Analysis of Gender Roles and Romantic Love in the K-Drama “My Secret Romance”

The objective of this research is to identify the indicators of romantic love and define the representations of gender roles in the Korean romance series “My Secret Romance”. Adapting a qualitative, descriptive, and cross-sectional content analysis design, this study employs a systematic observational technique across all 14 episodes. To address methodological rigor, coding was conducted via a two-coder independent framework with intercoder reliability assessment (Cohen's Kappa = 0.88), establishing clear operational definitions for psychometric categories adapted from the Gender Ideology Scale and Hendrick & Hendrick's Love Attitudes Scale. Among the main findings, traditional gender role statements exhibited low direct verbal frequency (e.g., “A woman's place is in the home,” 8 occurrences; “Children suffer if their mothers work,” 4 occurrences) but profound narrative impact in constraining female autonomy. Regarding romantic love, a total of 256 behavioral occurrences were categorized, with Mania (145 occurrences) and Eros (68 occurrences) dominating the affective structure. The most frequent indicators centered on cognitive obsession (“When I am in love, I find it hard to concentrate,” 56 occurrences) and somatization of distress (“When something is wrong, I feel a knot in my stomach,” 55 occurrences). The manuscript concludes that while the textual representation in My Secret Romance naturalizes obsessive attachment and emotional dependence, such findings reflect narrative tropes within the text rather than audience reception or behavioral effects.

Gender roles, romantic love, Hallyu, k-dramas, qualitative content analysis

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