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.

The Master’s Sun
(주군의 태양 / Joogoonui Taeyang)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hello there! Once again I’m starting a review in the evening, hoping I can finish it before turning in. I’m just really excited to get on with my to-watch list, haha.
But I’ll still take the time to write worthwhile reviews, so don’t worry.
Anyways, I finished this one, and it’s another golden oldie. I wasn’t sure whether to watch it at first, but for some reason it still ended up on my list.

The Master’s Sun is a 17-episode drama from 2013 and it’s about a woman who can see ghosts. Tae Gong Shil (played by Gong Hyo Jin) used to be the most succesful, beautiful graduate from her school, until she got into a severe accident. When she woke up after a 3-year coma, she wasn’t the same. She could suddenly see ghosts and her fear of them turned her into a secluded, lonely woman who couldn’t go anywhere without being bothered by the dead. For some reason, to ghosts she ‘shines very brightly’ and this is how they are attracted to her, and they ask her to relay messages to their living relatives and such. Gong Shil lives in constant fear of these ghosts, but still ends up helping them out.
On the other hand, we have Joo Joong Won (played by So Ji Seob), a rich and arrogant president of a big national chain of hotels, shopping malls, pools etcetera called Kingdom. He cares about nothing besides money. When he was younger, he was involved in a kidnapping accident with his former girlfriend, who perished in an explosion during this accident. Since then, he hasn’t been able to read and he has always hated his former girlfriend because he is convinced she was one of the conspirators. The kidnapping accident was about some huge diamond necklace.
Anyhow, Joong Won and Gong Shil meet by chance, when she hitches a ride with him one rainy night. Gong Shil finds out that when she touches Joong Won, or when he touches her, the ghosts around her disappear. Thinking that she finally found a shield, a way to ward off the pestering ghosts, she follows him to Kingdom to get in closer proximity to him.
The drama mostly consists of episodes in which Gong Shil encounters a certain ghost that wants her to solve something so that it can pass on in peace. The more he gets involved in Gong Shil’s crazy world, the more Joong Won starts to care for her and they make a deal to help each other out: since Gong Shil is able to see the ghost of his former girlfriend still wandering around him, she will relay any message between them (Joong Won) is still bend on finding the whereabouts of the stolen necklace) – and Joong Won will act as Gong Shil’s shield whenever there is a ghost bothering her. A unique bond starts to form between them in which they become really special to one another.
In the meantime, we have the head of security at Kingdom Mall, Kang Woo (played by Seo In Guk), who is sent there by Joong Won’s father to keep an eye on him, and who also falls for Gong Shil. And Kingdom model and actress Tae Yi Ryung (played by Kim Yoo Ri), Gong Shil’s former classmate with the same surname as her.
Coming to that name, as it is quite an important tool in the story: in Korean, it’s apparently normal to call a woman with the surname Tae as ‘Miss Tae’, which translates in Korean to ‘Tae-yang’. Taeyang is also the Korean word for ‘sun’. As I’ve mentioned, Gong Shil shines brightly like a sun to the ghosts she attracts, and she also becomes Joo Joong Won’s metaphorical sun.

I found it a strange but rather enjoying drama to watch. It was a real joy to see all kinds of old tropes again, such as people having monologues/talking to themselves, pressing-mouth kisses instead of actual make-out sessions, typical rich people behaviorisms and outfits, amnesia, secret twins…
The structure of the series in the beginning was really nice, it was like a series depicting the daily life of Gong Shil in which she encountered different ghosts and fixed different relationships. After a while, she becomes more involved in Joong Won’s ghosts (literally) and then the main plot of the story is played out. Once that main plotline is solved, there are about 2 or 3 episodes left in which Gong Shil’s personal journey is finalized and where she ultimately comes to fully accept her gift to see ghosts. After that, she is finally able to return to Joong Won’s side.
However, not before some dramatic stuff happens.

