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.

Summer Guys
(썸머가이즈 / Sseommeo Gaijeu)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

So glad I didn’t actually jinx myself when I predicted my next watch to be short at the end of my previous review, lol. I got to finish this show and review it earlier than expected. I have to say it was quite interesting to watch a summer story in autumn.
To be honest, I don’t even remember putting this one on my list, but I guess I do pick up on some cute-looking mini series every now and then, and this must’ve been one of those. Although I definitely prefer my dramas to be a bit more layered, I do think they did a nice job at giving dimension to the characters and it was a nice and refreshing summer story. It was also a nice pallet cleanser after all the lengthy shows I’ve watched recently. Let’s get it!

Summer Guys is an AbemaTV K-Drama with ten episodes of about thirty minutes each. You can watch the full show on Viki – I couldn’t really find any other streaming sites that had it.
The story takes place on Jeju Island and centers on a young woman called Oh Jin Dal Rae (played by Kang Mi Na). She lost her parents at the age of seven in a tragic car accident, which both made her an orphan and gave her a crippling fear of fire. Now in her twenties, Jin Dal Rae has taken over her father’s old cocktail bar Summer Guys, but struggles to keep the business going. Her uncle, Yang Paul (Jung Kyung Ho), a Catholic priest, is dealing with a lot of loan sharks and even seems prepared to put the bar up as collateral to pay back his debts.
To make matters worse, Summer Guys is right in front of a large beach resort called Partner’s Resort, and its CEO is looking for ways to expand it, preferably by getting rid of the bar. The resort is currently run by the CEO’s daughter Yeom Ah Ran (played by Im Na Young), who is also against Summer Guys for this reason.
It is around this time in the summer that three handsome young men travel to Jeju Island, all for their own reasons, and end up working with Jin Dal Rae at Summer Guys. They are Seon Woo Chan (played by Lee Jung Shin), Ma Tae Oh (played by Lee Jung Shik) and Park Gwang Bok (Kwon Hyun Bin). Despite their initial personal motives, once they actually get the bar up and running again they grow closer and become a real team, even going up against Partner’s Resort together in the end. While the summer heat gets to the team members in different ways, they all ultimately find a new reason to keep going and live life to the fullest, which I personally think is the most important message of the story.

I’d just like to start out by saying that the intro song to this show is an absolute banger. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere online, but my Shazam app tells me it’s called “SG_Boom up” by Lee Jung Min (it’s instrumental). I was immediately pulled in by the exotic summer beach vibes in the intro, so that was a good start. All in all, the intro sequence really reminded me of Single’s Inferno, lol, especially that quieter part at the end where they’re all chilling on that boat. The story had such a typical vibe to it as well, with Jin Dal Rae reminiscing about ‘that one summer’ in the beginning. It was like The Summer I Got Three Handsome Guys to Help Me Save My Cocktail Bar (arguably better than The Summer I Turned Pretty).

While there is a storyline in the sense that it’s about restoring Summer Guys to its former glory and going up against Partner’s Resort to save the bar from being demolished, I felt like the series focussed more on the characters and their respective developments. As such, I would like to go over the main characters in some more detail before commenting on certain other aspects of the story.

Starting off with our heroine, Oh Jin Dal Rae. I always get confused with four syllable names, so I’m glad they clarified that her first name was Jin Dal Rae, as it refers to the azalea flower (‘jindallae’). Although I believe some people did call her Dal Rae in the beginning, I will refer to her as Jin Dal Rae in this review. I think it’s a beautiful name.
As mentioned in the summary, Jin Dal Rae grew up at an orphanage from the age of seven onwards. I’m not sure why her uncle didn’t take her in, since he was the only family member she had left who also lived on Jeju Island. Anyways, Jin Dal Rae went through a really hard time as a child (played by Lee Eun Chae). After losing her parents in an accident that only she survived, she was sent to an orphanage where she got bullied for her fear of fire by the other kids. The only kid that stood up for her was a young boy (played by Nam Gi Won) who unfortunately left the orphanage after only spending a short time there.
As a young adult, Jin Dal Rae doesn’t have any friends and is only focussed on saving her father’s cocktail bar. Her struggle to keep the business afloat is definitely not a result of her poor skills – she’s a very talented bartender and cocktail maker. If anything, her drinks are what initially draws the three guys in and makes them want to help out with the bar – they immediately see its potential.
I liked the aspect of Jin Dal Rae making new friends and learning to open herself up to others more through the bar. Initially, it seemed like her trauma made up the majority of her personality, so it was nice to see her develop in both social and professional ways throughout the story.
I did feel like she was quite naive at times, for example in how she just accepted whoever claimed to be her childhood friend without any second guessing. Also, despite her being an alleged loner, she didn’t seem to have any trouble drawing people in with her bright smile and bubbly personality. It was interesting that, as someone who’d never had any real friends, she had no trouble interacting with and befriending new people. Maybe it helped that it happened through working at Summer Guys, as that was her comfort zone which allowed her to pull her new friends into what she was the most passionate about. She does admit at some point that she got attached to the guys because she wasn’t used to spending time with friends and they immediately brightened up her so far empty life when they first came to the bar.

Regarding this first meeting, I have to admit I still don’t fully understand the whole ‘who started the fire’ argument. Since Jin Dal Rae was outside when it happened, she instantly blamed the guys, and that was the main reason they agreed to help her out for a month, to compensate for that (even though they should’ve known whether they were actually responsible or not). The blame shifts to different people – for some reason everyone wanted to take the blame at some point – but in the end it’s revealed that it happened because of a blown electricity plug, and Jin Dal Rae blames herself for neglecting the bar’s maintenance. However, the way she revealed this made it sound as if she let it happen on purpose because she didn’t want the guys to leave (although I distinctly remember her getting annoyed at how drunk they got during their first meeting). Thinking logically, I guess what happened is that she found out about the blown plug at some point and didn’t tell the guys about it because she’d grown attached to them. Still, they made it sound like she found out right after they just met, when they weren’t that close and comfortable with each other yet, which was a bit confusing to me. I thought it could’ve been made a little bit clearer, seeing as that fire was the inciting incident that made the guys stay and help out with the bar. Anyways, it wasn’t that big of a deal and it didn’t distract much from the rest of the story, but I still wanted to point it out.

I think it was a nice touch to symbolize Jin Dal Rae’s growth through the way she overcame her fear of fire, as well. That was a very gradual and intentional development and I’m glad they used the fire as more than just a trauma in the end. It was really touching to see how, as she became closer with Chan, he started helping her out more, even to the point where he urged her to face her fears. The final challenge she had to overcome – creating the pillar of fire during their cocktail flair show – was a defining moment for her character in general as well. It didn’t just help her win the contest, but it also helped her overcome her biggest fear and confirmed how much she’d grown. I thought that was a nice development.
All in all, I liked Jin Dal Rae for all her different traits. It was cool to see how passionate she was about the bar and how far she was willing to go to save it, even if that meant attacking the loan sharks head-on.
On the other hand, she had to learn how to trust and depend on others in order to maintain friendships. She was occasionally a bit blunt, for example in rejecting someone’s affection, but I think that’s also because she wasn’t used to receiving (romantic) attention from anyone before. It’s because she cherished their friendship so much that she got angry when they lied to her, even if she later realized that she still cared enough about them to forgive them.
Despite the short length of the series, I think they did a nice job at establishing Jin Dal Rae’s character. They made her just layered enough to give her personality and valid reasons to respond to things a certain way. I found myself rooting for her when she finally succeeded at that fire pillar because it felt like she’d come such a long way, even in ten thirty-minute episodes.

Seon Woo Chan, who starts going by Chan once he becomes part of the Summer Guys team, is introduced as a rich chaebol son of a large company called Seon Woo Construction, which I believe would help with Partner’s Resort’s expansion. He studied with Ah Ran in the United States, as well. I’m not sure if he and Ah Ran were arranged to be married or that their parents just wanted them to get together, but Chan was definitely not planning on that. I do believe he came to Jeju for business purposes – maybe his parents wanted him to check up on the resort or something? – but he definitely meant to pay Summer Guys a visit while he was there.
From the way they hinted at the fact that he knew the bar from when he was a kid, it wasn’t a very big surprise to find out that he was actually Jin Dal Rae’s childhood friend. He was adopted by that rich family after being abandoned by his biological mother on a beach in Jeju Island. When he met Jin Dal Rae again and started working at Summer Guys, he clearly became more and more detached from his adoptive family and the construction project he was supposed to help out with. I believe he even went by ‘Chan’ to reject the full ‘Seon Woo’ part of his name, and he even ended up returning his car to them.
Despite being the most serious and poker-faced of the three guys, Chan doesn’t repress his growing feelings for Jin Dal Rae. He initially seemed like the kind of guy who would act unnecessarily cold to the female lead, so I was really glad he was actually upfront about his feelings. His straightforwardness in expressing his affection was also very nice and their kissing scenes were really sweet. I loved how he gradually started challenging Jin Dal Rae to face her fears by leading her through that candle-lit path before confessing his love for her, and how he kept encouraging her not to give up on the fire part in the flair show. Despite his aloof demeanor he made no bones about how much he cared about her and wanted to help her, in more ways than just with the bar. He confessed all the things he’d kept hidden from her out of his own volition before confessing his love to her because he didn’t want anything standing between them. I loved that his experience at Summer Guys taught him what kind of person he wanted to be, and that he also became that person to Jin Dal Rae.

Although the short duration of the series definitely leaves some things to be desired in terms of build-up, I really liked the natural development between Jin Dal Rae and Chan. Regardless of that typical accidental kiss in the first episode, I thought they grew towards each other very naturally. In a way, it was nice to see things develop between them so quickly. I admire the fact that they managed to build up the relationship between them with so little time and still didn’t make it feel too rushed. Even if they needed a drink to get over that initial hurdle, Chan’s immediate response after Jin Dal Rae kissed him the first time was very satisfying. It was so sweet how he kept shielding her from instances of fire at first by covering her eyes or ears – apart from that scene at Ah Ran’s birthday party when Jin Dal Rae fell into the pool, I don’t know what he was doing there, he was standing right next to her – and how he ultimately started challenging her to overcome her fear altogether. Even though they’d been tied together by what I like to call a ‘destiny element’, as they’d known each other as kids, I liked that they didn’t fall for each other because of that. They got naturally close through mutual effort and a genuine affection to care for and help each other, and that’s what made their relationship very healthy and sweet.

