May 16, 2004

By F.N. D'ALESSIO

J.P. Paulus is Dutch-Indonesian, but had no exposure to any sort of Asian culture while he was growing up in the suburbs. So he took a roundabout route on the way to becoming a fan and promoter of Korean TV drama.

He singles out on a devastating courtesan and concubine named Chang Nok Soo. For nearly a year, beginning in 1995, Paulus followed the story of the legendary beauty on a low-power station where it ran on rented airtime.

When ''Chang Nok Soo'' aired in 1995, it was the year's top-ranked dramatic show in South Korea. But even with English subtitles, the chronicle of medieval court intrigue in Korea was hardly noticed in the United States.

Paulus, now 31 and the financial officer of Chicago's Uptown Baptist Church, was attending Northwestern University at the time. He said he began watching ''Chang Nok Soo'' because he was curious about the culture of Korean-born friends he met in a campus Christian group.

Then he got hooked, becoming part of a small but growing U.S. fan base for South Korean serial television dramas, which are so popular in their native country that the military recently sent several series to Iraq to preserve the morale of Korean troops stationed there.

Korean dramas also reach hundreds of millions of daily viewers in such countries as China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. They're part of hallyu, ''the Korean wave,'' that has been flooding popular culture in much of Asia in recent years. The Seoul government estimates that 200,000 Asian tourists visited South Korea last year to see the television studios and locations where the shows were shot.

Hallyu isn't a wave in the U.S. yet, but its ripples are reaching these shores.

U.S. audiences for Korean television drama are small, but vocal and devoted. Stations in Chicago, Philadelphia, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and New York now offer several shows daily. These cities have sizable Korean-American populations, but Korean-Americans are not the sole audience. That surprised Kwang Dong Jo, vice president of WOCH-TV, Channel 28, in Chicago.

''We knew that most viewers of the dramas were first-generation Korean-Americans, but we worried about the second generation, who were losing the language,'' Jo said. ''We started subtitling to reach those younger people, and we asked viewers for feedback to see if they liked the subtitles.

''We got nearly 500 e-mails from English-speaking Americans,'' Jo said. ''We never expected non-Koreans to write, and it was a shock to us. I know these dramas are becoming popular even in Latin America -- but in the United States? We are still surprised.''

WOCH news director Myung H. Han singlehandedly does the subtitles for the station. Because of his expertise, Han has become a sought-after contributor on the local Internet message board for American fans of the dramas. That message board recorded more than 1,700 posts for just one drama, ''Yellow Handkerchief."

''Yellow Handkerchief'' was a daily family drama. Such series, which focus on one or two extended families, have a superficial resemblance to U.S. soap operas. The historical epics, like the 200-episode "Emperor Wang Guhn,'' are heavy on political intrigue and warfare.

Most fans say they came upon the programs while flipping channels. For Betsy McCreary, a legal aide and dance troupe manager from Philadelphia, the costumes were the hook. She said she glimpsed the elaborate attire in ''Emperor Wang Guhn'' when it was airing on WBYE-TV, a local publicly supported station, and had to see more.

"Music is my life, and this was the first time something other than music got me interested in another culture,'' McCreary said. ''The production values -- the acting, the camera work and especially the costumes -- are extremely high.''

Bo Brown, a legal secretary from Oak Park, didn't even know what language the actors were speaking when she chanced upon a family drama on WOCH, but the scene's emotional intensity drew her in. She now vastly prefers the shows to American soaps.

''The things seem to be written by focus groups,'' Brown said of the U.S. shows. "Korean soaps are better because they're firmly rooted in the real world. I also like that they've got a beginning, a middle and an end -- they tell a story and the same writers do the entire series.''

Jeanne Powers-Smith, 69, of Lualualei, Hawaii, gets her dramas from KBFD-TV in Honolulu, which does its own subtitling.

''I tried Japanese shows out of curiosity when I first moved to Hawaii,'' said the former Californian. ''But nothing ever happened on them. Then I tried the Korean shows and loved them. The plots deal with families and family values. They're a cleaner type of show, too. When there's sex, they leave something to the imagination. They're romantic.''

All the fans interviewed were enthusiastic about the current epic, ''Dae Jang Geum,'' the fact-based saga of a servant girl who rose from the royal kitchens to become personal physician to a 16th century king.

''It's the first series I've been able to get my wife enthusiastic about,'' Paulus said. ''But I don't know if it belongs on the History Channel or the Food Channel.''

AP