西洋오랑캐

꽃보다 남자…”Man That (Looks) Better Than a Flower.” It’s a pretty stupid term isn’t it? Somehow with the sucess of the film 왕의 남자 this term began showing up on all the Korean versions of Entertainment Tonight, and in all the fashion magazines. What exactly is a “Man that looks better than a flower?” Well friends, today we are going to do an in depth and comprehensive study as to what makes one a 꽃보다 남자.

These lads, for those of you that don’t happen to be 14 year old Chinese girls, are F4. F4 are some sort of Taiwanese ensemble, perhaps singers that were the hunky lead actors in a Taiwanese television program Meteor Garden (流星花園), based on a Japanese comic book, Hana Yori Dango (花より男子). This show aired in Korea, and for some reason, I briefly become all about it.

This program became my first exposure to Flower Men, primarily due to the fact that in Korea it was given the title, 꽃보다 男子. So in my first understanding of the term, 꽃보다 남자, was simply an Asian man with long hair strong jaws, and muscles that make the young girls swoon. And apparently I wasn’t that far off the mark. The series finished it’s run and that was the last I heard of 꽃보다 남자…until this winter.

The winter of 2005 / 2006 brought about the Korean film of the year, 왕의 남자. For those of you unfamiliar with this film, I turn you over to Joel of About Joel, who has a much better thought out and reasoned write up of this film than I could ever hope to create. I’ll wait for you, I promise….

Ok I see you are back. The above picture is 이준기 (Lee Jungi), the current King of the Korean Flower Men. In the film, this was the actor portraying the character kings assumed was a woman (or perhaps knew was a man and didn’t mind). Anyhow, as the film become more and more successful the press (and high school girls) started paying a lot of attention to 이준기 and his looks. The phrase 꽃보다 남자 came back, and my understanding of the term changed.

No longer did I assume it was muscled Asian dudes with nice hair and Superman-esque jaws. Now I was under the impression that the term referred to men that looked like women. “Ah! So 하리수 (Korean post-op transgender Harisu) is the ultimate 꽃보다 남자.” Apparently it doesn’t work that way. The second you have breasts (topless pictures of Harisu…avoid if you have problems with such things), you apparently become ineligable for 꽃보다 남자 status.

So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this theory…if you are a decent looking man and attract hordes of girls to scream and show up anywhere you go, then you are a 꽃보다 남자. Though this is the thing I don’t really understand. Here we have men that are prettier than the girls idolizing them…it would be kind of like American men lusting after big burly women that compete in Lumberjack Games, or have sex with the 1-2-3 Kid.

Anyhow, I’m going to go cut pictures of hot guys out of my Tiger Beat magazines and hang them on my walls…thanks a lot diary, you’re the only one who understands me!