While Ma Tae Oh’s reason for coming to Jeju is the last one to be revealed, it’s clear from the start that he’s hiding something. His first encounter with Jin Dal Rae and Chan is when he walks in on their accidental kiss, and then he immediately stands up for Jin Dal Rae in what later turns out to be an attempt to earn her fancy from the get-go. Throughout the story, Tae Oh is the only one who doesn’t lay out all of his cards on the table, even after genuinely confessing his love to Jin Dal Rae. I admit I was quite confused about his true nature at first, and how he was connected to Partner’s Resort, but I’m glad they also clarified that in the end.
Tae Oh, whose real name is Jin Oh, became a conman to earn money for his father’s hospital bills. After sitting out a prison sentence, he got the offer for one final job: seducing Jin Dal Rae into giving up her bar to Partner’s Resort. Honestly, the fact that the CEO hired a conman to seduce the bar’s owner to get this done is so petty, I can’t even. But yeah, Tae Oh initially comes to Summer Guys with this motive, and even pretends to be Jin Dal Rae’s childhood friend for a while. As time passes, he finds himself actually growing attached to the bar and his new friends, and even tells his employer (Shin Yeon Seo) that he wants out of the job when she visits the bar at some point. When the truth about his lies finally comes out, Jin Dal Rae immediately sends him away, after which he goes to stay with his sick father at the hospital. But no matter how angry and disappointed the team is at Tae Oh, they immediately find out they’re lost without his serving skills at the bar, and everyone ends up forgiving him quite quickly. Tae Oh’s time at Summer Guys helps him decide to become a better person and leave his conman days behind him.
I appreciated that Tae Oh also wasn’t made into too much of a stereotype, and that he got a proper backstory and character development. I actually quite liked him, even when he was still working as a spy for Partner’s Resort. It was really satisfying to slowly see him become his own person and stand up for what he felt, instead of choosing ‘the bad guy way’ just because that’s all he saw himself as. He was quite an interesting character in my opinion, because he was not as black and white as the rest. He had to fight a battle within himself to come out as a better person, in a different way than Chan and Gwang Bok. He never lost his womanizer charm, he just chose not to use it to scam people anymore, and that made the biggest difference. The fact that they brought in the backstory of his dad helped me empathize with his character a lot more than if they’d just made him the token playboy character.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m still a bit confused as to what the idea for Gwang Bok’s character was. In the summary on Viki it says ‘a former baseball player’, although I don’t believe that’s ever mentioned – at least it doesn’t play any part in his character. But then in the series itself it’s revealed that he’s a former gang member, and then they suddenly add in that he’s a musician as well. Whereas Chan and Tae Oh were established very clearly from the get-go, switching between and bringing in these different aspects to Gwang Bok’s character made things a bit confusing to me. Having said that, he was the one that first made me go “I like him”, and also the first one to fall for Jin Dal Rae. It’s kind of a pity that they didn’t really do anything more with his feelings for her until his actual love confession. Like, it was already clear from the start that he was the last one to stand a chance at winning her heart, so it almost felt a bit awkward to put him in as the one who fell for her first. Still, I really appreciated that he confessed his feelings just to express them, without expecting anything in return, and how he handled Jin Dal Rae’s ‘let’s just stay friends’ so maturely.
Because Gwang Bok is initially introduced as the most uncomplicated character among the three guys, I was quite shocked when they suddenly made his backstory so dark. When he started crying at receiving a birthday cake, I went from “aww don’t cry my baby 🥹” to “wait what do you mean you wanted to die 😢”. It’s revealed that Gwang Bok, who was also raised as an orphan (they named him after National Liberation Day, the day he came into the orphanage), got involved in some dark networks and started working for the mob as someone who beat people up. Through this, he became so miserable that he actually lost the will to live, but right as he was trying to hang himself (dark) he suddenly got an invitation to stay for free at a luxury hotel in Jeju, and he ended up coming across Summer Guys on the way there. I’m still not entirely sure if they really needed to make his backstory that dark and serious, because I already loved him plenty without it. I wouldn’t have minded it if he was just the innocent baby bean of the group. Personally, I thought the revelation of his gang member past was a bit extreme and out of tune with the rest of the story. It only made the reason behind his tears of having his birthday celebrated extra emotional. Still, it didn’t make me love his character any less.

All in all, I really appreciated that all the main characters were properly established with clear backstories, motives and developments. They all went through something and overcame their dark sides through their time at Summer Guys, and I think that’s the most important thing to acknowledge in this story. It’s cool that, even in such a short series that didn’t have room for too much elaboration, they still managed to at least validate all the main characters in their choices and emotions. I was reminded of how badly this was done in Love of Summer Night, where they introduced a whole basketball team but didn’t even bother to give everyone a personal development arc despite having enough space for it. This show was more than just fun beach vibes and cocktail trivia, it actually told a story with a small set of well-established main characters that all contributed to the plot in their own way. Even though I didn’t feel as emotionally connected to everyone as much as I would’ve in a longer series, it still made it fun enough to watch.

The only character that I did not come to like in this story was Ah Ran. Seeing her depicted along with the rest of the team on that boat in the intro, I was expecting that she’d start helping out at Summer Guys at some point and ultimately turn against her own father as well. That would’ve at least given her a learning curve and a personal connection to Summer Guys in a similar way to the other characters, and it would’ve definitely made me like her a lot more. Unfortunately, Ah Ran remained unpleasant until the very end.
Honestly, I thought it would’ve already made a difference if they’d created some history between Ah Ran and Jin Dal Rae, like that they used to be friends but grew apart for some reason. The fact that Ah Ran’s disrespectful behavior towards Jin Dal Rae was purely based on her disdain of Summer Guys and her jealousy of Jin Dal Rae’s relationship with Chan made her all the more immature and shallow. She literally blackmailed Jin Dal Rae with her trauma of fire and laughed about it behind her back with her mom (who was equally bad). It didn’t even help that she acknowledged her own pettiness, because she clearly didn’t feel bad about it at all.
It was so weird how she just appeared out of nowhere and slapped Jin Dal Rae in the face without even knowing her. Jin Dal Rae and Chan were having a personal conversation and she just started butting in, like, why the heck are you getting involved, girl?🤨 She didn’t even know anything about Chan’s past and she immediately went at Jin Dal Rae for even suggesting that he’d been at an orphanage at some point in his childhood. I always hate it when girls go at each other in these situations. She could’ve also asked Chan why he was hugging another girl, but no, the other girl is immediately the homewrecker. 🙄
The birthday party was such a joke, as well. Like, I get that she was planning on confessing her love to Chan and that’s why she got upset when he left early after saving Jin Dal Rae from the pool, but COME ON, SIS. You triggered someone’s trauma (probably on purpose), making that person nearly DROWN, and still all you can think about is your own missed opportunity at confessing your love to a guy who was going to reject you, anyway? The way she purposely spilled the cocktails Jin Dal Rae made her was so disrespectful as well, it actually made me mad. As accomplished she may have been at running Partner’s Resort, she lacked a lot as a human being, and she never came to reflect on anything. Even when she triggered Jin Dal Rae AGAIN by making her do a freaking fire show to let her keep her bar, she just went “Yep, I’m just being petty :D”, like… Seriously.
While they did such a good job at fleshing out the Summer Guys team members, they really missed the mark with Ah Ran. I don’t know if they even wanted to invoke empathy for her at all, but it definitely didn’t work on me. Even when she went all wannabe girl-boss when she bid Chan farewell to study abroad at the end I was like, “…nobody cares but sure, bye Felicia”. 👋🏻 I thought it was kind of a pity, really. They could’ve at least come up with a proper reason behind her attitude towards Jin Dal Rae. I think that’s what irked me the most, that there was no base reason for her character to act the way she did, and they actually made her the token bitch girl while making sure the other main characters all had valid reasons and character developments. They could’ve done so much more with her, but I honestly feel like they didn’t even try to come up with anything that could possibly redeem her.

As such, in hindsight I find it quite weird that they featured her alongside the Summer Guys members in the intro, as if they were all good buds. She only had a link to Chan, was a complete bitch to Jin Dal Rae and never even interacted with the other two guys. They probably did it to highlight the idol cast, just like they featured Cha Eun Woo and Bona on the poster for The Best Hit despite them only having minor supporting roles. If you look at Ah Ran’s contribution to the story it’s actually kind of weird that she’s featured so friendly with the others in the intro. As I said, seeing them like that the first time made me think that she was going to be a member later on, so it’s actually kind of misleading, as well. This misconception was only emphasized through the summary on Viki, which says: “Yeom Ah Ran (Im Na Young), daughter of a local corporate boss, watches their efforts with interest.” I don’t know what they watched, because she did a lot of things, but definitely not ‘watch their efforts with interest’. She literally came inside the bar ONCE and never even bothered checking what they were actually up to. It was more like she “(…) tried to sabotage their efforts with petty actions”, if you ask me.

I’d like to go over a couple more supporting characters, starting with Father Yang Paul. Again, I’m not sure how close Jin Dal Rae actually was to her uncle, because he didn’t seem to have raised her after her parents passed away despite being a nearby-living family member. I’m guessing Jin Dal Rae was dependent on her uncle to a certain extent since he officially owned the rights to the bar (he was able to sign it over to the loan sharks, at least). Still, there didn’t seem to be any bad blood between Father Paul and Jin Dal Rae, except for when he bought her that busted popcorn machine and almost got the bar taken away. I was curious to his history with the mysterious lady, as he seemed to recognize her when she first showed her face at the church, but that was never explained.
Despite the fact that he wasn’t a very dependable uncle, I did like Father Paul. He had Jin Dal Rae’s best interests at heart when it came to the bar, and he was cheering the Summer Guys team on in their efforts, even if he didn’t do much himself. It was nice that there was at least one supportive adult around to occasionally drop by to check in.
As for his Catholicism, I believe they explained why he turned to God very briefly, but I kind of forgot. 🙈 Was it because he used to be a gambling addict or something? In any case, while there was nothing wrong with him being a Catholic priest, in the end I felt like that only came into play when the mysterious lady came to make a confession. They didn’t really utilize the church that much in any other aspect of the story, which sometimes made me feel like it was a bit random. Also, Father Paul was still pestered by loan sharks, so it’s not like shifting to Catholicism and becoming a priest made all that go away and allowed him to finally live in peace. Anyways, I liked Father Paul as a supporting character, but I thought they could’ve made his role and contribution to the renovation of Summer Guys a bit bigger.

I’d also like to briefly comment on Ah Ran’s parents, Mr. Yeom (Jo Deok Hyun) and Yeom Jang Mi (Jang Ga Hyun). While Mr. Yeom is only ever depicted as a scheming person that’s looking for ways to sabotage Summer Guys, Mrs. Yeom gets a little storyline of her own at some point when the mysterious lady appears and they seem to know each other. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really care about Ah Ran’s parents because they weren’t very nice people, and I also couldn’t be bothered with their emotional ‘My happiness has always been you’ scene at the end. Just like Ah Ran, they didn’t really contribute anything to the main story of ‘The Return of Summer Guys’, so it felt kind of weird to suddenly have one last scene of them expressing their true love for each other at the end. I wasn’t even paying attention to the fact that there were cracks in their marriage, because I wasn’t interested in them as characters. Sorry to say, but it had the same effect on me as the epilogue scene of Ah Ran preparing to confess to Chan. It just made me go: “so what, am I supposed to feel something for these people now, all of a sudden?” Clearly, the entire Yeom family wasn’t granted a validating backstory or development like the main characters were, so why bother putting in a single ‘sweet’ scene of them? The only satisfying scene with Mr. Yeom was when Tae Oh came to tell him he was officially breaking their contract.

