If you know you know! Singles Inferno 3 has been immensely popular this season with its viewership currently standing at 71 million hours globally within just four weeks (Korea JoongAng Daily). In this article, we discuss Singles Inferno Season 3 and how Korean social standards influenced the overall interactions between contestants and the results of the show.
If you haven’t read our previous singles inferno articles you can do so HERE.
Let’s get into it!
First off, a question we asked ourselves while watching Season 3 was, “would it just be better to leave alone?” This is of course coming from a cultural perspective but if we look further into it we can see the reasons for some questionable actions as a reflection of Korean society.
Gwan Hee and his antics
Surprisingly for us, Gwan Hee was not who we thought would have so many of the contestants attention. He’s intriguing for sure, but after how he acted we were surprised to see how many women were still interested in him despite his behavior on the show.
It made us question the intentions of the women who were after him, is it simply that it was a dating show and they wanted to pursue their interest in him or was it perhaps that they really didn’t want to be left alone on the island on account of what people would think of them after the show had ended.
Harsh Society
Korean society is very status oriented and appearances are almost everything. You can see this in recent events with Lee Sun Kyun's death and how you present yourself in the public eye and in society is so important. It’s an also somewhat harsh society so judgements are passed easily and without much thought for the feelings of the other person.
For instance, in this show with Gwan Hee and Hye Seon it seems as if she was acting on her feelings but after how Gwan Hee acted, a lot of us would have preferred she left alone or didn’t choose him. This is because she really seemed to know her worth, but we respect her choice regardless.
Another contestant that appeared this way was Gyuri, despite being interested in Min Woo more than Min Kyu, she left the show with Min Kyu after she was quite rude to Min Woo and wanted to essentially control his actions to choose her.
Korean social standards and practices really shine through in Singles Inferno and other Korean reality shows. We’ve seen it before in the previous seasons for example, where Moon Se Hoon was very persistent towards pursuing Shin Ji Yeon. Western audiences saw it as "creepy" or "forceful" but Korean audiences saw it as "romantic", "loyal" and "persistent".
How deeply is "society" embedded in us?
So our main question is “is it that they really liked the person they left with, or was it simply that they didn’t want to appear “rejected” or not chosen? Korean society firmly stands on societal acceptance, so it’s hard to tell what’s genuine and what’s not in this type of show. I mean of course, even the want to be accepted is genuine but it’s also very strongly influenced by a judgmental and harsh society. So is it really us or is it society or both? Comment your views below! We want to hear from you!
For more on Singles Inferno check HERE!
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