These days, the drama which has the biggest audience rating is "Queen Seon-deok". "Queen Seon-deok" has been noticed by more viewers for each episode as its program rating has passed 40%. When people search for recent popular programs, there are many historical dramas like "Jewel in the Palace(Dae Jang Guem)" and "Prince of the Legend(Jumong)". Historical dramas are difficult to approach. Nevertheless, why are the historical dramas popular?
While the dramas in present-day life show daily lives and present society, historical dramas show past society and history. Therefore, historical dramas extend the people's interests in history. These peculiarities make people who don't like dramas decide that historical dramas are better than present-day dramas.
When China's Northeast Asian Project was a hot issue from 2006 to 2007, dramas about Kokuryeo and Par-hae appeared together at that time. The three main broadcasting stations televised historical dramas about Kokuryeo. "Yeongaesomun", "The King Dae Joyoung" and "Prince of the Legend" were on the air at that time. Due to those situations, people showed interest in Kokuryeo history.
However, as interest in historical dramas has increased, some criticisms have been raised. One of them is whether historical dramas needed to be accurate or not. As a matter of course, historical dramas are based on real historical facts. However, historical dramas are fiction. It means that the society in dramas is not real, but fictitious. Moreover, dramas are a kind of product that need more attention from viewers to make a profit. On this account, play writers change the historical facts. Therefore, stories in historical dramas are not real.
In one movie scene, one man asked, "Who is the Empress Myung-sung?", and someone answered, "Lee Mi-yeon," who is an actress. As a matter of course, this scene is made to move the audience to laughter on purpose, but this scene can be real for some people who are kids and who don't have background knowledge and just  believe dramas like passive viewers. Maybe this is better than indifference, but wrong recognition of history will give bad effects to Korea's development. Varied and upright recognition can be helpful. People should be active viewers who try to learn the background of history related to the dramas.