Finally, I just want to mention the mysterious lady who occasionally came to Summer Guys and ultimately turned out to be Chan’s birth mother. She’s credited as ‘Linda’, although I don’t remember anyone ever calling her that in the series. Anyhow, Linda (played by Park Mi Sook) initially appears when the team is holding a promotional sangria tasting at the beach one day, and every time she comes to the bar she seems to single Chan out, although she never stays long.
We only find out in the second-to-last episode that she’s actually Chan’s biological mother, the one who abandoned him when he was a kid. Why she suddenly came back and what she wanted to achieve by seeing him again, I’m still not sure. She didn’t get him to forgive her, that’s for sure. I was a bit conflicted by her sudden transition from smug mysterious lady to emotional mother because it made me wonder why she made such a scene of her appearance in the first place. Also, she was able to maintain a straight face every single time in the beginning, when she took Chan for a walk or when she ordered a drink with him. I get now that that was supposedly an act, but she took on such a different demeanor than the desperate mother at the end. The only ‘backstory’ we get about her is that she was friends with the Yeoms – I believe Mrs. Yeom had a picture of them together, but I don’t even remember if she talked about why she left Chan on his own, or why she came to see him again after all this time.
Whereas the main story around Summer Guys was so clear and well-established, they really left a lot to be desired when it came to the supporting characters, because that’s where the major ambiguities lay. It’s a pity, because Linda started out as a really interesting character, but it felt like they kind of let it slip through their fingers towards the end with the sudden revelation of her identity.

All in all, I think there was a very clear distinction in writing when it came to the different characters. The main characters were all fleshed out well and had significant backstories and individual developments, but the antagonists and the supporting characters all felt a bit incomplete. I don’t want to blame that on the short duration of the show, because I do feel like they could’ve gone a different way with for example Ah Ran in the same amount of time. So yeah, that was a bit of a pity.

Using the end of my character analysis as a segue to my general remarks regarding this series as a whole, one of the biggest pities for me in this drama was that they basically spoiled every episode in the preview sequences. Normally, an episode ends with a short preview of the next episode which reveals just enough to get you excited, but never spoils anything major. In this series, probably because the episodes were so short, the previews actually gave away almost the entire next episode. All the kissing scenes and the incidents, but for example also the outcome of the flair contest and the revelation of the mysterious lady being Chan’s mom (because there would be no other reason for him to hug her while she was crying). That was such a pity. I actually stopped looking at the previews at some point because I didn’t want to get spoiled. They should’ve just rolled the ending credits during the stills and ended it with the epilogue sequences, because those were actually interesting. The epilogues at least revealed some extra ‘background’ information that wasn’t featured in the main story, like how Ah Ran prepared to confess to Chan or how Linda confessed to abandoning her child to Father Paul. As it was, that confession scene lost all of its impact because they already strongly suggested that she was Chan’s mom in the preview just before that. I really wished they hadn’t included those extensive previews, it took away so much of the wonder and suspense of what was going to happen next.

I also felt like they sometimes elaborated too much on scenes that weren’t as relevant as others. For example, why did they put in such a lenghty slow-motion scene of the team beating up those loan sharks when taking literally one minute of screentime for the renovation of the bar? Restoring the bar was one of the main objectives of the story, so why did they brush over that so quickly? I honestly thought that would’ve been a much more extensive process that they might even stretch over several episodes to have a grand reveal at the end, but no, it was done in like one minute and then only hyped up by Father Paul when he saw the new interior for the first time. I feel like they could’ve shifted the importance of certain events a bit better, according to their relevance to the story.
Admittedly, whereas the renovation itself went by way too quickly, I really liked the way the bar looked. It had a really fun vibe to it with all the colors. I also really appreciated the focus on the cocktails, that was the least they could’ve done to highlight the exotic bar element of the story. Every episode was named after a cocktail, and they gave each cocktail a special feature accordingly by mentioning the recipe and all. It was fun to learn a bit more about bartending and making cocktails, because that’s another very obscure specialization that you normally wouldn’t know about unless you’re into it yourself. I also liked how the cocktails ended up playing a part in each episode, like how Jin Dal Rae made Ah Ran a ‘Quick Fuck’ to embarrass her, lol. They ended with a fictional cocktail that Chan made and named after Jin Dal Rae, which was a nice and sweet twist at the end.

The final criticism I have has to do with the ending. As far as I understand, this mini series was made as a way to promote Jeju Island and highlight its exotic beachside. It says at the beginning of each episode that it was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Korea Creative Content Agency. It was never meant as a full-fledged K-Drama, so why the heck did they leave the ending open like that?
They literally end it with a new love interest for Gwang Bok and Tae Oh (played by Lee Hyun Joo) and some mystery guy (played by Kim Dong Joon) that announces he means to buy the bar and acknowledges Chan as if he knows him. Why? The ending was fine as it was, with the guys all deciding to stay at Summer Guys and them continuing to run the bar together. Why would they suddenly add new elements at the last minute, even when they already know there’s not going to be a second season? I really don’t understand that. Sure, they could’ve let Kim Dong Joon make a guest appearance, like they did with Bobby Kim, but to have him actually introduce a new storyline when it’s already clear that there’s not going to be a continuation? Now people are asking for a second season, which I doubt will ever come. I really don’t see the added value of that ending.

Despite my criticisms, which in part are inevitable because of the short duration of the series, I still had a good time watching this. It was a light-hearted yet straightforward story with a nice romance element to it, and I liked that at least all the main characters were fleshed out and worked through their personal issues. I think it served the purpose it was meant to, to create a simple yet engaging story whilst promoting the attractive beachside of Jeju Island, and for that I appreciate it.

On to my cast comments! Since it was quite a small cast of characters, the story didn’t deviate into too many irrelevant side storylines, which was nice. Overall I thought the actors did a really great job.

It was so cool to see my girl Kang Mi Na again! I originally know her from Produce 101, but I’ve seen her act before in 20th Century Boy and Girl, Gyeryong Fairytale, Hotel Del Luna and Café Minamdang, and there’s a couple more of her dramas on my watchlist. I really love Mi Na. She was already one of my favorite contestants on Produce 101 because of her natural bubbliness. She just has something so likeable about her and she always brings such a nice energy to her acting performances. She always delivers on the romantic scenes too, which I admire. I thought she showed a lot of emotional variety as Jin Dal Rae, and her chemistry with Lee Jung Shin was really sweet. I’m glad I get to keep seeing her in things, she always brightens my day. Having said that, she does typically get cast as quirky and bubbly characters, so I would like to one day see a completely new side of her that I haven’t seen before. I’m sure she’ll pull it off.

Apparently, Lee Jung Shin was one of the four ‘knights’ in Cinderella and the Four Knights, but I honestly don’t even remember him from that. 🙉 He did look familiar to me, but I guess I’ve seen him before somewhere in a CNBLUE-related clip? Not that I’ve seen much of that either. Anyways, I liked his performance as Chan. As I said, it was nice that he was so proactive about his feelings and never actually gave anyone the cold shoulder, as his appearance would suggest. It was nice seeing his cold exterior thaw as his feelings for Jin Dal Rae deepened, and how he ultimately broke into a smile more often. I was impressed with Lee Jung Shin’s emotional acting as well, he performed those very sincerely and naturally. He made a good co-star to Mi Na and their kissing scenes were 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻. I will be seeing him again in other shows that are still on my list, so I’m curious to see what else he can bring to the table.

Apparently, Lee Jung Shik changed his stage name to Lee Do Yeon a month ago, but I’ll just use the name he was credited as in this series here. He also looked familiar to me, although I’ve never seen anything with him in it before. He kind of reminded me Im Si Wan at times. All in all, I think he was a really good casting choice for Tae Oh. He has that easy charm about him and was able to tap into the darker parts with much ease as well. I could tell that he approached his character with a lot of sincerity, because it showed in his portrayal. He switched between the arrogance-exuding conman/playboy to the hurt rejected loverboy very naturally and never once became too much. I think he was the only one among the main character cast that wasn’t an idol or musician, but he fit right in. It would be cool seeing him in something else in the future.

I thought I remembered Kwon Hyun Bin’s name from a survival show and I was right, he participated in Produce 101 Season 2. He also goes by the stage name VIINI. While I get that when an idol appears in a drama they like to promote their musical talents in some way, I still feel like suddenly introducing Gwang Bok’s musical skills came a bit out of the blue. By the time he suddenly started playing the guitar I’d already forgotten that he indeed bought a guitar at the beginning of the show, lol.
Anyways, to me, Gwang Bok was an absolute cinnamon roll. The instant tears when they shoved that birthday cake under his nose got me so bad. I was actually going teary-eyed myself seeing him get so emotional over a simple birthday celebration like that. Other than the scenes about his dark past, his acting didn’t go much deeper than goofy and oblivious, so I’m actually grateful for that darker insight into his psyche, because he did really well in those. I haven’t seen him in anything else so far, but I did read somewhere that he’d started acting more besides his musical career, so who knows when I’ll see him again.

I also know Im Na Young from Produce 101, but I’d never seen her act in anything before. Apparently she also started acting after wrapping up her career as an idol. It was interesting to see her and Mi Na act like rivals in this series while they actually debuted as idols together in real life. Despite my dislike of Ah Ran, I was actually quite impressed by Im Na Young’s acting, especially in the emotional scenes. I remember her nickname at Produce 101 being ‘Stone Na Young’ because of her pokerface, so it was nice to see her show more emotional expressions. As immature as Ah Ran was, those were legit tears of hurt and frustration, and she delivered those very well. There are a couple more shows with her on my watchlist, so I’m curious to see how well she performs in an actual full-length drama series. In a way, it’s a pity that her character in this show was left as the token bitchy second female lead, because I feel like she could’ve easily given a new color to Ah Ran. I really hoped they would actually end up on that boat together in the end as best buddies. But she did very well!

As expected for such a short show, this isn’t a very long review, and I’m actually relieved to finally be able to finish one in a single day again. As I said, despite my criticisms I had a good time watching this, it was straightforward and simple but still had a clear objective and well-established main characters. I’m not sure why they went for an open ending when they clearly made this as a light promotional mini series, but it’s not going to keep me up at night, either. I liked the vibes, I liked learning a bit about cocktails, and I liked that it connected the main characters in a significant way that contributed to them both individually and as a team. It was nice seeing them work towards that final end boss of a flair show together. If it were summer, it would’ve probably made me want to go to the beach myself, lol.

So there we have it for this short and sweet mini series. These days, I don’t even expect to upload two reviews in one month anymore, so this was a fun little surprise. Thank you for reading all the way if you did, and I will get started on my next watch.

Bye-bee! x

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 Tale of Nok Du
(조선로코 녹두전 / Joseonroko Nokdujeon /
The Joseon Romantic-Comedy Tale of Nok Du)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Happy spooky season, everyone! Welcome to this review of my first historical drama of the year – I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something so cozy and atmospheric about watching a historical drama in autumn.
When this title popped up on my Spin The Wheel app, I let out a yelp of excitement, not just because I had been looking forward to this drama for a long time, but also because it’s been a full year since my last historical drama, The King Loves, so I was really in the mood for another one. I took my slow and steady time watching this to indulge in the full historical K-Drama experience, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on this. Overall, while there were some things that remained a bit vague and unsatisfying to me, I really enjoyed it and it grew on me a lot while watching it.

