Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Hotel Del Luna
( 호텔 델루나 / Hotel Delluna)
MyDramaList rating: 8.5/10

Hello everyone! I’m back with another review! I try to create a better overview of the series I watch in a certain period of time, so I was looking for a drama that I could wrap up October with and I ended up picking this one. Because, honestly: what better way to end the month October and wrap up Halloween by finishing this spooky drama?
Hotel Del Luna was originally later on my list because it’s a relatively recent drama, but I just couldn’t wait, I was in the mood and I just moved it up.
It was on my list foremost because of IU and because I was curious after learning it was about more dark stuff than just a fun hotel.
I have a friend who told me about it (she doesn’t watch anything involving ghosts whatsoever, but she saw some clips and told me it was supposedly very good). Honestly, I was not disappointed and I was hooked from episode 1 on.

First of all, let me try to give a summary of the story.
The story of Hotel Del Luna starts off in the Goryeo period, when a orphan rebel warrior called Jang Man Weol (played by IU/Lee Ji Eun), stumbles across the so-called Guest House of the Dead and involuntarily becomes the new owner after being tricked by a deity. The Guest House of the Dead is a place where wandering ghosts and spirits spend their last moments on earth before moving on to the afterlife.
Man Weol is forced to live through centuries as the owner, welcoming new guests, some of which who come to stay and work for her at the guest house > inn > hotel until present day.
Her three most loyal employees are Mr. Kim (played by Shin Jung Geun), Mrs. Choi (played by Bae Hae Sun), and Ji Hyun Joong (played by Block B’s P.O./Pyo Ji Hoon). Mr. Kim Shi Ik is a scholar from the Joseon period and is currently working as the bartender in the hotel’s sky lounge bar, Mrs. Choi Seo Hee is in charge of the guests and youngster Ji Hyun Joong is the front office clerk.
In the 90s, a man who was in an accident but is not yet completely dead stumbles upon the hotel, now called ‘Hotel Del Luna’, and attempts to steal something. Man Weol busts him and threatens to let him die for real, but the man begs her to let him live for his young son. They strike a deal: the man will live but when his son is in his 20s, Man Weol will come to claim him for her hotel. Skipping to 2019, Goo Chan Seong (played by Yeo Jin Goo), now in his 20s, has been staying away from Korea after hearing all his father’s stories about the strange hotel, but when he returns to Korea to work for a high-class hotel, fate has it that his path crosses Man Weol’s.
Man Weol bestows upon him the gift of being able to see ghosts and while in the beginning he is freaked out and does whatever he can to stay away, in the end he has no choice but to become the new general manager of the hotel. It has been a tradition for a while that the hotel has had an alive human as general manager.
Slowly but surely Chan Seong gets used to the particular guests of the hotel and Man Weol’s materialistic tendencies, and he becomes closer to the staff.
In the meantime, we learn more about Man Weol’s past and why she can’t move on, just like her employees.

I would like to re-emphasize how much I enjoyed this drama. The concept was good and original, it gave a completely new angle when it came to ghost dramas, the acting was good, the characters well really well-constructed…. I can keep going.
The thing is, I’ve watched multiple K-Dramas with ghost themes and they all kind of came down to the same thing: there’s always an innocent ghost that doesn’t remember how he/she died and there’s always an evil spirit that’s responsible and has taken possession over someone’s body.
What I liked about Hotel Del Luna was that it gave a new perspective on ghosts and it really emphasized their humanity. Even the ones that on first glance you’d think ‘eeewww creepyyy’ turned out to be mostly victims when their back stories were revealed. It looked at various situations and concepts of death, people who held grudges because of their deaths, people who were in accidents, etcetera. I really liked that it took a familiar genre and still delivered something new to it. And put standard ghost tropes into perspective.
For example, the guest from room 13, who was introduced as the really very scary dangerous guest who wasn’t allowed to leave her room because the smell of alive humans would drive her nuts – when Chan Seong was made to go in to light the incense and you could see her peaking through the ajar closet with that creepy IT-like grin, I was seriously scared. But on the other hand, I really wanted to know more about her. And they actually explained her entire story.
To be clear, this drama has 16 episodes but every episode is about 1,5 hours(!) long and a LOT happens in every episode. But I really appreciated this because in this way, they could create so much backstory for everyone and really take their time to play out all the plotlines. In the end, nothing felt rushed or unnatural, and even a couple of guests got an extended story.
The creepy ghost girl who went crazy and killed herself and became a vengeful spirit turned out to be a victim of some serious cyber bullying. Pictures of her being taken advantage of by a guy from college were spread over the Internet and the comments all made her lose confidence in humanity. She wasn’t allowed to leave her room because she’d go out and take advantage on the people who did that to her – and this happened when Chan Seong accidentally freed her. But at the same time, while what she did wasn’t right, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. These scumbags drove her to suicide and they were just living their cocky lives without reflecting on their actions. They barely even remembered her, that’s how small the matter was to them.
In the end, she was vaporized by the deity because she became a vengeful spirit and harmed humans, but at least she got her peace after the injustice that had happened to her by those bastards was revealed to the world.

