#45. 막장 -- That k-drama sucks as if there is no tomorrow

K-dramas, as addictive as they can be, are full of clichés. If you take a step back, the majority of the plots can be described by the same sentences. An orphaned but optimistic girl meets a rich and handsome prince. The man's family, rich and huffy, can't accept this relationship and they try their best to sabotage it. Then the man's family hires assassins to kill the girl too, because actually, the man's family was responsible for the girl's parents' deaths. But then it turns out that one of the assassins hired to kill the girl is the girl's childhood sweetheart. Now they're in a love triangle... "Ugh!" you scream. "I've had enough of this ridiculousness!"

And it turns out that he girl's mother was actually not dead. She emerges out of nowhere to curse out her boyfriend, and slaps him with some kimchi.

Yes, I get it. The Koreans get it, too. But for some reason, you can't stop watching the drama, although you'll complain about it until the drama comes to an end.

Koreans do the same thing, actually. Except that dramas of this sort are so common that they have a word for it. The Koreans would complain:

이 드라마 줄거리 정말 막장이네. (The plot of this drama is really 막장.)

Informally, when I see the word "막장," I understand it as "having gone so far with the ridiculous plot that there is no way to salvage the drama from ever being respected again.

There are two interesting theories of where this word came from, though.

The first is that this word comes from "the end of the market day." The letter "막" is a Korean prefix that means "last." For example, "막차" means "the last car (bus) schedule of the day." And "장" means "market," mostly in the traditional sense of an open outdoor market that happens every few days. At the end of these market days, the vendors, not wanting to be stuck with spoiled goods, start calling out ridiculously low prices for their goods. The prices can sink as low as they want, just like the quality of the plots of some k-dramas. This might be where the word "막장" comes from.

The second is a little bit darker. Between 1950s to 1970s, Korea was a pretty terrible place to live. The country was just starting to recover from the destruction of the Korean war (and also, the Japanese occupation has just ended some 10 years ago), and Korea was very poor, at least as poor as most of the third world countries nowadays.

During this era, coal mining was one of the biggest industries that sustained the country. Korea exported a lot of coal to the US, and most Korean homes were heated by using 연탄 (or 구공탄, because it has nine holes: "구" means "nine" and "공" means "hole"), which burned more slowly than wood, and thus more convenient (This feels like ages ago, but I still have memories of going to my grandparents' house, which was in the outskirts of Seoul, and they burned 연탄 until the mid-90s. Some places, even in Seoul, still use it!)

Pre-usage, it's black. Once it's all burned off, it turns into white ash. You could use tongs to insert into the holes, so that you could transport them easily into the fire.

Thus, the production of coal was very important. However, as we all know, mining is a very dangerous business. For one, your life expectancy as a miner was drastically decreased, not only from the bad air in the mines, but also from the fact that being in the mine itself was very dangerous. It could collapse any minute, and the smallest accidents led to catastrophic results. In particular, the deeper in the mines you worked, the more dangerous risks you ran.

The deepest of the mines were called "막장." If you were working in the "막장" of the mines, you were regarded as someone who had nothing to lose. There was almost no oxygen, and if any part of the mines collapsed, you were sure to be buried in. Although the compensation was greater, you'd have to be in a very deep financial trouble to want to volunteer to work there. To this day, in the mining villages of Korea, the word "막장" is taboo.

Nonetheless, the Koreans feel that this describes the state of some terrible k-dramas. They've degenerated so far and all respect has been lost, that they have nothing to lose by creating another ridiculous plot twist!

As for the usage, this is pretty common. Of course, because of the derogatory nature of the word, you don't want to use it in any situations that could offend anyone. But if you called a k-drama "막장,"it likely won't be much of a problem in an informal company (unless you had a die-hard fan for that drama!) Look for this word in the comments of internet news articles describing the plots of some k-dramas!