The Tale of Nok Du is a KBS2 K-Drama which you can either watch in 32 back-to-back episodes of about 30 minutes each, or in 16 episodes of little over an hour. I watched it in the latter format on my new go-to site kisskh.do. Besides it being an adaptation of a webtoon by the same Korean title (created by Hye Jin Yang), the story is also based on historical events surrounding the reign of King Gwanghae of Joseon, which ended in a revolt led by his nephew, the later King Injo of Joseon. As such, it can be deduced that the story takes place in the 17th century.
Jeon Nok Du (played by Jang Dong Yoon) grew up on an island with his parents and his older brother Hwang Tae (Song Geon Hee). His mother passed away due to an illness, and his father Jung Yoon Jeo (Lee Seung Joon) has been raising his two sons by himself ever since. One day, Nok Du’s uneventful peaceful life is disrupted by a group of assassins that’s clearly set on killing his father. Nok Du manages to wound one of the assailants and decides to follow them back to their leader to find out who targeted his family and why. This journey leads him to Hanyang, the Joseon name for the current capital city Seoul. During his pursuit, Nok Du encounters a young man who also seems to be chasing someone – the two immediately start off on the wrong foot and swear not to meet again after spending a night in prison together. While continuing on his journey, Nok Du finds out that his attacker is actually a woman – as it happens, the whole group of assassins that attacked his family consisted of women. Eventually, his pursuit ends when the assassin retreats into a widow village that only women are allowed to enter. Determined as he is to find out who gave the order to murder his family, Nok Du disguises himself as a woman and enters the village under the name Kim Nok Soon or ‘Lady Kim’.
The village is a place where widows and other women deemed ‘damaged goods’ are allowed to live and work in peace away from men. They are supported by a nearby gisaeng house that provides them with any necessary essentials. Once he makes his way into the village, Nok Du once again encounters the young man he met before, only to find out they were a woman all along as well, and a trainee gisaeng at that. Her name is Dong Dong Joo (played by Kim So Hyun). Nok Du is immediately impressed by her strong spirit when she publicly cuts her hair off to snap back at a rude client of the gisaeng house.
After being forced to share a sleeping chamber, Nok Du and Dong Joo inevitably grow closer. Dong Joo does not immediately recognize Nok Du as the man she met before in Hanyang and starts viewing ‘Nok Soon’ as a dependable older sister. In the meantime, while keeping his identity hidden and dealing with his growing fondness for Dong Joo, Nok Du finds the group of assassins responsible for the attack on his family. He even manages to gain their trust and become one of them. However, the truth that he ultimately finds doesn’t only explain the reason for the attack on his family. It goes way further than that, back to his own birth and real identity that he never knew of.

Although it took me a couple of episodes to get into this, in hindsight I do think the pacing of the story was quite good. I liked the clear transition point of moving the story from the widow village to Hanyang halfway through. The first half focusses on Nok Du’s stay at the village and the build-up of his bonds with Dong Joo, the widows and the assassins, and the second half focusses on Nok Du and Dong Joo’s respective intentions to enter the palace and the revealed truth about their individual connections to the King, next to their unfolding romantic relationship.
While I appreciated this clear build-up and things definitely fell into place more as the story progressed, I can’t deny that I still had some trouble following the exact timeline, especially with regards to Nok Du’s birth and the prophecy and all that. Thinking back now, I still feel like some points weren’t established as clearly as I would’ve liked, to clarify from what point on things started unfolding as they did. Besides this, I also had trouble following some of the flashbacks. I felt like they didn’t necessarily make the transition between the present and flashbacks to the past as clear as they could have, and they also sometimes showed flashbacks in a non-chronological order, which made the exact timeline a bit hard to grasp. Still, I feel like this happened mainly in the first half of the story, because the second half really grabbed me and pulled me in, even when I didn’t fully catch on to some practical details.

Before I start with my character analysis, I would like to give some context to the events of the story. The reality of both Nok Du and Dong Joo’s pasts is only revealed throughout the series gradually, but for my review I feel like it will help to establish what happened in the past in advance so it doesn’t get tricky explaining things later on.
King Gwanghae (played by Jung Joon Ho), the current monarch, only became king after his older brother passed away. Having been second in line from the start, he has always been very apprehensive of anyone that could potentially take the throne from him. Shortly after succeeding his brother as King, Gwanghae learned of a prophecy that said that ‘a royal offspring born on November 19th will take the throne from him’, and this only fuelled his paranoia. So much so that he gave the order to have anyone that seemingly opposed him or formed any sort of threat, however minor, killed. So much so that when his own first son was born on November 19th, he immediately gave the order to get rid of the baby, much to the devastation of his wife, Queen Yu (played by Park Min Jung).
One of the families that got slaughtered during this reign of paranoia was the Yoo family – Dong Joo’s family (she was born as Yoo Eun Seo). Being the only survivor of her family’s massacre, she was found and taken in by the lady of the gisaeng house where she grew up with a constant hatred for the King and a desire to kill him in order to avenge her family. That’s also what she was trying to do in Hanyang when she first met Nok Du, and why she occasionally dressed as a man to get close to the palace.
The King’s baby that was supposed to be killed is of course Nok Du. Jung Yoon Jeo used to be one of the King’s most trusted friends, and he ended up taking Nok Du to the island to raise him as his own son far away from the palace instead of killing him.
The only other person who knows about what really happened to the baby is Royal Chancellor Heo Yoon (played by Kim Tae Woo), another old trusted friend of both the King and Jung Yoon Jeo. The Chancellor has always been loyal to the King and he was also the one who set up the Muweol Corps, the female assassins, together with the lady of the gisaeng house.
In all his raging paranoia, the King failed to notice the true threat that would ultimately become his downfall: his own nephew, Grand Prince Neungyang (played by Kang Tae Oh). Although he was still only a child when his father, the first King, died, Neungyang has always held on to both his claim to and his desire for the throne. While initially introduced as a harmless second male lead character, he eventually reveals himself to be the main villain of the story which, again, is based on true historical events: Grand Prince Neungyang did become King Injo of Joseon after undertaking a coup d’état against his uncle, King Gwanghae.
Some other characters that appear who are also based on actual historical figures are King Gwanghae’s sister, Queen Dowager In Mok, and her young son Grand Prince Yeongchang, who was also sadly murdered as a part of Neungyang’s revolt.

To quickly refer back to my confusion regarding the timeline of the historical events, I also found the dynamics between the members of the royal family incredibly hard to follow. I was only able to establish the above list after looking it up on Wikipedia. I don’t think it was ever properly clarified how exactly everyone was related to one another. As a matter of fact, I spent the entire series thinking that little prince Yeongchang was King Gwanghae’s youngest son and that the Queen Dowager was his second wife. I thought they were just terrified of him because of what he did to his first child, which would’ve made sense. I was just sitting there wondering how there could be two Queens while one of them actually turned out to be the King’s sister.
Of course we have to keep in mind that K-Dramas are foremost made for a Korean audience and that they contain references that only people with knowledge of Korean history and culture can understand. I guess that a lot of Korean people and people who know about Korea’s (royal) history would be able to understand these things without much clarification, but for me as a foreign viewer it was quite hard to follow. While the most important things to understand were the reason why the King decided to get rid of his newborn child and the fact that Grand Prince Neungyang was the King’s nephew, it would’ve been nice to have a clear understanding of all the other royal family dynamics as well.

The last thing I’ll mention that got a little confusing was that a lot of characters frequently changed names during the series. Both Nok Du and Dong Joo use about three different names throughout the story, Neungyang is initially introduced under a different name, at some point Hwang Tae also takes on a different name… It made things a bit unnecessarily complicated at times.

With the historical context now out of the way, I’d like to get started on my character analysis.
Even though our titular hero Nok Du is raised on a desolate island far away from the capital, he’s not by any means estranged from reality. He knows how to fight with both weapons and his fists, he is quick on his feet, determined and resourceful. He doesn’t hesitate for a second to go after that assassin, even if it means leaving the island he grew up on and entering unfamiliar territory. Apart from these heroic traits he also has a very playful streak and is very honest to his own feelings. I actually appreciated the fact that he cried so much throughout the story, he was really forthcoming about his emotions and didn’t try to pretend to be tougher than he was or feel differently than he did. I also loved how straightforward and provocative he was sometimes, like when he – as Nok Soon – smooched Neungyang on the mouth in front of everyone in the village to aggravate Dong Joo and get her to admit who she really had feelings for.
What got me the most about Nok Du’s character development is that we accompany him as he finds out who he really is. We watch him while he finds out that he is the King’s biological son and heir to the throne, and see him crumble at the discovery that his biological father tried to kill him and still wants him dead when he finds out he’s alive. It was so impactful to see him try to process all these new pieces of information at the spot while continuously adapting to what his next step should be. He came to Hanyang to find out why someone gave an order to murder his family on the island, only to find out that it all had to do with a prophecy that was associated with his own birth. As if that isn’t complicated enough, in the middle of this, he finds himself falling in love and somehow manages to make that relationship work as well.
Nok Du is a classic hero: selfless and loyal to a fault when it comes to the people that mean the most to him. When his adoptive father Jung Yoon Jeo got captured and tortured by the King, he worked his way up to Royal Guard so he could visit and check up on him. Even when his brother Hwang Tae seemingly joined forces with Neungyang and started blaming Nok Du for condemning his family to a miserable life on the island, Nok Du kept coming back for him. After Dong Joo agreed to stay with Neungyang on the condition that he’d let the injured Nok Du go in the final episode, Nok Du returned to get her back as soon as he was able to. He stayed true to his own chosen family from the island and the village, and never once considered actually taking up his rightful position as heir to the throne.
I thought Nok Du’s character was really admirable and I couldn’t help but love him. He embodied such a just and genuine spirit. I also really liked the dynamics he had with all the other characters. It was nice to see that, after the first half of the series built up the trust between him and the village, no one actually cared anymore when he was exposed as a man, and they just went on treating him the same way.
I also loved how Nok Du and the Muweol Corps became such a good team, and how well he ended up getting along with the village widows. His reunion with the Queen, his real mother, was also really heartfelt, the way they immediately hugged and accepted each other so warmly was very touching.
While it was of course meant to sting when Nok Du met the King in disguise and befriended him thinking he was just an Administrative Official, even the comradery between them was nice to watch. It actually made me wonder if maybe the King would change his mind if he found out who Nok Du really was. If he hadn’t been so paranoid, he might have actually realized that Nok Du would never come out of nowhere to steal the throne after finding out about his birthright. Even though they were ill-fated as father and son, it was nice to at least see a friendly side to the King as he warmed up to Nok Du and supported him in entering the palace as an official.
Even though we knew it would be painful to watch Nok Du and Dong Joo find out that the nice elderly man they’d been meeting up with was actually the King, the target of both their revenge plots, the revelation for both of them still hit really hard. That cliffhanger of the King revealing himself to Nok Du, thinking it would just be a fun surprise, while Nok Du’s face just paled with dread at the realization was really effective.
All in all, I really liked Nok Du as the main character. He went through such an emotional rollercoaster and faced everything that came his way in the best possible way. I couldn’t help but admire his determination and the fact that nothing could dent his sense of humanity even in the slightest.

