Melodrama and the Ecological Imagination: K-Dramas and Thai Lakorns as Instruments of Soft Environmental Diplomacy

This paper examines how Asian serialized dramas, particularly Korean television dramas (K-Dramas) and Thai Lakorns, function as cultural texts that shape ecological imagination within the Philippine media environment. Using interpretive visual-textual analysis of Crash Landing on You, My Mister, 2gether: The Series, and Bad Genius: The Series, the study explores how visual aesthetics, emotional atmospheres, and narrative structures encode environmental values such as balance, restraint, and care. Rather than measuring audience impact, the paper interprets Filipino online audience commentary as illustrative reception discourse reflecting how viewers emotionally interpret these mediated landscapes. Anchored in theories of soft power, cultural proximity, and visual discourse, the analysis demonstrates how melodramatic storytelling communicates ecological ideals indirectly through spatial order, affective pacing, and moral narratives of repair. The paper argues that these dramas operate as informal channels of soft environmental diplomacy by circulating aesthetic imaginaries of sustainability across borders. It concludes by suggesting how Philippine media industries might adapt these narrative strategies to develop locally grounded environmental storytelling within regional creative collaborations.