And then there’s Kim Yoo Na (played by Kang Mi Na). Kim Yoo Na is actually the spirit of high school student Jang Soo Jung possessing the body of her former bully Kim Yoo Na. Yoo Na threw Soo Jung off a bridge and Soo Jung got back at her by possessing her body, leaving Yoo Na’s spirit to be unknowingly burned by her parents. Now Soo Jung is living in Yoo Na’s body and since she’s practically a ghost, she can also enter the hotel and becomes an intern – she and Hyun Joong also start going out. Despite her sometimes impulsive and selfish behavior, she helps out a couple of times when it comes to tracking down spirits.

The story really was about finding peace, for both the living and the dead. It captured the humanity of every ghost, even after death.
I was really touched by the scene where the father who got into an accident with his little son made a dream call to the truck driver that killed them that he didn’t want him to feel guilty and that he shouldn’t lost his life because of this – that it was their fault for suddenly jumping onto the road.
All these different situations really spoke to me, although the general theme of the series is so fictive, it showed some real humanity and that I really liked. Not all people are killed or wronged by bad people. Of course, there were some scumbags, such as that serial killer dude.
I think he was the only real bad guy in the series because he showed no remorse at all. Seol Ji Won (played by Lee David), was a former college mate of Chan Seong when he was studying in the US and he started some really serious cyber bullying about Sanchez – I will get to Sanchez later – Chan Seong’s friend. After getting back to Korea, he kills seven people and buries them in a forest. Yoo Na discovers this as she keeps seeing a ghost sitting in the back of Seol Ji Won’s car, calling for help. With her help, all the victims end up at the hotel, waiting for getting back at their killer, especially when other people get framed for the murders he committed. In the end, he chooses to commit suicide rather than face justice and he becomes a vengeful spirit with a lot of resentment towards Chan Seong and all the connected people.

I will talk a bit about Sanchez before I review more about Man Weol’s past and the reincarnated people from her past.
Sanchez (played by Jo Hyun Chul) is Chan Seong’s college friend who owns his own pizza place and is pretty rich. Chan Seong is staying at his house since it’s so big.
Let me just say this: SANCHEZ IS BAE. Honestly, he’s such a good friend, even after he learns all about the ghost stuff. It was heart-wrenching when his girlfriend/fiancée-to-be suddenly turned up as a ghost next to his table. She got into an accident because she was so eager to get to him and he was going to propose and MY HEART COULD NOT. That moment when he was sitting at the table waiting for her and suddenly got the phone call and she was standing next to him and he couldn’t see her and I was like NO DON’T TELL ME SHE DIED NO. Ugh, my heart. I felt to sorry for him, I wanted to hug him so much.
Anyways, Sanchez was the best friend ever. Period.