Of course, Nok Du couldn’t have grown into such a splendid human being without the fostering of the people he grew up with, so let’s look at them for a moment.
As mentioned before, Jung Yoon Jeo used to be one of the King’s closest friends and most trusted men, together with Chancellor Heo. The two of them watched with a heavy heart as King Gwanghae slowly lost himself to his paranoia, and they worked together in secretly bringing the child he wanted to kill to safety. In the end, no matter what kind of new feelings were raised between Nok Du and the King, Jung Yoon Jeo remained Nok Du’s only true father. He raised him as his own son, making no distinction between him and Hwang Tae, even if that meant having to risk his life when he came back to Hanyang. I can’t express how scared I was that this man wasn’t going to make it – even if he wasn’t killed he was constantly coughing so I felt like he might as well pass away from an illness at some point. Even after being locked up in a prison cell and being tortured by the King himself, he still had the courage and strength to tell the Queen that her son was alive – he actually risked so much to make sure Nok Du would be protected by the right people. Unlike his wife and other son, he never blamed Nok Du for anything and he always considered him his son. I loved that they all ended up going back to the island to live together in peace again in the final episode. Throughout everything that happens in the story, nothing changes between Nok Du and Jung Yoon Jeo, and I think that says enough about how deep their father-son bond was. Honestly, props to Jung Yoon Jeo.

To be completely honest, I’m still not entirely sure what Hwang Tae’s real feelings were towards Nok Du. It seemed like they were close as brothers and got along very well, so I was quite surprised when Hwang Tae made such a turn and started blaming his ‘miserable upbringing’ on Nok Du. Part of me feels like he was pretending to be mean to Nok Du and push him away in order to gain Neungyang’s trust. Maybe he was even trying to sacrifice himself to keep Nok Du away from him? I don’t know, but what I do know is that it was BS and came completely out of nowhere to blame Nok Du for being born as the King’s son and ‘causing them’ to move to that island, as if that was Nok Du’s choice.
Admittedly, it is possible that a part of the deal between Hwang Tae and Neungyang went over my head. I just understood that Hwang Tae claimed that he wanted revenge on Nok Du, and he would get some position in the palace under Neungyang’s reign as a reward or something? Also, I still don’t really understand why Hwang Tae suddenly said he wanted to be called by a different name. I think it was Jung Yi Hyung – I remember him saying that that’s how his grandfather had wanted to name him, but why did that matter? Maybe that would’ve been his name if they didn’t have to move to the island and he wanted to claim it back as another thing that Nok Du ‘stole’ from him? I’m not sure.
And then, after I actually started worrying that he might truly betray Nok Du, when push came to shove Hwang Tae suddenly switched sides again and chose to stick with Nok Du, after all. Suddenly the alleged bad blood between them was gone and they just went back to being close brothers as if nothing happened. So yeah, I was a bit confused. On the one hand this only strengthens my idea that Hwang Tae was really just pretending to Neungyang about wanting his brother dead – we did see him flinch every time Neungyang mentioned he wanted him to watch as he killed Nok Du, so it might be that that’s what was going on. Maybe I’m just bad at reading between the lines, but I don’t think Hwang Tae ever actually clarified to Nok Du what his real intentions had been. I guess he was just trying to survive after Neungyang caught him on the island? It wasn’t really clear to me. It actually surprised me that he made it out alive – I wouldn’t have put it past Neungyang to suddenly break his promise and kill Hwang Tae when he didn’t have a use for him anymore. In any case, I guess Hwang Tae was a good guy in the end, but I was kind of lost on what he was trying to do whilst being in Neungyang’s custody.

In another episode of ‘here’s what Mei missed’: it completely went past me that Mr. Hwang (played by Lee Moon Shik) was a martial arts master – I’m sure they mentioned it when they first introduced him and it makes total sense now, because how else would Nok Du know how to fight so well (duh 🤦🏻‍♀️) but the whole time I genuinely thought he was just an old man who randomly turned into Drunken Fist Rock Lee when he was attacked. 😂 But yeah, it would make sense that he was a skilled fighter, because otherwise he probably wouldn’t have lasted long and he wouldn’t have appeared together with all the soldiers in the final battle. Just like with Jung Yoon Jeo, I was really scared that he wouldn’t make it through that battle. He kept saying things like, “oh this scratch? it’s nothing” which is often code for “i’m actually seriously wounded and probably bleeding out as we speak but don’t you worry about that”. I’m just glad he made it out.
I really liked Mr. Hwang, he was a very good supporting character who contributed both to the comic relief and to the action in the series. It was nice to have him around Nok Du while Jung Yoon Jeo was away, he was like a nice uncle to their family.

In addition to Mr. Hwang, there was also his young daughter Aeng Du (played by Park Da Yeon). At the start of the series she is comically introduced as Nok Du’s fiancée-to-be since there aren’t any other women on the island, lol. I loved Aeng Du to bits. She was such a sassy, lovely little girl. I didn’t even care that she sometimes interrupted a romantic scene between Nok Du and Dong Joo, she was just such a great little lady. Although she mostly contributed to the comic relief, she acted in such a self-assured way that no one could say no to her. I really loved how she kept telling people off and always went for the food no matter where they ended up at. She just made her way into everyone’s hearts and even Neungyang seemed to develop a soft spot for her, as he made sure that she and her father wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire when he planned to attack Nok Du. Honestly, if anything would have happened to Aeng Du, I would’ve crashed out. She was such a little treasure. I’m glad that she and her father remained regular supporting characters until the end, and I loved how Aeng Du ultimately gave Dong Joo her blessing to take over Nok Du as her fiancé, lol.

As mentioned before, Dong Joo was born as Yoo Eun Seo, the daughter of a family of considerable status that was massacred due to the suspicion that her grandfather (I believe) was conspiring against the King. Dong Joo watched her mother die in her arms after she urged her to leave this sad past behind and live on strongly and happily by herself. After this, Dong Joo made a promise that she would avenge her family by killing the King (even though her family never asked for this), and hid away at the gisaeng house pretending to be a trainee, while actually honing her own skills in secret.
If I’m being honest, I was initially really worried that Dong Joo’s character would gradually be diminished to a passive damsel in distress throughout the series. There are so many shows with a female protagonist that’s made out to be really strong and hard-headed at first but then gets drained of her resilience more and more throughout all the drama and misery, and I always find that such a pity. I didn’t want Dong Joo to end up like the female lead character in Ruler: Master of the Mask (coincidentally also played by Kim So Hyun) or even the one from The King Loves, as she also visibly became more troubled and meek after starting out so tough and strong.
I’m really glad to say that Dong Joo didn’t disappoint me as a female lead for a second. I really loved her.
Even through her emotional breakdowns, she remained mentally and physically strong until the very end. She was literally making her own weapons and planning assassination attempts on the King on her own without a shred of fear to get caught and killed herself. She was prepared to follow her family in death as long as she could take the King with her.
In hindsight, I feel like this is exactly why falling in love with Nok Du came as such an unexpected thing for her: she wasn’t prepared to find a new reason to live happily when she’d already made peace with laying down her own life as a result of her revenge. Sure, she tried to push down her feelings for Nok Du in the beginning, but she never actually denied how she felt about him. The avoiding of her feelings didn’t get annoying because there was such a valid reason behind it, and I really appreciate that she vocalized her side of things clearly to both Neungyang and Nok Du. I felt like it was only natural for her to feel hesitant about anything that potentially gave her something to live for when she’d already made peace with the outcome of the plan she’d been focussed on her entire life.
As opposed to the overused trope of couples purposely pushing each other away to ‘protect’ their lover without ever telling them the truth, I love that this drama took a different turn. Clear and honest communication is such a satisfying thing, especially in K-Dramas (where it often doesn’t happen). I’m so glad that Dong Joo never pulled away from Nok Du without being clear about her actions. The fact that her first reaction upon seeing Nok Du after learning that he was the King’s son was to run to him and hug him tightly instead of quietly disappearing and painfully pushing him away was so gratifying.
It was refreshing to have a female lead character that wasn’t forced to just stand by and watch while the men fought their battles: when the revolt happened, Dong Joo snuck into the palace with her crossbow and actively tried to help Nok Du and refused to leave his side when he was wounded.
In terms of their romantic relationship, I was positively surprised with how bold and unfazed she was when they finally got physical. While Nok Du was getting all flustered and fidgety, she just smiled reassuringly, saying “what are you getting nervous about, all of a sudden?” I really loved that, also because it was so different from the typical passive historical drama FLs. She even took the initiative in the hugs and kisses from time to time, which was a welcome change.

Honestly, I loved the relationship between Nok Du and Dong Joo so much. The way their dynamic changed from friends to lovers was really subtle, but then they became so naturally affectionate. I enjoyed every single scene of them together. Their walks through the flower fields, their small interactions as a couple, their hugs and their kisses were all so adorable. I specifically loved the scene at the washing lines in the palace courtyard, when Nok Du offered her that flower ring and she back-hugged him and they just had their quiet happy little moment together. 🥰🥰🥰 The recurring element of Nok Du remembering to light a candle for Dong Joo at night because she was afraid to sleep in the dark was also really heartwarming. I feel like it’s been ages since I last saw such a natural and unproblematic romantic development between two lead characters, it really made me smile. Even before they became a couple they had such beautiful moments together, like when Dong Joo got on that swing for the first time – that actually brought a tear to my eye.
Additionally, although this may sound weird, I also really loved their crying scenes together. I mentioned this scene before, but there’s this moment when Nok Du has just found out why the King had wanted him dead as a baby and Dong Joo just learned that Nok Du was the King’s son. Dong Joo spots Nok Du near the swing and runs to him to hug him from behind. In this moment, they are both crying for their own reasons, without seeing each other cry and I actually screenshotted this because I found it such a heartbreaking moment. Here, suffer with me.

I don’t know for sure if Dong Joo hugged Nok Du here because she acknowledged how much he must have suffered as well, but it was just so touching to see how, in this moment, she put her love for him before her resentment towards the King. She could’ve chosen to immediately break things off with Nok Du and focus on her revenge, but she already couldn’t bring herself to do that anymore.
The look in her eyes in that scene when she confirmed to Nok Du that she already knew who he was, and how they were just standing there crying, knowing that their love for each other hadn’t changed but they just had to go their separate ways for a while was heartbreaking. I just loved how they sometimes didn’t need words to express how they felt, their chemistry was so good that the emotions just flowed naturally and there wasn’t a single shred of doubt regarding how they felt about each other. I loved them to bits, they’re definitely one of my new favorite K-Drama couples ever. ❤️

Of course, historical or not, a K-Drama wouldn’t be a K-Drama if there wasn’t at least one person that opposed the relationship between the main leads. Add to that a pinch of delusion and the inability to deal with rejection, and you’ve got Grand Prince Neungyang.
Initially, he is introduced as Cha Yool Mu, a young man of high status who acts as a kind of benefactor to the gisaeng house. It’s clear from the start that he is fond of Dong Joo. When she’s still at the gisaeng house, he always defends her and tries to take care of her, but we also see that Dong Joo seems uncomfortable with this and always tries to brush him off. At some point it’s revealed that he’s had a crush on her ever since they were children, and he’s looked after her ever since she lost her family.
Having had my fair share of tragically rejected second male lead characters, I initially had no idea that this man would turn out to be connected to the plot in a far more brutal way than just being the yearning guy with good intentions who didn’t get the girl. From the way he was introduced I was really surprised to suddenly see him change into a bad guy. That was quite a plot twist in itself.
All things considered, I found Neungyang a bit inconsistent in his sentiments. While he didn’t seem to have any real attachments to others – seeing as he was able to cut people down without a second of hesitation – he didn’t even try to hide his weakness for Dong Joo. As soon as she said: “alright I’ll come with you, so stop”, he would literally drop everything and call off the attack/pursuit. I was actually surprised that he kept acting like that even when he knew he couldn’t break her and Nok Du apart and he was already too far gone in his desire for the throne. In the end, he didn’t even seem to care anymore whether Dong Joo actually came to love him or not, as long as she stayed by his side, which I found kind of weird. He literally went: “I don’t care if you don’t love me, I just need you to stay by my side forever, but it would be nice if you at some point could bring up some sincere feelings for me”, lol. After everything he’d done, including multiple attempts at taking her lover’s life, he still thought he could sway her? Let’s not forget that he actually gave the order to burn down the widow village just because she rejected him, all in an attempt to make her come run to him. This guy was on a different level of delusional. After knowing what she went through and how she lost her family, he actually destroyed and burnt down her second home, and he didn’t even consider that would be a major turn-off.
Not like we needed any more confirmation that Nok Du and Dong Joo were meant to be, but I actually really liked that they brought back the element of the lit candle in the end. Neungyang blew it out, clearly not aware of the fact that Dong Joo couldn’t sleep in the dark, and then Nok Du instantly appeared to light it for her again, as he’d done back in the widow village. That was such a nice moment, not just because it revealed that Nok Du was still alive, but also because it confirmed that they really couldn’t live without each other. It was also a defining moment for Neungyang, because this made finally made him give up his desperate pursuit of Dong Joo. After this, he was finally able to let the both of them go.