I have to say, there were some really intense themes in this series. It dealt with topics such as loss, revenge, grudges, as is to be expected of ghost-related stories, but also with child abuse and assault. Some of the ghosts were wandering because of absolutely heart-breaking reasons.
First of all, and I’ve seen this in another series before I think, but the fact that there is actually such a thing as a spirit matchmaker kind of freaks me out. There was this lady, Madam Go (played by Lee Yong Nyeo) who had the ability to communicate with spirits and she was working as a matchmaker for young people that had died before they got married, mainly from rich families. Some families apparently are very troubled by the idea that they were never able to marry off their children, so they ask this kind of matchmaker to find a match for him/her so that they can still get married in the afterlife. So this woman was looking for young unmarried women’s spirits and she needed Gong Shil’s help when she found out Gong Shil also had one foot in the spirit world. I don’t know, it feels kind of weird and also intrusive? I can’t really get on board with the idea.
Although there weren’t any real cases of same-sex romances, at one point there almost was one case in which I was hopeful that the young man’s spirit (that they were searching a bride for) had been pining for a man. Unfortunately it still turned out to be a girl, haha, but that would’ve been really refreshing. I did like the episode of the deceased chairman who was trying to keep it a secret that he was secretly crossdressing. Everyone thought he had all this stuff because he was hiding an affair, but he was actually hiding his true self and I appreciated that everyone was okay with that in the end.
I personally responded very badly to the child abuse episode. I mean, it was very powerful but hard to watch, even worth a trigger warning.
In one episode, one of the two little boys who live in Gong Shil’s building is attracted to an abandoned (and incredibly creepy-looking) doll in the park. As the two boys are a bit neglected by their mother who is never home, three ghost children hiding inside the doll target the youngest to play with them and become ‘one of them’. While in the beginning it was just a bit creepy, in the end it is revealed that this doll was the only thing these three children had as they were beaten by their ‘parents’. At some point they start targeting this other little boy and we see him get beaten by his mom at home. This was really not okay, I’m glad they even arrested the woman in the end. Gong Shil even got smacked in the face by his mom while she tried to get him to safety, away from his own home. That was some dark stuff.
And the second time I nearly cried was when there was this kid who died in an accident without his mother knowing and he was standing next to her while she was begging people on the streets to help her find him – as I said, heartbreaking stuff.

As a result of this last case, there is one important event that I have to mention. The little boy was accidentally hit by a car and the driver panicked and hid him in his trunk. When the little boy’s ghost leads Gong Shil to where his body is, she is confronted by the driver and he tries to stab her with a screwdriver. Joong Won jumps in to protect her and gets stabbed instead, nearly fatally. When he is in surgery, his heart stops for a moment and in that moment, his spirit briefly leaves his body. As are all the ghosts, he is attracted to Gong Shil’s light and, thinking that he is dead, he bids her farewell and says he loves her before he dissolves. Heartbroken, thinking he is gone, Gong Shil then is surprised by the news that his heart only stopped for a brief moment and that the surgery went well.
However, since Joong Won’s spirit already saw Gong Shil and thinks that he’s a goner, he won’t come back to his body. Gong Shil then makes a deal with Madam Go, the creepy spirit matchmaker woman: she can lure Joong Won’s spirit back to his body, but in return she has to give up all his memories of her and the spirit world. All their memories will be sealed in the sun-shaped necklace that he gave her and until he found that/her back, he wouldn’t regain his memories. Gong Shil agrees to this, which leads us to the next part of the story: the part where Joong Won wakes up and doesn’t remember Gong Shil. It doesn’t take him that long before he regains his memories though, he figures the necklace thing out – or actually Madam Go basically tells him what to do to get his memories back (lol, so much for the whole deal with Gong Shil).
But then the next part starts unfolding which will lead to the solving of Joong Won’s past trauma.

