Well, IMO, modern kdramas are, in general, fairly shallow, and most boil down to "rich guy financially or physically saves poor girl." Most of them, frankly, tend to treat their love interests badly for reasons exagerrated far beyond their mileage, and they tend to manipulate things to have "us against the world" for shallow reasons, and have anti-responsibility/family themes. (I mean, look at Goong. Shin's angst boils down to "I don't want to live up to the responsibilities of my station-which the entire country needs me to do-and my girlfriend rejected my ultimatum." I spent the entire time sympathizing with his mother and Hyo-Rin, and wanting to scream at him to get over himself.) In addition, while the heroines often seem to have plenty to do at first glance, it's usually "be cute but annoyed over hero->pine over hero as he pays attention to everyone else->repeat->get hero or die in the snow/cancer/get hit by a car." Even the shoujo I'm tempted to throw across the room does better on that front. Sageuks, however, seem to have much more complex (and tighter) plots, and there's a much more conscious effort put into making the female characters be more developed and have more to do.