The only time we ever see Neungyang sincerely hurt – apart from Dong Joo’s rejections – is when Dan Ho dies. Park Dan Ho (played by Hwang In Yeop) was Neungyang’s best friend and most loyal swordsman. He did everything Neungyang ordered him to do, no questions asked or issues raised, which meant he also killed people in an instant at his command.
Since he didn’t even speak for the first couple of episodes after being introduced as Yool Mu’s friend, aka the ‘pushover’ who even cut his ice cubes for him, I initially thought that was going to be his gimmick. Not gonna lie, I initially thought Hwang In Yeop was just making a guest appearance, lol. When he suddenly started talking I was like “IT SPEAKS!!!” 😂 No but seriously, I actually found Dan Ho quite an interesting character. It would’ve been nice to see a flashback of how he and Neungyang became close and to get some insight in his personal thoughts: did he really not have any personal opinions about his friend’s ambitious plans and brutal orders? He was actually one of the characters that I would’ve liked to grasp a bit better, for example by having him express his own feelings independently from Neungyang. I guess he was really just loyal to the point where he didn’t think twice about what his friend ordered him to do. I can’t help but feel like he would actually be a good guy, and I lowkey hoped that he would unexpectedly help someone and go against Neungyang once he completely lost it. In the end however, he dies during the revolt, and I’m sorry to say it didn’t make me feel very sorry for him. He unapologetically assassinated innocent people, and it caught up on him. Karma’s a bench.
As I said before, we don’t get any flashbacks about how Neungyang and Dan Ho became friends and we also never see them interact casually while they’re just hanging out, so it honestly didn’t strike me that they’d actually been that close until seeing Neungyang’s reaction to Dan Ho’s death. I thought they could have explored the depth of their relationship a bit more. I honestly thought Neungyang only appreciated Dan Ho for his unwavering loyalty, but I didn’t imagine him responding this emotionally if he ended up dying. While it was nice to see Neungyang at least have a place in his heart for someone, I still feel like they could’ve done more with the friendship between him and Dan Ho, even just to increase the slightly impact of the latter’s death.
Although generally no one likes a villain, I had to hand it to Neungyang, because he did a very good job at misleading the King and feeding his paranoia. He was great at pretending to be a victim and then smile smugly behind the King’s back when his words were taken for the truth. I also feel like he got away with things really easily in the end. I’ll say more about the ending in a separate section, but all in all I felt like Neungyang managed to get things done quite smoothly. A little too smoothly, even. Of course we could’ve expected that he would succeed in the coup d’état because it’s based on an actual historical event that happened, but something about the way the story built up still made me hopeful that they would be able to stop him. I was constantly waiting for the moment when the King would realize he’d trusted the wrong person all along, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Instead, we get to see Neungyang on his new throne with an empty smile on his face after being warned that he would always remain lonely at the top.
I actually felt a bit sad for him in that final moment. He’d lost his father at such a young age and then his best friend, and he couldn’t get the woman he loved to love him back. Maybe he just accepted that he would always be alone and made peace with that. He may have just been really sad all this time, yearning for a sense of power to distract him from that. It’s kind of tragic.

Speaking of sad, it’s high time we start talking about the monarch himself, King Gwanghae.
From what I gathered, he used to be a very promising and righteous leader. There’s one flashback in which we see his emotional response to a massacre caused by the Japanese Invasion and how this impressed and strengthened his friends Jung Yoon Jeo and Chancellor Heo in their admiration and support for him. I’ll talk about my opinions regarding the prophecy a bit more later, but I will say in advance that I didn’t really understand the King’s paranoia. As in, I understand that he got nervous after hearing a prophecy that someone from his family would take over his throne, but I found his reaction to that a bit extreme. In hindsight, it feels like his paranoia blinded him into waving his sword around at invisible threats, while it would’ve probably been wiser to stay calm and vigilant, without losing track of the kind of King he set out to be.
Having said that, I think framing his transition from a just Crown Prince to a paranoid King would’ve worked a little better if they’d given us an insight in how King Gwanghae used to be versus how he changed, like a before and after. Apart from that one flashback, we don’t really get any footage of how exactly he changed after hearing the prophecy. I feel like seeing the contrast of how that prophecy truly messed him up would’ve made it a bit more impactful for me, personally. Now it just felt like he was overreacting.
I guess the only traces of his good side came out when he befriended Nok Du and Dong Joo in disguise. It was really nice to see him so free and open-minded when talking to them despite their lower ranks, and how he even took Dong Joo’s advice about not sleeping alone to heart – she might have actually fixed his marriage with that. It was also interesting to see him open up to Nok Du at the palace, for example when he told him that ‘he hoped he would never get to see the man he really was’. I find it interesting that they introduced us to this side of him. It’s as if they wanted us to empathize with him only to ultimately burst our bubble extra hard by still turning him into an merciless King who, even years later when it didn’t matter anymore, just couldn’t put his fear of losing the throne beside him.
I’d honestly hoped that he would give Nok Du the benefit of the doubt, even after he found out he’d been pretending to be someone else. He could’ve calmly asked to see him and get an explanation from him first, but even in this situation he immediately went: “HE BETRAYED ME”. I guess the paranoia was always just simmering right underneath the surface, and the kind demeanor was just a cover for his real temper?
I actually found it a pity that the King kept being blindsided. I was waiting so impatiently for him to finally find out that Neungyang was the real threat, but he kept trusting the wrong people. He actually ended up killing a close friend and torturing another, and even though you could sometimes see him shocked at his own aggression, he never really tried to stop it. Even his own family members had become terrified of him, so I guess it really was just the nature of the beast, although I still feel like he could’ve been better – he certainly seemed better before. He’s kind of a tragic character as well, if you think about it, because he ended up living his life consumed by doubt and suspicion.
One thing I did appreciate was that he came back after falling in the river that one time. I just knew that that couldn’t be his real death, that was way too anticlimactic. It would’ve been really cool if his return had resulted in him finally acknowledging Neungyang as the actual villain, because I was really waiting for that to happen. Unfortunately, it just went back to how it was and he continued to place his trust in the wrong people. Oh well.

The fate of Chancellor Heo actually surprised me more than I anticipated. I wasn’t really sure whether he was a good or a bad guy at first, but as soon as it became clear that he was actually good and he just couldn’t compete with Neungyang’s manipulation, I felt really bad for what happened to him. I definitely didn’t expect him to be killed off like that. His death was one of the reasons why I wanted the King to figure out Neungyang’s betrayal so desperately. I just wanted to see the realization on his face when it dawned on him that he’d killed his friend for no reason.
From what I understood, Chancellor Heo had been at King Gwanghae’s side ever since he was still Crown Prince. They may have even grown up and fought many battles together. I’m not sure exactly when he set up the Muweol Corps in collaboration with Lady Chun, but it was definitely meant as an extra defense. I’m still a bit lost with regards to who ordered the attack on Nok Du’s family on the island – I believe the King said that he’d ordered it himself, but if I remember correctly he didn’t know Jung Yoon Jeo was still alive at that time, so that would be weird. I also remember Neungyang going to the island, but here the flashbacks got kind of mixed up and confusing to me, so I’m not entirely sure.
What I do know is that the Muweol Corps was just following orders, and maybe they’d been informed that they were meant to kill a deserter or something. They were misguided by Neungyang, who turned them against Chancellor Heo and even made them falsely testify against him.
Although I found Chancellor Heo a bit suspicious at first, he really turned out to be loyal to the King and he spent his final moments desperately trying to open his eyes to the truth, unfortunately to no avail. It was sad that he had to die like that, and much earlier than I expected, too.
As if Chancellor Heo’s death wasn’t sad enough, I was strangely shaken by the reaction of his loyal guard, Chil Seong (Oh Kyung Joo). His emotional response to his master’s death, and the fact that he willingly gave up his life to follow him was really touching. The sight of him laying next to his master had something really powerful to it, almost like a ceremonious gesture of loyalty, even in death. It made quite an impact on me.

As confused as I was about there being two Queens in the palace, I’m glad they at least didn’t create any misunderstanding about who Nok Du’s mother was. I thought the plot about the two halves of the norigae was really sweet. I loved that, as complicated as Nok Du’s feelings towards his father were, there wasn’t a shred of doubt when it came to his mother, and that hug they shared was so very touching. She was such a Queen, both in status and title and in actions. After learning that her baby was still alive, she didn’t even care about defying her husband anymore. She was so brave, honestly. I really loved her character. It was so cool to see how the love for her child instilled a kind of silent strength in her. The ending of her fleeing the palace to be with her son and his new family on the island was really wholesome, that was such a nice way to end the story and it made for a great ending shot as well.

Besides Queen Yu and the King’s sister, there is one other queen that we cannot forget to mention in this review, and that is Lady Chun. Lady Chun ran the gisaeng house that provided for the widow village, and she was also the one who found and took in Dong Joo as a child after what happened to her family. She basically became like a second mother to her and raised her between the safe and comfortable walls of the gisaeng house. She’s later revealed to actually be the leader of the Muweol Corps, and she even used to be one of them herself. It was so cool to see her in action rather than just be a defenseless gisaeng, and I loved learning a bit more about her own history with the Muweol Corps. The fact that she brought these women, who were cast out from society and had nowhere else to go, together and ensured them a peaceful life while simultaneously teaching them how to physically defend themselves was everything. She was the GOAT and I really hated that she had to die. The way that she accepted it so gracefully as well, it was such a loaded moment. Seeing both Ssook and Dong Joo’s emotional responses to her death said everything we needed to know about the impact she’d had on all these women’s lives. Lady Chun was the best.