Okay, so let me explain to you about Cha Hee Joo. Cha Hee Joo (played by Han Bo Reum) is/was Joong Won’s girlfriend in high school. She and young Joong Won (played by baby L/Kim Myung Soo) used to date until they were both kidnapped by some shady people. During this, Joong Won was forced to read from an Agatha Christie novel when having to relay phone messages from his kidnappers – this caused his trauma of not being able to read anymore after the accident. He was also confronted by Cha Hee Joo herself, who basically told him that she was involved in the kidnapping (as a conspirator). In the end, back outside, Hee Joo got stuck in a gas-leaking car which exploded in front of Joong Won as he was being held back by the arriving police.
For some reason, Cha Hee Joo’s ghost is still wandering around Joong Won, always wearing a really sad expression, and she keeps telling Gong Shil that she wants to borrow her body to find the culprit, or that she needs to protect the culprit or something. Very vague. Joong Won isn’t interested in meeting with her, but he only wants to know where the necklace is.
Joong Won’s father, who is living lavishly abroad somewhere, finds some evidence that Hee Joo might still be alive. But how is that possible when we have already seen her ghost through Gong Shil? Well, guess WHAT.
Cha Hee Joo HAS A TWIN. I never thought this would actually happen since it seems like the most cheesy trope ever, but YES. There was a twin. And they swapped places at some point. So the one that Joong Won was in love with was actually not Hee Joo but her TWIN. And Hee Joo, who was in love with Joong Won from the start, couldn’t have that and that’s why she set up this whole incident. And then she blamed it on Joong Won.
She comes back with a new face (played by Hwang Sun Hee) under the name of her twin Han Na and tries to win Joong Won for herself, which of course fails. She even goes as far as to get the exact same sun-shaped necklace to lure him in after he loses his memories.
Can I just say I clapped when he was like ‘I need to find the thing I lost (the necklace)’ and she was like ‘Oh, don’t you mean me?’ and he was like ‘Nah you’re fake, I’m going for the real one’. HAHA. And the way they tricked her into confessing to her true identity and everything, and where she hid the necklace was brilliant. I went all ‘BUSTED, BITCH’ on her. Sorry not sorry. In all honesty, what the hell did she need the necklace for? She was wearing enough excessive jewelry as it is.

Okay, so, to sum it up as concretely as possible: Cha Hee Joo and her twin Han Na were separated by birth and Han Na was adopted by people in England where she grew up really wealthy. At some point, she learns that she has a twin in Korea and is excited to go find her. When they meet, Hee Joo shows her Joong Won and tells her that she likes him but she’s too scared to go talk to him. So Han Na, bright as she is, takes her sister’s place, introduces herself as Hee Joo, and starts getting close to Joong Won.
In the end, Hee Joo lets Han Na die in that explosion with the message that she needs to die with Hee Joo’s name so she can live on as Han Na.
Still following?
Oh, and also, Joong Won’s loyal secretary (played by Choi Jung Woo) is actually Hee Joo and Han Na’s uncle and that’s why he initially came to Joong Won’s service, because he found out Joong Won’s scar was still very deep and he wanted to help him heal. In the last part of the drama they suddenly started creating all these hidden links between people.

I have to say that the extra adding of these tropes in the last part of the series were meant to make up for the lack of complications in the beginning. In the beginning, I was kind of enjoying how uncomplicated the story was, no hidden links or hidden pasts or anything, and then when the twin plot came out I was kind of like ‘oh wow, they’re going for it after all.’ I’m not saying it was bad, but some parts did feel a little exaggerated. Especially because I had the expectation that the whole Hee Joo mystery would be this huge mindblow-thing, but in the end Hee Joo was found out quite quickly and without too much hassle. It’s not like she managed to wreak a lot of havoc in her plan, it kind of failed altogether. So that might’ve been a tiny bit underwhelming.

