Speech levels in kdrama

I've started watching the Korean drama "Full House" and I am hooked. Absolutely hooked. If you've never watched kdrama before, the best way I can describe it is like a very long, serial movie. It's not like American TV shows, because a kdrama usually only has one season, consisting of 16 hour-long episodes (sometimes more or less). There is a cohesive plotline and story arc, and at the end, it's the end. Some kdramas have second seasons or sequel movies, but most of them don't drag on for years like American shows.

Watching "Full House" is giving me a much better sense of spoken Korean. I'm starting to pick up on patterns of verb use, for instance. The seven politeness levels of Korean threw me for a loop at first, but now I'm seeing that in everyday conversation, only about three are normally used. It's very convenient that verbs are always at the end of the sentence, because it makes it easy to pick out the verb endings.

Perhaps more importantly, watching "Full House" is giving me a sense of who uses which speech levels and when. It's becoming clear that the prepackaged phrases in Korean phrase books are awkwardly formal to use in everyday speech. It really is important to learn all the commonly used speech levels so that you can speak appropriately to superiors, "inferiors," equals, etc. - and understand what they are saying to you. A typical conversation is distinctly asymmetrical, with the older or higher-status person using casual speech while the younger/lower-status person uses more polite speech. Also, it seems that most men use casual speech towards their girlfriends.

Aside from verb endings, the different forms of personal pronouns also play a significant role in politeness level. Though Koreans don't use personal pronouns nearly as frequently as English speakers, they often do appear for purposes of clarification or emphasis.