Of course we can’t end this analysis without touching on the people that led Nok Du to the widow village in the first place. As evil as they were made out to be in the beginning, I really came to love the Muweol Corps. It was cool to get to know them and realize that they were so much more than just mindless assassins that blindly followed orders.
The assassin that Nok Du follows into the widow village is Min Deul Re (played by Song Chae Yeon), and she is one of the four main Muweol Corps members. After Nok Du manages to infiltrate the village, there’s a temporary sense of danger since she seems to vaguely recognize him, but she’s murdered by Dan Ho before she can connect the dots. I admit I didn’t fully follow the circumstances of her death because, again, the timeline and the flashbacks became kind of confusing to me at that point.

The remaining three main Muweol Corps members are Kim Ssook, Noh Yeong Boon and Ahn Jung Sook. If there’s one character that grew on me throughout the story, it was Ssook (played by Jo Soo Hyang). While she initially appeared to be the most stonecold member of the Corps, I really enjoyed seeing her warm up to Nok Soon. She actually ended up being one of the people to forgive Nok Du for his pretense because she’d seen with her own eyes that he’d been willing to give up his life for the women in the village. It was cool that they continued to work together even after Nok Du entered the palace, and that they even became something resembling friends in the process.
While I would’ve liked to get some more insight in the psyche of a couple of other characters, I really liked Ssook’s character development. Seeing her emotional response to Lady Chun’s death, followed by the flashback of how she was personally saved and taken in by her helped me sympathize with her character so much more. She actually became one of my favorite characters.
Also, I totally called that she would get some sort of revenge after Lady Chun was killed. I just felt that she would get back at the person responsible, whether that was Neungyang or Dan Ho, who fired the arrow. It would’ve been so satisfying to see her slay Neungyang, not gonna lie, but I also couldn’t help but feel a sense of justice when she killed Dan Ho. It just needed to happen, and I’m glad I was right. Nevertheless, I was still terrified that she would end up sacrificing herself for Nok Du or get killed during the battle in some other way in the end. I’m so glad she made it out, and it was nice to see her smile more in the end. She really deserved a happy ending, so I’m glad she got one.
In contrast to the collected and pokerfaced Ssook, Noh Yeong Boon (played by Ahn So Jin) was very candid and expressive. She spoke in a dialect that made her sound a bit crude at times, but I thought she was cool. She may not have been as observant as Ssook and tended to take things at face value, but her heart was in the right place. Her reaction to realizing that she’d actually condemned Chancellor Heo to die because she believed Neungyang’s accusations of him was enough to prove how much she cared about being on the right side of things.
Although Ahn Jung Sook (played by Yang So Min) had less memorable characteristics than Ssook and Yeong Boon, it was cool that she remained part of the unit of three throughout the story as well. I loved how these women just stuck together and always showed up at moments of need. Every single time they showed up I was like “YESSS MUWEOL CORPS LET’S GOOOO!!!” 🔥🔥🔥 They made such great supporting characters and I loved how they also joined the rest at the island in the end. I loved how all the awesome people just ended up becoming one big happy family.

Just like there were three main members of the Muweol Corps, there were also three main members of the widow village. Kang Soon Nyeo, Park Bok Nyeo and Lee Mal Nyeon (played by Yoon Sa Bong, Hwang Mi Young and Yoon Geum Seon Ah, respectively) were the designated strong women trio of the village who were basically in charge of beating up and chasing out every man that tried to sneak in. As a matter of fact, Nok Du’s first attempt at sneaking inside the village as a man also ended in him getting his ass kicked by these three.
To be completely honest, at first I was a bit sceptical about the three strong widows. They were introduced so clearly as comical characters and I was worried that they would only contribute to scenes that threatened Nok Du’s identity to be exposed. I’m glad to say they didn’t become a distraction to the plot, and it was actually nice to see them reunited again in Hanyang. I also found it cute that Bok Nyeo and the Vice Curator ended up as a couple, that was surprisingly sweet.

Speaking of the Vice Curator, as I believe I haven’t mentioned him yet, he was a predominantly comical relief character as well. Yeon Geun (played by Go Geon Han) was the only man allowed in the widow village – they probably chose him because he was so visibly weak and harmless, lol. He becomes a comic relief character firstly because he falls in love with Nok Soon at first sight and keeps stumbling over his feet to try and impress her. Since his feelings for Nok Soon (and his lingering attraction to Nok Du even after he’s revealed to be a guy) were such a big part of his character, I was curious to see what would become of him after inevitably having to move on. It came as a fun surprise when he suddenly developed feelings for Bok Nyeo, who couldn’t have been more different from Nok Du in both appearance and personality, lol. In any case, he did help Nok Du get into Hanyang and offered him the name Yeon Soo so he could pretend to be his relative. Despite his clumsiness and unfiltered weakness, he actually helped out a lot and I appreciated him for that.

Finally, I just want to give a shoutout to my girl Mae Hwa Soo (Lee Joo Bin), one of the most popular gisaengs at Lady Chun’s house. When Neungyang burned down the widow village and everyone was saving themselves and running away, Hwa Soo was the only one who went back to rescue her friend and attack her assailant at the risk of her own life. That was such a power move, I loved how she proved her true strength there. It was a pity that the gisaengs kind of disappeared after that, but I guess they must have dispersed to different houses after Lady Chun died. It would’ve been nice to see Hwa Soo again somewhere, though. I really liked her.

That’ll do it for my character analysis. All in all, I thought the cast was really cool, it was nice how they gave everyone a purpose and I specifically appreciated all the strong women in the story.
I was really upset when the widow village was destroyed because by then we’d learned enough about the backgrounds of these women to know that this was quite literally their safe haven. Everyone in that village had been ostracized and chased away to survive in the woods by themselves as they were no longer of any value to their families. It’s so sad to realize that this was literally how women were viewed, and how they are viewed to this day in certain parts of the world. The way this show visualized the bond between these women, and how they stuck together even after losing their home for the umpteenth time was really heartfelt. I loved how the gisaengs, the assassins and the widows all grouped together and helped each other find a new place to live after the village was destroyed. They all looked after each other until the end, and I loved how this caused Lady Chun’s legacy to be be passed forward. Every single female character in this show was strong in her own way, and I really compliment the writers for creating them like that. I’m not surprised to see that this series was screenwritten and co-directed by women. It really shows. 🔥

Now that I’ve concluded my main analysis, I would like to make some separate remarks on certain parts of the story that I found a bit confusing or disappointing, starting with what I’d like to call: The Logic of the Prophecy. I mentioned before that I found the King’s response to it a bit extreme, but I feel like there was a potential plothole to it, as well.
First of all, isn’t it kind of weird to think that someone who is already an heir to the throne would overthrow his own father? As in, even though they’re going to succeed him at some point, anyway? Unless they’re just really impatient, it wouldn’t really make sense to prematurely kick him off the throne, right? This is what I kept thinking, and what made King Gwanghae’s decision to kill his own child because of that prophecy so unrealistic. The fact that he was too blind to even calmly think it through really bothered me. It just made the whole reason behind his actions so weak. You killed your own son because you were afraid he would overthrow you? Sir, he would have become King after you anyway, why would he overthrow you? Wasn’t it more logical to look at the people who weren’t able to obtain the throne despite being royal descendants?
In that train of thought, why didn’t he just conduct an investigation of all his family members’ birthdays as soon as he heard the prophecy? It literally said ‘a’ royal offspring. Not ‘his’ offspring or ‘this specific person’. How could he have overlooked the fact that Neungyang was born on November 19th as well? If he was so paranoid, it would’ve made more sense if he’d thoroughly scrutinized everyone in his family to make sure he didn’t miss anything. The fact that all this misery happened because he didn’t even think to double-check whether or not his nephew had actually been born during the Japanese Invasion or not just bothers me.
Also, in my opinion, the King remained quite neglectful in his paranoia until the end. Am I the only one who found it really weird that he didn’t even check whether it was actually Nok Du’s body that Neungyang brought him? It was so uncharacteristic of him to suddenly be like: “I don’t need to see it, I believe you” after going through such extreme measures to make sure his son was dead.
The delay of execution in the final revolt was also kind of weird to me. Why would Neungyang wait another nine years to finally do it? He could’ve done right after he fooled him with Nok Du’s fake dead body, why wait another decade? That was such a random time jump, and they also didn’t even age any of the other characters. They never mentioned any specific years in the story either, so it wasn’t that they needed to follow specific numbers to make it align with actual history, either. As a matter of fact, the reason for Neungyang’s desperate desire to take over the throne wasn’t even clear to me. I guess something must have changed within him after his father died, as I do remember him saying something about that he always listened to and learned from his father’s stories, but in hindsight I’m not actually sure where his bloodlusty greed for the throne actually originated. I get that it only mattered to the story that both Neungyang and King Gwanghae were both desperate about claiming and keeping the throne, but I would’ve liked a valid reason or argument that explained why they let themselves get swept away by their greed like that. It would’ve made it easier to understand where they were coming from.
Another thing that I didn’t really understand was that final interference from the King’s sister. After little Prince Yeongchang (Seo Eun Yool) had been killed, we never really saw Queen In Mok (played by Oh Ha Nee) again, but then she suddenly appeared during the revolt only to point accusatory fingers at Nok Du instead of Neungyang, even though she also didn’t want Neungyang on the throne. What was up with that? Did she just want to pin her brother against his own son after he got hers killed or something? Was it some sort of weird revenge thing? I didn’t see the added value of her suddenly showing up again to ruin things for Nok Du again for no clear reason. That was kind of annoying.

Generally speaking, I found the order of events in the final episode very strange. After that whole epic battle episode, Dong Joo gave herself to Neungyang so that Nok Du could be evacuated safely, but then the next moment Nok Du just reappears, completely recovered, and takes her away to live happily ever after. Just like that.
Sure, the main danger was gone since the King had by then officially proclaimed Nok Du dead and ended his pursuit of him, but somehow I just couldn’t help but feel like things weren’t finished. I expected they would first wrap up everything that needed to happen at the palace before ending it with a big happily ever after wedding party on the island.
The way they went from Dong Joo’s captivity to that blissful wedding sequence to the final confrontation nine years later just felt unnatural to me. It kind of debunked the effect of Dong Joo giving herself up to Neungyang to save Nok Du as well, as it literally felt like he came to get her the very next day. Neungyang might have just as well taken that as his final sign to tell the King that Nok Du actually still wasn’t dead – I know he couldn’t do that because he was the one who brought him his body, but I just mean he could’ve still retaliated. Instead, everything was suddenly good and well and no more worries, and the final confrontation was also a lot less satisfying than I’d anticipated. Of course, since it’s based on actual historical events, Neungyang was always going to succeed in his revolt, but I still hoped for a proper “Oh my God what have I done” scene with the King. I just wanted him to fully realize his own stupidity, but even that effect was diminished by how the final confrontation ultimately played out.
So yeah, I can’t deny that I was a bit disappointed by how very easy and conveniently everything ended, even though I’m glad Nok Du and Dong Joo got to actually live their happy life together, of course.

It’s time for the cast comments! As I mentioned before, I really loved the cast of this show and the energy and sincerity they brought to their characters. I really don’t have any negative comments about anyone’s acting, everyone was really into it and it showed.

