Song Jae-jung Hates Her Heroines

For anyone who doesn't know, Song Jae-jung is one of the greatest sci-fi fantasy writers on the scene today. She partially inspired the love I have for thrillers now, and is responsible for one of the most romantic dramas I've ever seen. But... I don't think she's perfect. Namely because within the four dramas I've seen that Song Jae-jung has written, I've noticed parallels - in each one, the male leads are charismatic and deftly written, but I'm convinced that comes at the expense of the female leads.

Take Queen In-hyun's Man, where the hero Kim Boong-do defies typical stereotypes for a protagonist - instead of sullen and in need of 'fixing', we got a man who proved compassionate and empathetic from Day One.
  Regardless of how much I liked the heroine, I take issue with how she was characterised. Yoo Inna was likely a huge saving grace here, embodying Choi Hee-jin with I imagine far more charm than was written on paper.
  Song Jae-jung unintentionally wrote Hee-jin as a stereotype of a woman - an air-headed but sexy foil to the man. She never demonstrated herself to be an intellectual equal of Boong-do, but constantly showed a sexual power over him.
  I still maintain that Queen In-hyun's Man is a ridiculously romantic drama first and foremost, but I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't necessarily to do with the dynamic between the leads. To Song Jae-jung's credit, the characters shared a heightened emotional intelligence, but I would argue that the talent of the actors and their outstanding chemistry shone through the way the characters were written. When they laughed, or cried, or shared a silent moment together on-screen, their star-crossed love seemed all too real.

The heroine of Nine, Joo Min-young, is perhaps the only female lead on this list appreciated for something other than her beauty. The bowl cut she sports in the drama says two things - firstly, that she isn't just supposed to a be glamorous object to look at, but also that she shouldn't be taken seriously.
  I wouldn't call Nine a "romance" by any stretch of the word but there is romance in it - unfortunately, most of the heroine's influence in the story belongs to that tiny subplot. It's a strange case, because unlike with dramas such as Goblin, she is actually a player in the larger conflict and therefore should be more involved. However, this is a hero story - Min-young is so underutilised in the middle of the story that it's basically criminal. In the end, she became a symbol of a perfect timeline where the hero could be happy.
  Nine is an incredibly compelling and tightly-written thriller, but you shouldn't watch it solely out of love for Jo Yoon-hee because you will be sorely disappointed.

W: Two Worlds fell apart completely in it's second half as the logic unravelled into an underwhelming conclusion. But the narrative failures don't stand out to me as much as the inconsistencies in the characters.
  By the end of W, the heroine Oh Yeon-joo had been completely robbed of every semblance of her original personality. (Notably, this happened to the hero too, although to a lesser extent as the fundamental parts of him stayed intact, even though the emotional ties he had to the conflict evaporated.)
  Unlike the other heroines on this list, the beginning of the drama was actually told from her perspective as her adventure! That ends pretty quickly - it's her job, ultimately, to intrigue Kang Chul, and once he discovers the truth it's suddenly his story. That's a mere four episodes in.
  After that, she acts merely as his love interest, then the mysterious vixen who seems to know him; a supporting character, down-trodden by tragedy and devoid of the quirkiness and flighty behaviour that had so comically characterised her earlier. What a way to end Han Hyo-joo's first foray back into drama after six years, huh?

So far, in Song Jae-jung's latest drama Memories of the Alhambra, nothing seems to have changed - Jung Hee-ju is a pretty little thing with absolutely nothing to do with the conflict. I was immediately turned off from the potential of the fantastical premise by the fact that her screen-time was minuscule in the first three episodes.
  I'm a little dumbfounded by this, actually. How could you cast a huge name like Park Shin-hye and give her a role in which she is effectively useless? Of course, I'd have to catch up to discover whether or not this may change, but I'm not sure I want to.

This probably isn't Song Jae-jung's fault - the Korean drama industry seems to thrive because it follows what's popular. This is why we go through phases where certain themes are central - last year it was time-travel, this year it's robots and exorcists! Because other hit-makers like Kim Eun-sook are developing awesome heroes and neglecting their heroines (that's a post for another day), perhaps it's a completely unconscious move to do the same? But it's becoming a problem, because it's taking me out of the narrative she's spinning.