The story of Choi Ho Dol and Joo Won Suk is extremely popular with gay people. Some of the scenes are not realistic, but others are very much the shared experiences of gay people everywhere and resonate deeply. On YouTube there are multiple bootlege short videos of some of the gay scences grouped together. Having watched 32 episodes of “Love with Flaw,” I can understand why these videos are made. The Choi Ho Dol and Jon Won Suk story is spread in short segments among 32 episodes in a rom com that is so-so. This index is so you can look at the scences on your own without having to watch the rest of the series. The Dol-Suk segments make up a fairly well self-contained story. Also, seeing the segments in order make the full comprehension of the story easier to understand.
Nowhere is the series do we see Dol and Suk kiss, though there is a lot of straight people kissing in this series. We don’t see them going to bed together or waking up in bed together.
I had trouble in doing this index. I couldn’t figure out who the evil gay person was. I used Mydramalist to identify people and the spellings are from Mydramalist. I didn’t index any of the stuff about straight people being mistaken for being gay. I did include some items that didn’t involve the Dol - Suk story but would be of interest to gay people.
This list is in Excel.
Ep. 1 19:42. Gay bar. Classic complaint of straight women that the good men or handsome men are gay made by Joo Seo Yeon. Some straight women want to put their problems on the gay community rather than take ownership for their personal issues.
Ep 1 22:46 Choi Ho Dol getting enough courage to go into the gay bar. I don’t think this is so much a thing now days in America, but I remember when it was a very common shared experience when gay people did their first step to enter the gay community.
I remember being at Iowa State Univ. and the 1973-74 year was coming to a close and gay liberation had a group at ISU. I walked around and around the park for an hour, but I didn’t have the courage to cross the street and go to the last gay liberation meeting of the school year. I didn’t come out until a couple years later when I saw a gay lib group advertised and I went.
We used to find people poised to go into the meeting room but not quite able to take the final step and so we had techniques to help them make the last step. While entering we would say things like lets go in and they would move.
Seeing it in a Korean film makes me think that in the past or at different historical stages in different nations it is a universally common gay experience. Though it may be only so with nations with conservative Christian churches. It seems to be not present in Thailand and the Philippines. I am talking about gay movies there, not BL.
Ep2 Nothing.
Ep3 16:52 Park Suk Min goes to Joo Won Suk’s gay bar. Joo Seo Yeon laments all the handsome guys are at the gay bar.
Ep3 17:52 Choi Ho Dol enters the gay bar, continuing the scene from Ep1 and is told to leave. This is somewhat shocking. I have never known this to happen in a real gay bar. Though the bar there seems to be fairly upscale and those types of bars are often snooty. Joo Won Suk is a jerk. I think this might be a bit of BL creeping into the story line here. Doing this to a person who is obviously coming out is something that would be generally disapproved of. I will have to make inquires if this is a Korean gay thing.
Also, the very first few seconds shows Choi Ho Dol seeing the gay world and seeing others who he knows are like himself and having for the first time an idea of what the gay world might be. There is wonder in his eyes. This may not be a big thing in the contemporary United States, but it was the common experience of seeing the gay world for what it was for the first time. Usually you regret not coming out much earlier.
I may not entirely understand this episode. It might be that Suk thinks Dol is a student reporter or someone visiting as a non-gay person to do a story or otherwise sociological researcher. I will get back to this later in this list.
Ep4 Nothing.
Ep5 9:29 Joo Won Suk is shown with towel and it obvious he has showed. He obviously stayed over night with Park Suk Min. (Did I get the correct character identified here.)
Ep5 25:35 Gay bar seen where Joo Won Suk discovers that his wallet was taken by the evil gay person. (I couldn’t figure out this character’s name.) Then there is a scene where Joo Won Suk at the university overhears how Choi Ho Dol’s classmates are using him for their own purposes and are not his friends. Then Joo Won Suk meets the evil person and gets his wallet back. Then the evil gay person demands why Joo Won Suk doesn’t find him attractive. Joo Won Suk makes it clear that he doesn’t have time for closet cases. I am not sure if the translation here is the best. It could be that this is how Korean gays express that a person is closety and the translation is more a transliteration. I don’t know.
There is a slang term in English for the type of person evil gay is. The slang term is “Miss Thing.” That is this person since they look good and many people want them, they thing they are god’s gift to gay men and are conceited and causual in cruelty. When class advantage is added, they can be really insufferable. This type is well known, and one of the things an intelligent gay person does is steer away from them. If you are looking for a one night stand that is fine, if you are thinking of dating you are setting yourself up for problems. Suk can see that evil gay is “Miss Thing.” I don’t know what the equivalent term would be in the gay community, but I suspect that every language has a slang term for this.
First thing, the wallet taking must be a BL element put in here or a rom-com crazy element. This would be something that you would not want to be known for. It would be seen as totally unacceptable and other guys would avoid you.
The other really interesting thing is that the evil gay person is wearing a hot pink sweater. Color in Korea doesn’t have the same gender assignments as in the United States and also Koreans seem to be more relaxed or freerer in their use of color. I noticed this when I was on a business trip in Korea.
I remember in 1968 when on of our teachers wore a ordinary regular pink dress shirt and it was cause for discussion. Even now days I don’t think you will find men, gay or otherwise wear a bright pink. The color has other class stigmas I think as well as used by adult businesses. The color grammer of Korea and the United States is very different. I say, good for the Koreans.
Ep6,7,8,9 Nothing.