I have so much to discuss about this drama that I need to think of how to construct this review! As I’m typing more and more things come to mind and I don’t want to get into too much detail about the contents of the drama.
But one of the most important things I have to review is the spirit world, Man Weol’s past and about the parts the deities and the Grim Reaper played in it all.
The funniest thing about the hotel was that all matters concerning the dead were taken care of ‘business-as-usual’ style. Man Weol having a chat with the deceased about whether they had any regrets or resentments left, if they had any remaining fortune in the living world, the manner of how they would leave for the afterlife (by bus or limo for the more elite guests) etc., it’s all very amusing. And the fact that to ‘the afterlife’, they would just step into a fancy car, drive through a tunnel and ultimately had to cross a large Manhatten-like bridge to the other side was very well interpreted.
I really liked the deities and the Grim Reaper characters.
The deities are all portrayed by the same actress, Seo Yi Sook, and they’ve made it so that they’re all ‘sisters’. Their combined name is ‘Ma Go’. There’s the Ma Go who gives flowers to the deceased and helps them on their way (also the one who made Man Weol the owner of the hotel), the one who has the sight of both past and future, the one who makes the special medicine and potions, the strict police-like one who chases down and punishes vengeful spirits, and the deities of wealth and poverty. All of them have different personalities and appearances (loved the one dressed as Queen Elizabeth). The Grim Reaper, played by Kang Hong Suk, is a very stoic but also funny character (in a dry way). He makes sure all the designated spirits depart the human world safely and it’s his job to catch evil spirits that don’t belong in the human world. He occasionally showed up at the hotel as well to chat with the employees. Unlike the usual concept of a grim reaper, he wasn’t scary at all, just very stoic and I loved that he had this gas tank thing on his back, lol.
In the garden of the hotel, there is the Moon Tree. Man Weol was bound to this tree when Ma Go made her the new owner. She was forced into this job because of a terrible crime she committed. She killed a lot of people out of hate and vengeance – although truth be told, she went through a lot of shit herself.
I initially thought that Man Weol’s story would remain very secret and mysterious, no one knew the complete truth about her. But since Chan Seong suddenly started seeing her past in his dreams (because of a flower from the Moon Tree that Ma Go placed with him when he was asleep one time), her past is revealed to us viewers gradually throughout the entire series.
Man Weol was originally from Goguryeo and lost her parents at a young age and was found by a lady who raised her together with her own son. The lady passed away soon after but Man Weol and Yeon Woo (played by Lee Tae Sun) grew up as close as siblings, slaves rebelling against the state in hope for a new and free world.
Initially the enemy as he is a guard to the princess and has to stop the Goguryeo rebels, Ko Chung Myung (played by Lee Do Hyun) joins the duo and the three of them spend some time together. Man Weol and Chung Myung grow closer, but then Chung Myung suddenly betrays them and they are captured by the guards. Yeon Woo is hanged and Man Weol is imprisoned, but the swears that she’ll be the one to kill Chung Myung one day. The princess Song Hwa (played by Park Yoo Na), is arrogant and wants to keep Chung Myung by her side.
Man Weol is ultimately manages to assassinate both the princess and Chung Myung, but even in her present life she is filled with resentment for them and is therefore unable to move on.
And then, to her astonishment, Princess Song Hwa’s reincarnation appears before her in the form of Lee Mi Ra, Chan Seong’s ex-girlfriend and former college mate from the US. As she gets involved with Chan Seong and Sanchez again and makes it clear she wants to get back with Chan Seong, Man Weol is unable to hide her resentment and attempts to place a terrible curse on Mi Ra. Chan Seong manages to save his friend just in time, enveloping the curse himself.
Honestly, that part just felt so bad. In this scene, Man Weol was so undeniably the bad guy. I mean, we knew her resentment towards Song Hwa was legit, but Mi Ra wasn’t her, she didn’t have any memories of her past life, so I didn’t think it was fair and I was a bit shocked by the weight of the curse Man Weol attempted to put on her. I found it really mean of her.
Yeon Woo is reincarnated into police officer Park Young Soo, who is also in the team investigating the serial murders caused by Seol Ji Won. He and Mi Ra meet and fall for each other. As happy as she is seeing that Yeon Woo is reincarnated as a good person living a good life, Man Weol has some trouble accepting he is now seeing Princess. Song Hwa’s reincarnation. But of course, she can’t tell either of them about their past lives, she alone has to live and remember everything by herself.
What became of Chung Myung is one of the saddest things of all. It is revealed that Chung Myung sincerely loved Man Weol, and he tried everything he could to protect her while knowing she would come to kill him one day. Man Weol has waited for centuries, waited for him to appear in front of her so she could face her final resentment; except she never sees him. He’s always been there, but she never saw him because he was reincarnated into a firefly. There’s constantly a firefly hovering around the Moon Tree, and it’s also this firefly that leads Chan Seong to the hotel the very first time. This firefly turns out to be Chung Myung. I don’t know man but I found it so sad T^T He was always there and she was always waiting, not knowing he was by her side throughout the centuries. He couldn’t show himself to her without her own inquiry.
There’s even a period where Man Weol suspects that Chan Seong is the reincarnation of Chung Myung, and she fears she has to kill him, but in the end Ma Go tells her the truth and she is able to accompany Chung Myung to the afterlife bridge where she declines his offer to come with him.

In all honesty, the story had so much to offer and showed so many stories that the romance between Man Weol and Chan Seong didn’t even interest me that much. I was totally rooting for Hyun Joong and Yoo Na because Hyun Joong was my baby and they were just adorable together. But honestly the romance between the two main leads wasn’t even the most defining thing for me to like the series. I actually found their relationship quite dry and stiff. It lacked passion. It was mostly just staring at each other smiling, one good kiss and casual hugs. I didn’t really feel it that much.
But it didn’t take away the joy for me, either. I mean, there had to be romance, otherwise it wouldn’t have been a K-Drama. But this time it felt a bit like romance for the sake of romance. I actually liked the relationship between Man Weol and Chan Seong as they started out, at odds with each other but slowly growing on each other.