I’ve only seen Jang Dong Yoon twice before in School 2017 and Drama Special: If We Were a Season, but he definitely made a very strong impression on me in this show. I really loved the energy he brought to the table as Nok Du. He showed a wide emotional range and also fully went for the scenes where he pretended to be a woman. It was really cool seeing an actor I’d only seen in smaller roles/dramas before in such a turbulent main lead role. I thought his performance was really good and I also liked his chemistry with Kim So Hyun. As I mentioned in my character analysis, I really appreciated that Nok Du cried a lot, and I really respect Jang Dong Yoon for being so unapologetically sad and emotional. Honestly, it was more than natural for him to cry about all the things that were happening around him. The actor was able to express all these complicated feelings so naturally, it was really admirable. I will definitely keep an eye out for Jang Dong Yoon in the future. He did a great job.

KIM 👏🏻 SO 👏🏻 HYUN 👏🏻. I am so incredibly proud of my girl. This might actually be my favorite performance of her so far. I’ve seen her grow up from a child actress to a main female lead, through The Moon That Embraces the Sun, The Girl Who Sees Smells, Rooftop Prince, Missing You, I Hear Your Voice, Who Are You: 2015, Bring it On Ghost, Goblin, Ruler: Master of the Mask, While You Were Sleeping, Radio Romance and Love Alarm. My only criticism on her acting has always been with her romantic scenes, and I remember I was just wondering if it’d been the same in this show… and it wasn’t. You cannot imagine how I screamed when she actually kissed back, that honestly felt like such a defining moment!! From all the shows I’ve seen her in so far, this is the one in which she shone the most, in my opinion. She handled the emotional range so well, she went from bright and cheerful so genuinely heartbroken and she managed to maintain Dong Joo’s strength in her energy, expression and body language throughout the whole series. I am so glad I got to see her in this and to see yet another great development in her acting skills. She was so natural with Jang Dong Yoon and her fellow co-stars as well. I really, really loved her performance. It’s a new fave for sure!

I will say it again and again: nothing could ever make me hate Kang Tae Oh. Even seeing him as a villain in this, I could only just admire how well he pulled it off. Call me biased, but I really think he did an amazing job at Grand Prince Neungyang. I’ve seen him before in Short, That Man Oh Soo, My First First Love, Run On and Extraordinary Attorney Woo and because he’s typically always cast as a good guy it was really interesting to see a different take on that perfect smile of his. Honestly, I had no idea in advance that Kang Tae Oh was even in this, or that he was going to be the villain, but his portrayal of Neungyang actually gave me goosebumps. He was so good. I wonder if he’s done more troubled or problematic roles, because now I’m curious to see even more variety in his acting, lol. It was really cool seeing him in this in such an unexpected role. I believe it’s also the first time I’ve seen him in a historical drama, so that was nice, too. I’m already looking forward to the next I’ll see of him.

According to MDL, I should have seen Jung Joon Ho before in True Beauty and Backstreet Rookie, but I don’t remember him from those. He did look very familiar to me, but maybe he just has one of those faces. In any case, I really liked his portrayal of King Gwanghae. It was cool to see him switch from serene kindness to intense paranoia and rage. Seeing the good that was still hidden in him, I actually found myself wishing that they’d deviated from the historical events to create a satisfying ending in which Neungyang got caught and the King came to terms with his past mistakes. It was quite cruel that he and Nok Du would’ve been able to get on so well had they been strangers, because they would never be able to see eye to eye as father and son. The way Jung Joon Ho balanced the two sides of King Gwanghae was really impactful. He fit the role he really well and did a great job at portraying this turbulent character. Now I find myself wanting to see him play a loving father role, just to see the difference, lol.

It’s funny to think that the last role I saw Kim Tae Woo in was a psychopathic murderer, lol. I’ve seen him before in God’s Gift: 14 Days, Romance is a Bonus Book (still my favorite role of his) and most recently in Missing: The Other Side S2. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in a historical drama, and the first time I’ve seen his character undergo such a tragic fate. I kind of liked how it was kept a bit ambiguous at first whether Heo Yoon was actually evil or not. It can go either way with Kim Tae Woo, and it was nice to be put on the wrong track at first, because that made the discovery that he’d actually been loyal to the King the entire time even more painful once he was accused. Next to the ‘extra’ roles I’ve seen him play, it was nice to see him in a calmer and more subdued role for a change. I love getting the chance to see different sides of actors that I already like, it just makes me appreciate them even more. I honestly think Heo Yoon could’ve stuck around for a while longer, his death was quite sudden and unexpected and he would have loved to see the resistance against Neungyang once the Muweol Corps also learned about his betrayal. In any case, it was nice to see Kim Tae Woo in this and to witness a new side to his acting.

Yoon Yoo Sun is another one of those faces that I’m always happy to see in K-Dramas. I’ve seen her before in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, Mary Stayed Out All Night, King of High School, Producer, She Was Pretty, Shopping King Louie, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, The King Loves, Just Between Lovers, Abyss, Yumi’s Cells and Extraordinary Attorney Woo. She’s typically cast as a mother, in my experience, and that’s also really the vibe I got from her portrayal as Lady Chun: she was like a mother to all the women she’d taken in. I really loved her role in this series, even though it unfortunately ended way too soon. Just like with Heo Yoon, I think she would’ve loved seeing her assassin squad head into that battle at the palace, she would’ve been so proud of Ssook. 🥹 I always really like Yoon Yoo Sun’s energy, even when she plays less friendly characters, she always fully goes for it and just exudes this kind of warm and motherly energy. It was really cool to see her as a gisaeng mama in this show, I hope to see her again soon!

I’ve seen Lee Seung Joon before in Hyde, Jekyll, Me, Madame Antoine, Descendants of the Sun, The Package, Thirty But Seventeen, He is Psychometric and Hotel Del Luna, and there’s a bunch more of his shows on my list. It was nice seeing him in this as Nok Du’s real father. I think this is probably the oldest I’ve seen him as, too, but he pulled it off very well, lol. I initially thought Nok Du would just leave his father and brother behind on the island and they wouldn’t actually come back that often, but I’m glad they weren’t forgotten and actually remained important supporting characters throughout the story. It was cool to find out about Jung Yoon Jeo’s past as a guard and friend of the King, and how he got entangled in this mess. Lee Seung Joon did a great job at expressing Jung Yoon Jeo’s sincerity from beginning to end, and I really liked seeing him in this.

You know that feeling when you see a certain actor in something for the first time and then suddenly they appear in everything you watch after that? That’s my experience with Song Geon Hee now, lol. As soon as he appeared on screen as Hwang Tae I was like: “THOMAS?!?!” 😂😂😂 I got introduced to him very recently through Missing: The Other Side, and now I’m happy whenever I see him. As I mentioned in my review, I wasn’t really sure about Hwang Tae’s true feelings regarding Nok Du, although I do still believe he never actually resented him, and that he just pretended to hate him in front of Neungyang. In any case, I still enjoyed Song Geon Hee’s performance, he approached the character very genuinely and I’m glad he still came round in the end. The subtly suggested shipping of him and Ssook was a bit random, but kind of cute as well, lol. It was really nice seeing him in a historical drama, and I hope I’ll get to the other shows on my list that he appears in soon.

I’ve seen Lee Moon Shik before in Rooftop Prince, Healer, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, The Secret Life of My Secretary and Move to Heaven, but I’ll probably remember him best from his role in this show. Despite his general funny uncle vibes, I really liked that he actually got into the action part of the story as well. He balanced the silliness and the seriousness very well and became a character that I came to like and respect a lot. I feel like he was a really significant supporting figure to Nok Du while he was separated from his father. He was dependable and trustworthy, and those kind of allies were very welcome. I really liked his energy, how he switched from being goofy to the martial arts master in battle. I liked his performance a lot!

Park Da Yeon was eight years old when this show aired, yet she managed to come across so incredibly mature that it actually surprised me. I know the talent level of child actors in Korea is quite high, but she is definitely another one to look out for. Honestly, I LIVED for her portrayal of little Aeng Du. It was a blast to see such a young girl nail that level of wit, sassiness and charm all at the same time. She only has five dramas to her name so far, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for her, because she’s a very promising little star. I hope she’ll continue to develop her acting skills while she grows up, because going by her performance in this show alone, she’s going to be absolutely brilliant.

I was so surprised to see Jo Soo Hyang in this! I’ve seen her before in Who Are You: School 2015 (where she played Kim So Hyun’s relentless bully), Drama Special: What is the Ghost Doing?, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Vivid Romance, Duel and Something in the Rain. I was really impressed by her portrayal of Ssook; this is definitely my favorite role of her so far. As I mentioned before, I loved Ssook’s character development, and it was so cool to see her go from her usual pokerface to expressing more lively and emotional expressions as the story progressed. I said it before: Ssook was one of my favorite supporting characters in this, and it helped that I got to see such new colors in Jo Soo Hyang’s acting. It was really cool to see her in such an intense role, and in a historical drama for the first time. I’m really curious to see what else she’s put out!

Last but certainly not least, my boy Hwang In Yeop. I’ve seen him before in True Beauty and The Sound of Magic. As I mentioned earlier, at first I thought he was just going to make a guest appearance since he initially just appeared to cut ice cubes with his sword and didn’t say a word, lol. I’m glad they gave him more lines and things to do. I would’ve really liked to get some more background information on him and his friendship with Neungyang, that would’ve probably gotten me attached to his character a bit more. Now, because he was just a loyal follower of the bad guy, he didn’t really instill that much empathy in me, especially after killing Lady Chun. In a parallel universe, his character would’ve probably grown on me much more, but as it was, Dan Ho remained like a silent enigma to me. Hwang In Yeop did great though, it was cool seeing him as this collected, silent swordsman. I also hadn’t seen him in a historical drama before, so that was cool.

I feel like I’ve said all I wanted to say about this drama, so I’ll end it here. All in all, I really enjoyed it. The story may not have been the most original, but it had a lot of beautiful and touching scenes and the different storylines came together very naturally. There may have been some confusing details here and there that occasionally made it hard for me to keep up with the exact timeline of things, but the overall quality of the series was great, the acting was really good and I loved the music and the beautiful cinematic shots they included. I want the shot of Nok Du and Dong Joo walking together in the flower field framed, because it looked just like a painting.
It was nice getting into another historical drama with a straightforward plot and a happy ending, even though I still think it was wrapped up a bit too easily in some aspects. The romantic storyline was also included very naturally, it’s been a while since I’ve been so fond of a main couple. I think the writers did a good job at establishing the characters, even if some had a bit more depth than others. I liked that it put a spotlight on underprivileged women as well, because I don’t think that’s shown very often. The fact that it featured strong, independent women and female assassins and showed women actively participating in battles was really cool, I loved that. Seeing Kim So Hyun in such a strong and self-assured lead role was also definitely a bonus, I really enjoyed her performance in this.
I’m glad I finally got to see this series, it had been on my list for quite some time, and the autumn season made watching this extra cozy. I’m kind of settling into this monthly reviewing routine, so I’m probably going to keep that up. Unless my next watch is really short, then I’ll probably be back sooner (watch me jinx it).

Thank you for taking the time to read my review, and I will be back as soon as I can.

Bye-bee! x