I think it’s also funny to come back quickly to the nostalgia I felt while watching this. Instead of excessive sponsor mentioning and product placement as they do nowadays, the old K-Dramas were very good at exaggerating in one way or another. For example, Joong Won’s father who was off abroad somewhere had this younger foreign woman companion who used to be friends with Han Na and gave him the tip that Hee Joo might still be alive. These foreign people always just sit there and stare into nothing until they are allowed to say one line in broken English. I never get why these people who are allowed to make an appearance in a Korean drama series never really seem to act, they just exist for saying that one line in English. And why even make them speak English if that’s not even their native language? It doesn’t really matter, what matters is that they’re foreign. Being European, this always kind of bothers me. If I were allowed to appear in a K-Drama to say one line in English, I would still act my ass off because when do you ever get such an opportunity? But these foreign ladies that are cast just make someone look like an international pimp always just kind of awkwardly sit there.
Secondly, Gong Shil’s excessive collection of Christian objects. I mean, she can see ghosts, but she never speaks a single word about being a Christian or why she has all that stuff in her house. She has all this stuff hanging from her door to ward off spirits but it doesn’t work because the ghosts can still easily enter her house. The poster of the series shows the main couple in a very Christian-like image, like with the ecclesiastical mozaic background and she’s even holding a holy Cross? Even though she never uses that in the series? And she wears this long white night gown that says ‘JESUS SAVE ME’? Where do all these Christian accessories come from and why are they there because as far as I’ve seen, none of these things ever help her in warding off the ghosts. So maybe she just became a fan of Christian symbols? Something left to be explained clearly.
Lastly, then I’ll stop, but I had to laugh about this one. At one point, Gong Shil’s sister is drinking in a bar by herself after finding out the security guard was using her to get information on her sister even though she thought they were becoming a thing. And the bottle she’s drinking from has a big TEQUILA label on it. And she didn’t pour it in a shot glass, no, it was an actual champagne glass. And she just chugged it. And then that guy came in and demonstratively also chugged a glass of ‘tequila’ and he only did this tiny ‘kkkk’ sound that Koreans make in dramas when they take a sip of alcohol. Dude. You just knocked back a full glass of tequila and all you do is ‘kkkk’. As far as I know, tequila is way stronger than just a ‘kkkk’ response. It was a tiny detail, but I was like… okay that’s definitely not tequila in that bottle HAHA. From what I’ve heard and seen, drinking a shot of tequila does more to a person than that. And he knocked back three of them, no problem, just a ‘kkkk’. As if it were soju. Kind of unrealistic. Unrealistic to drink it like that out of a bottle, too. Anyways, enough nitpicking.

Also, I would like to make some comments on the couples in this series before I go on to the side characters and the cast.
Honestly, I didn’t feel an extreme wave of chemistry between Gong Shil and Joong Won. There was always this stiffness between them, undoubtedly initiated by Joong Won’s stiff personality. However, still, I feel like they mostly ‘talked’ about their love for each other and they didn’t really convey it in any other way. There was no excessive snuggling or hugging.
There was skinship, yes, some hugs, hand holding, a few kisses, but these only happened in cases where Joong Won was protecting Gong Shil. Apart from the final kiss at the end, there was no skinship that didn’t have anything to do with the ghosts. That’s kind of what I’m getting at.
They used a lot of words to express how they felt about each other and used the protective shield thing as an excuse to be allowed to touch each other. But they never really became intimate outside of that rule. It was as if they really were only allowed to touch each other because of the ghosts and there was no other reason why they would touch each other if there weren’t any ghosts around. So that’s why it continually felt a bit strained to me until the end.

Also, and I’m going to be honest here, I didn’t feel the couple Kang Woo and Tae Yi Ryung. At all. I just didn’t feel it. I found Yi Ryung quite annoying, actually. She was continually forcing herself onto Kang Woo while he kept dismissing her because he was in love with Gong Shil. Honestly, I was hoping he would keep doing that. I was kinda disappointed (but again, I was expecting it too) that he ended up falling for her anyway. I just don’t know how he suddenly made that switch. They just did a time jump to 300 days later and then suddenly he was completely into her.
The only moment I honestly appreciated Yi Ryung was when she faked the appendicitis in the plane to stop Gong Shil from leaving (on order of Joong Won). That was hilarious.
But other than that, I didn’t feel that second lead romance whatsoever. And it also had to do with the fact that I didn’t feel a real urge to pair these two off, except to just create the standard couples of people who couldn’t get the main lead or something. It just didn’t feel natural to me. Kind of a bummer.

One last main comment before I go on to comments on the characters and cast. It was very interesting to me that the series didn’t elaborate on Gong Shil’s accident. From the moment it was mentioned in the first episode, I was convinced that her accident was going to come back or explained, or that it would have some link with Joong Won’s accident or SOMETHING. But in the end, it’s not even revealed what the big accident was. The only important thing that was revealed in the end was that Gong Shil, when she was in a coma for 3 years, was a wandering spirit herself. Her ghost left her body for 3 years and she encountered this guy and joined him to a lot of places and met a bunch of ghosts and she promised them that she’d help them relay their messages when she’d come back to life. That promise is what made her shine so brightly to ghosts, and that is the reason she became able to see them. Even though she didn’t remember what she’d done in her wandering spirit state.
I have to say I actually liked that explanation, because of course we are all curious as to why she suddenly became able to see ghosts. And the fact that they didn’t focus too much on the accident itself may have been for the better, since Joong Won’s accident already got so much attention. But I did find it untypical for a K-Drama to not even explain an accident that the main character went through to become the way she is. On second thought I may have liked a little flashback to see how she used to be in school, the Big Sun, and how she was when she woke up. Now it was only described, and I think that was an interesting choice. I kind of both agree and disagree with it. It definitely made me curious, but I also didn’t really mind that it was left out? I’m torn, haha.
And then the guy who took care of her spirit when she was wandering appeared out of the blue, the only person she knew that could also see ghosts, and she ends up leaving with him on a kind of self-discovery journey where she finally finds peace in her gift of communicating with the spirit world.