I wish to make some remarks on the casting. I mentioned before that I thought the acting was very good, there were also some nice cameo appearances, and everything just fit into each other very well.
First of all, IU. The last drama I saw with her was My Mister, and I was already impressed with how much her acting had improved there.
IU was amazing in this drama. From the first moment on, I LOVED her. As the rebel warrior, and then as this mysterious, fabulously-dressed, eccentrical missy, she rocked. Her acting was so good her, I am so proud of her for growing so much. She got to show so many sides of her acting, both cute and immature as mature and grown-up, dangerous and mysterious.
I’m really impressed and I will continue following her dramas because this is the good stuff.
The thing with Yeo Jin Goo is, I see him in the same cluster as Kim So Hyun and Kim Yoo Jung. I’ve seen them as a cluster ever since The Moon That Embraces The Sun, where they were still babies and played the kid versions of the grown-ups. And now slowly but surely they’re becoming the grown-ups in the series and they have their own kid versions. Yeo Jin Goo is a bean, but of all his dramas I’ve seen, I can see a typical way of acting which sometimes seems to be a bit stiff. He always carries the same expression, either staring wide-eyed or with his toothpaste-commercial smile. And in this drama, he fell a little flat for me personality-wise. I wasn’t really convinced by Goo Chan Seong as a person and that’s probably one of the reasons why the relationship between him and Man Weol didn’t really stand out to me as truly passionate. I feel like he has more to learn when it comes to really showing more emotional expressions and how to act out to be passionately in love with someone. I mean, his counterpart was IU, I was surprised he wasn’t heart-eyed like 100% of the time. But it just stayed at kind smiles and pats on the back. It had to be realistic that he had to be so special that a woman who had lived for centuries carrying the weight of the dead and her resentment with her all this time, would fall for him. And that I didn’t really understand because of this. So that could’ve been a bit more convincing, but it didn’t bother me so much that I’d mark as an actual complaint. They were still sweet together.

My favorite character was Ji Hyun Joong. I didn’t know this guy (only when I looked him up did I find out he’s in Block B), but I just loved him. He was this adorably puppy bean with his scrunchy face and blessed smile, but he also constantly had something melancholical about him. The duality of his character, the youth he never lost even though he’s been dead for 70 years already… and when they revealed his past and how he died and what was binding him to the human world, I just wanted to hug him and never let go.
I really liked him, both the actor and the character. He was a really good choice for this role.
The relationship between him and Yoo Na was one of the things I really liked, because it was actually so wrong (as in, he was a ghost waiting for his little sister to die to pass on and she was a ghost in a human body, she still had her entire life ahead of her) and you know it just wouldn’t be able to stand. And the moment when Hyun Joong had to leave and say goodbye was one of the moments were I literally had tears in my eyes.

Let me quickly go over the three employees and their stories and how they got over their resentments.
Kim Shi Ik, the bartender, used to be a scholar in the Joseon period. He was a genius and passed the civil exam (or what’s it called?) in first place. However, he became interested in the lives of the ‘normal’ people and started writing down their stories. For this he was shunned by his fellow scholars; how could he, a man of his status, lower himself to the perverse and vulgar tales of the poor? (It didn’t make any sense to me, either, but hey I guess that’s Joseon logic). He was humiliated so much that even his wife left him and he lost all the reputation he had build that he took his own life.
His resentment is solved when a guest ghost in the hotel turns out to be a writer researching Kim Shi Ik’s life and is about to publish a posthumous book about the ‘perversities’ of this so-called scholar. Man Weol and Chan Seong work hard to make sure the book isn’t published and Mr. Kim’s name is cleared.
Mrs. Choi Seo Hee was also from the Joseon period. She used to be the daughter-in-law of a wealthy family, but as soon as she gave birth to a daughter she was cast out of the household (they only wanted sons to pass on the bloodline). Her husband just pushed her away to try it with another woman who could give him a son and Seo Hee lost both her child and her mind. She is bound to the human world in order to see the bloodline of her husband’s family ended. When the last son comes into the hotel as a guest she finally thinks she’s done because he never got married, but it turns out he did get a woman pregnant. However, in the end she is not able to harm the woman or hurt the baby. Also, because of her old-fashioned mindset, she never thought about the child as a being of its own and not necessarily the continuation of a certain bloodline. After she finds peace with this, she is able to leave.
Ji Hyun Joong was still a student when he was murdered by his former friend by accident. It was during the First Korean War (I think?) and his parents were killed in the bombings. He and his little sister fled, his little sister having lost her sight in the bombings. His former friend now turned runaway soldier accidentally shoots Hyun Joong. Hyun Joong’s last dying wish to him is that he takes his sister with him and help her survive. In doing this, he ‘cursed’ his friend into a life of taking care of his little sister. His little sister forever thought her brother was still with her – the friend had to pretend to be Hyun Joong. Hyun Joong is waiting for his little sister to grow old and pass away so they can leave together.
When Yoo Na finds out the truth, she is initially very selfish in that she doesn’t want him to go, but the way she handled it in the end was very impressive. But their farewell was absolutely heartbreaking, they were both bawling their eyes out.

