“Active Wife Who Demands Sex It’s My Character”

“A desire for sex? It is equally important as the desire for food. If you starve too much, you reach your endurance limit. When your husband doesn’t satisfy you, the alternative is to find a substitute husband.”

“Let’s make love on the days when there’s no final consonant in the first syllable. (In Korean, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays don’t have final consonants in the pronunciation of their first syllables).”

These are the lines for Byun Jung-su, the main character of the new soap opera on Friday nights, “A Wife’s Uprising” (producer Gwak Yeong-beom and script writer Yoon Jeong-geon), which will air from October 15 on the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) channel.

According to Byun, “In a nutshell, this soap drama is a sex comedy. It has some wild scenes with swimming suits and underwear dress codes. Also, it has a high level of deliverance in sex-related talks.”

The first episode begins with a scene in which Byun Jung-soo takes a bubble bath to entice her husband (Jo Min-gi) to have sex. When her husband leaves for the office, she slaps his thigh and says good-bye to his groin area.

Kim Jeong-gang, the role Byun acts, is a good-looking career woman working as an office manager at the front desk check-in at a hotel. She actively demands sex from her husband, who is a professor and has a complex with the fact that his wife is a well-recognized working woman, which is beyond his capability. She voices the women’s right to enjoy sex, and considers men as delinquent of their duty when they ignore this.

Byun Jung-soo said, “Except the setting that my husband is not good in bed, the role fits well with my real life active and social character.”

“A Wife’s Uprising” will unfold the issues of married couples with three examples: Byun Jung-soo and Jo Min-gi, Seonwoo Jae-deok and Hong Lee-na, and Lee Sang-woo and Yang Jeong-a.

Breaking the conventional timetable, SBS will air two consecutive episodes on Friday nights. In addition, it rated the drama “forbidden for those under 19 years old to watch” and declared that it would make the show for adults. Soap operas targeting audiences over 19 years old is the first gesture of its kind in TV history, except for cable programming.

Producer Gwak Yeong-beom said, “We plan to make the drama entertaining for adults, and are considering adjusting it for contents and visuals.”

Sun-Woo Kim sublime@donga.com