Okay, I’m already reaching the end of the comments I wanted to make about this drama so I’ll just briefly describe some of the minor characters and some comments on the cast, because that always needs to happen.

First of all, I was happy to see the amazing Kim Mi Kyung, who played Joong Won’s aunt. She looked so young and graceful in this series! I can always appreciate her appearance in any drama, honestly. Her husband was the Vice-President of Kingdom, a position beneath Joong Won. He was very jolly, and kind of bummed out that Joong Won didn’t call him ‘uncle’.
The part at the end where she turned out to be pregnant while already in her fifites and he was all heart eyes and ‘I love you’ was really cute.

Also, Gong Shil has a sister, Gong Ri (played by Park Hee Bon), who is the only one who knows about Gong Shil’s accident and ability to see ghosts. It is revealed that her wedding plans were ruined because Gong Shil got into that accident but even so she pushed everything aside to be there for her sister. She was quite a minor side character, and also ultimately hooked up with a security guard from Kang Woo’s team who was instructed to find out more about Gong Shil’s accident. In the end, they fall in love which was cute but also not really necessary for the plot (sorry, I sound very strict now haha).

In some way the basic plot of the series reminds me of About Time, where the female lead also approaches a guy because he can help her with an evitable and unnatural situation she is in. But luckily the communication between Gong Shil and her protector was a lot better than in that other drama. The fact that they told each other everything was so satisfying! Even though Gong Shil would make up some lies, they would always come out either when she was drunk or because she was just too honest or bothered to keep it up.

Comments on the cast! Here we go.
I have seen two other dramas with Gong Hyo Jin, The Producers and Jealousy Incarnate, and in both I found her incredibly annoying. I don’t know what it is about her, it’s not the way she looks or acts or anything, but there is just something about her that ticked me off. I think in the second one it was mostly her indecisiveness and passiveness. And in the first one I remember I thought she was nagging all the time.
Anyways, I took a chance on this one because I knew I didn’t really like her yet and I have to say that she didn’t bug me as much here. There were actually times I thought she was cute. And I just had a lot of sympathy for Gong Shil’s character. Overall, Gong Shil really was a tragic heroine. She lived her life in absolute misery, being pestered by ghosts, and when she finally found the one person who could protect her from them, he catches a screwdriver for her and nearly dies and she still doesn’t give in to her greed. She still makes a deal to get him back even though he won’t remember her anymore and goes through her miserable life all over again. She was so concerned with everyone else that she genuinely didn’t care about herself. In some cases this went a little far, to the point where she claimed she didn’t have the luxury to fall in love and stuff like that, but in the end she is just incredibly selfless. I was able to gain some sympathy for her through her portrayal of Gong Shil. I am still also curious to the series called It’s Okay, It’s Love, where she’s also the lead, so maybe I’ll give that a go one day and then I’ll see if I still find her annoying or actually okay.

So Ji Seob, of course, I knew him from a really old drama called Sorry I Love You (it’s from 2004), and more recently from Oh My Venus where I really liked him. I also watched a beautiful movie with him, I think the English title is Be With You.
He’s a great actor. I did find him a little animated in The Master’s Sun, he sometimes made excessive but unnecessary hand movements that made some things a little less credible. I always feel like not moving too much and just focussing on the words is more powerful than adding all sorts of gestures to it. Anyways, it was nice to see him as this stiff president who was completely shaken up by this weird woman. I did think the stiffness of Joong Won’s character kind of limited him in becoming more physical in his role, like all the hugs still felt a bit strained, as I mentioned before. But maybe these were director’s instructions so I can’t really say for sure, that’s just how it looked to me.

