to explore the newly emerged avenues of femininity, or ‘New Womanhood’ as exhibited in K-dramas, while focusing on women’s subjectivities transformed through multiple lived experiences and consciousness across media participation, diversity, and global connections. These dramas are a potential tool for attributing moral agency, ideas of selfhood, and feminist-based solidarity in resisting gender-based violence and class-based oppression in contemporary times. The study incorporates two record-high rated Netflix series aired internationally in recent years—The Glory (2022–23) and The World of the Married (2020). The transition from normative paternalism through affective labor utilizing media as an apparatus and its impact across international fandom spaces has been emphasized the most. The data was collected through a semi-structured online survey and merged with Nancy Fraser’s neoliberal feminist lens and Judith Butler’s performativity discourse. This chapter situates the debate on the gendered definition of womanhood through the complex lens of intersectional oppression, examining how K-dramas expand the scope of affective expression for women in Bangladesh.