It is set in South Korea in medieval times.
A bastard prince is worried that his fatherβs wife might give birth to a son that might replace him as the heir to the kingdom.
Strange events happening in the countryside and courtroom intrigue combine to produce an road adventure combined with a horror genre.
\p
Before I start this post, I would like to say that English isn't my first language and therefore may write sentences/phrases with some grammatical errors. I hope my point can come across!
This post is in three parts: Overview, history, and "so what's the problem?"
<Overview>
This is not a hate post. This is a genuine concern.
As a fellow Korean, watching the first episode of the drama was simply painful. It actually hurts.
To put it in short words: the very plot & setting in the drama is the very example of distorting historyβhistory that is DIRECTLY linked to the very reason why South Koreans have the freedom they have today. I don't care if the producers/directors are saying that "it's just fiction!"
They should not have even dared to fictionalize this historical event.
To put it into context: What would be your reaction if you saw a romance Netflix Series that portrays the Nazis as somewhat likable and glorifies them?
That would be almost the equivalent of what is going on. The "Central/government intelligence" agents that appear is this drama, called "Ahn-ghi-boo" (μκΈ°λΆ) WERE NOT PEOPLE who were attempting to catch North Korean spies.
They are a group who killed SO many innocent peopleβespecially young students at the time who were protesting against the oppression. It used the above as an excuse; they accused innocent college/graduate students who were fighting for their freedom as a North Korean spy, just to torture them and kill them.
If you have seen the drama, there is a scene where the agent demands that he enter the girls' dorm, and the headmaster(the lady who was refusing them to go in) refuses and asks for a search warrant. I literally laughed when I saw that.
What ACTUALLY would have happened is, she would not even had chance to "talk back" at the dude. She would just be dead. Ahn-ghi-boo gave no shits about being decent, if they didn't like you, they were free to drag you out of your dorm/house and beat you/drown you (or whatever) to death.
This means that during his time, you could literally die any day.
If you were accused of being a "North Korean spy," you would be tortured to death.
If you were a student who was part of the protest to demand for freedom, you would be beaten to death.
By whom? By the intelligence agents ( shown in the drama!!!!!)
And I see this fu**ing drama portraying them as some reasonable, likable people. Like what the hell?
Watch this: [https://youtu.be/ZseojPc
... keep reading on reddit β‘
I heard about this on of the threads here a couple of weeks ago and started watching it. I found it to be really interesting. It's has ton of suspense, twists and turns. It has 16 episodes and the story really takes off around half way.
Plus, it is also filled with politics, and drama, kind of like "House of cards".
I think there are at least 3 big twists and the very first scene you'll see on episode-1 about a sniper is the same scene you'll see at the end of the season after 16 episodes. So the whole 16 episodes is kind of the prequel to the second season.
Note: The whole thing is in korean (no english narration) and if you don't know korean, you'll have to have English CC to follow it like I did.
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