This is a bit random in-between, but recently I feel like I don’t put as much of my own interpretation in my reviews as in earlier ones. I noticed that the major parts of my reviews include story summary and contents of the series, and I want to add more of myself into them. This is what I’m going to be working on more from now on as well.

I really liked this drama. As I said, it was a particularly shiny gem within a familiar genre. The whole story was wrapped up very nicely, all character got literal closure on their stories and everyone was able to move on.
And I think that’s a very important theme to note: ‘moving on’.
Maybe even the most important one. It’s not just about ghosts that have lingering sentiments and therefore aren’t able to move on peacefully. It’s about people finding ways to face their unsolved business and find peace.
Some people hold grudges and resentments, others are only fogiving and apologetic, others hold regrets, others are just waiting for others to come join them.
In some cases, actual action is required to solve the things, in some cases the person just has to accept and move on emotionally. It’s interesting to try and depict the dead as people that still watch over their loved ones and are desperate to show them a sign of that they are sorry or okay.
This is also why I really liked the scene where only certain spirits were allowed to make a ‘dream call’ to someone still alive. From the hotel, this was a literal phone call, but it would mean they would appear in someone’s dream. The scene I mentioned before where the father appeared in the dream of the truck driver that killed him and his son, in which he told him that he hoped it wouldn’t traumatize him forever and that he wouldn’t lose it and that they were to blame for jumping in front of the truck – the truck driver crying words of gratitude and apology – as I said, in some cases accidents are accidents and they effect the person behind the wheel just as much.
It just put a lot into perspective. In the usual ghost dramas it’s always very black and white who are the good ghosts and the evil spirits, but there were just so many different sides to each and every character that it was impossible to 100% blame or hate someone (except maybe the serial killer, he was just cray – but he too faced his judgment when he met his 7 victims as a ghost).
It wasn’t just a fun drama to watch, it was really good. The depth of the story and the unexpected credibility of all the characters really impressed me. Also the story’s thread between the past and the present was really well-found. I liked how you slowly but surely gained more information on people and that every episode gave so much storyline.
I looked up the director of this drama, Oh Choong Hwan, and found out that he has directed several really good dramas, among which You Who Came From The Stars, While You Were Sleeping and The Girl Who Sees Smells (another drama I really liked). I will keep an eye on this guy for future projects.

I’m glad I moved this series up in my list, it was a true pleasure to watch.
The only thing I didn’t really understand was the ending, though, did they suddenly all come back reincarnated or something? And how was Man Weol still the same, did she somehow come back or what? I didn’t really get it, lol, but anyway.

Also, the Kim Joon Hyun thing. I have no idea who the guy is, but for some reason I really liked that they used him as this recurring element.
And can we please just mention that cameo at the very end? I almost fell off my chair, lol! I totally did not expect Kim Soo Hyun to turn up as a final send-off. I was like, who is this, I first thought maybe it was a reincarnated Chung Myung or something and then suddenly it was him and I was like HELL YES and my mom came to ask what was wrong and I couldn’t explain because only a K-Drama fan could understand this. Loved that.

Also, I wish to write a few words on Sulli. I read some comments about her and IU being close friends and I saw a comment somewhere saying ‘Sulli will now be a guest in your Hotel Del Luna’. And I thought, while this is undoubtedly meant as a nice remark, it’s still a little painful.
But then, in episode 10, Sulli actually had a guest role in the series and I didn’t know this so then the comment suddenly made more sense and it was so bitter to see her so pretty and smiling while knowing that a few months later she would be gone.
I’ve only seen Sulli before in To The Beautiful You, so I didn’t really know much about her, but she definitely didn’t deserve this cruelty in her short life. Twenty-five years old, for Christ’s sake. All them haters better be receiving some bad karma.

I have officially watched 10 dramas in the past 4 months, from June to October. I will keep up the pace and provide more insightful reviews! I will also try to vary more between more than just Korean dramas ^^
I’ll keep you posted! Thank you for reading!