Finally I get to elaborate on Seo In Guk. I was so excited when he appeared!! I wasn’t aware he was in this drama. Sometimes it’s nice to go into a drama on my list, not sure who’s in it (except maybe the main leads who are usually on the poster) and then get surprised. I LOVE Seo In Guk.
I’ve seen him in King of High School and Shopping King Louie (not even that much haha), but I loved him so much in these two series, he is a great actor with a lot of expression and quirkiness. I’m only a little bummed that his character in this series, Kang Woo, was kind of bland compared to his other roles. He was very calm, very polite, but he never really let loose or showed any of the immature puppiness that I know he excels at. Of course, in both these two dramas he was supposed to play a kid, or at least an immature high school-level/spoiled brat. It was nice to see this new side of him, he was a proper mature gentleman adult. I love him.

I only knew Kim Yoo Ri from her side role in Kill Me, Heal Me, as the male lead’s first love. As I mentioned before, I didn’t really like her character, I found her quite nosy and most of the time I wondered what her actual purpose was in the story. She had her own episode in the beginning where she was introduced, she was supposed to marry this famous soccer player but then Gong Shil and her ghost stuff got in the way of that. Then she had this episode where she was being manipulated by this ghost and absorbed by vanity. But besides that, her only remaining purpose was to try and seduce Kang Woo and to sometimes butt in with some rumor she had heard about Gong Shil. I wasn’t really sure what her purpose was besides the series’ purpose to assign someone as the second female lead who would somehow be forced to pair up with Kang Woo. So I’m not really enthusiastic about that. I would’ve liked to see more depth in her personality, like when she was being manipulated by that ghost she was confronted with how she was in the past which fuelled her obsession to become more pretty. But now, that’s all she was. A girl only concerned about looking pretty. So that was a bit of a shame. However, I still give her credit for the airplane scene. I’m not sure about Kim Yoo Ri as an actress because I haven’t seen enough of her, but I need to be convinced a little more.

A fun thing I’d still like to mention before I conclude was that I appreciated the wordplay with names in this drama.
1. The title, ‘The Master’s Sun’ refers directly to the main couple of the series. Being called ‘Master Joo’ by his secretary and staff, Joong Won is the Master. Gong Shil, is therefore literally the Master’s Sun. At some point, Joong Won also gives her a necklace in the shape of a sun which becomes a literal seal for their love and memories.
2. Tae Gong Shil is called ‘Miss Tae’ by several people. ‘Miss Tae’ in Korean is ‘Tae-yang’. ‘Taeyang’ is the Korean word for ‘sun’.
3. As Gong Shil and Yi Ryung share the same last name, their nicknames in high school were ‘Big Sun’ (Gong Shil because of her popularity then) and ‘Little Sun’ (Yi Ryung who used to be invisible).
4. In a flashback, Cha Hee Joo (or Han Na, I guess) teasingly calls out Joong Won by counting, ‘Joong One, Joong Two, Joong Three’ and this is a way she makes herself known to him when she takes over Gong Shil’s body to speak to him one time.

I also liked the story of the wolf and the lamb and other stories that kept coming back. Like the frog and the scorpion story in High Society. Everything was there for a reason, and everything was solved in the end. Even some regular ghosts that were kind of a running gag in Gong Shil’s daily life, they all got their stories wrapped up. Even the guy on the bench in the mall who kept flipping the lid of a garbage can got his ending.
Even the street kid that kept following Gong Shil around to buy him coffee turned out to be a wandering spirit who had to go back to his body to take his SATs. Everything was wrapped up and that was very satisfying.

All in all, I liked the nostalgia of this 2013 drama, it was not too complicated but still included enough complications and tropes to make it a worthy K-Drama. I saw some new sides to actors that I didn’t know yet. And although the ghosts were sometimes a little scary, in the end I’m glad it wasn’t all about vengeful spirits and dark evil ghosts that came back for revenge and stuff. It was about Gong Shil accepting herself, and it helped that she found some protective arm candy on the way there.

Next, I’m off to watch a drama that I’ve been DYING to start watching, I secretly swapped it with the one I was actually supposed to watch next just because I can’t wait any longer for it. Please stay tuned for my next review!