latteholic

Since no one has mentioned it yet, try Queen In Hyun's Man.

tvN has been producing 1 hr 20 min dramas for a while now (Reply 1994 was the one I remember starting this trend, around 2014). I’m assuming that’s the length of their weekend time slot.

Korea-Khitan War was the last proper sageuk that I've watched. I know there were some more proper sageuks that came out recently: The Queen Who Crowns and Queen Woo, but I haven't gotten around to watching them yet.

I agree with you. I'm just pointing out that the name changes happened because they don't want to associate this "romanticized" version of Yeonsangun with the RL Yeonsangun. Some sageuks have caught flak before for depicting historical figures as too modern or joking about the Joseon annals and calling them a gossip tabloid (i.e. Mr Queen). Every time, the broadcasting stations scramble to apologize, delete the scenes, or change the character names so as to not upset the descendants.

Yeah, he got himself in hot water for accidentaly posting squid game porn parody on his insta so he had to drop out of the drama.

Yep! He was one of the worst, if not the worst, kings in Joseon, so it feels weird, even disrespectful, to give him a big redemption arc and romanticize him while still using his real name. But iirc, historians believed he had the potential to be a decent or even good king, though he had already shown flaws like being temperamental and indulgent. It was the trauma of discovering the truth about his mother that caused him to spiral into madness, leading him to order the purge and ultimately turning him into a cruel tyrant.

Honestly, I didn't expect much since this wasn't on my to-watch list, but the first 2 episodes were more fun that I thought!

Quick thought: I noticed that they changed the names of all the key figures: Yi Yung --> Yi Heon; Jang Nok Su --> Kang Mok Ju; Queen Insu -> Queen In Ju, etc. It seems like the plan is to portray "Yeonsangun" as the misunderstood lover boy, with Yoona somehow preventing the literati purge that basically kicked off his descent into paranoia and madness, thereby changing the course of history in a major way. However, calling him Yeonsangun/Yi Yung without the literati purge is not going to fly with Korean audiences, which is why the names were changed.

I can buy him surviving that arrow shot because it didn't seem to damage his organs as you said. She also didn't remove the arrow, only getting rid of the tip so that should help prevent bleeding. Plus, she put magical petroleum jelly from 2025 to protect the wound. I'm actually more curious about how she survived that fall from the cliff with that horizontal position and the king pancaking her on the way down. That fall looked nasty. Still, I'm fine with some plot armor this early in the story.

So… I saw the trailer on YouTube earlier today and got hyped, thinking it was Kim Ji Hoon’s new drama. Then it turned out to be Rowoon. Womp womp. Honestly though, the facial hair and the messy topknot fooled me...

Rebel Thief Who Stole The People

Rebel Thief Who Stole The People :)

If you’re looking for more serious Korean period dramas (less fusion), I’d recommend Tree With Deep Roots, Six Flying Dragons, and Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People. Rebel specifically was such an underrated gem. When it aired, the cast wasn’t particularly what you'd call "popular cast", Lee Hanee and Kim Ji Suk were still playing mostly second leads, it was Chae Soo Bin and Yoon Kyun Sang’s first main roles, and even one of Kim Jung Hyun’s earliest drama appearances. Yet together they formed one of the strongest ensembles I've seen in a sageuk. Compared to the other two, Rebel is more lighthearted in tone, but it’s no less engaging, with fleshed out characters that really carry the story. It ended up being my favorite sageuk of 2017 and the writer later went on to write My Dearest.

I wasn't planning to watch this yet since Yoona is a bit hit or miss for me, and I wanted to wait to see if it was worth committing. But after feeling underwhelmed by Twelve's first episode, I clicked play on this at random, and then realized it’s set during Yeonsangun’s reign. That’s definitely a choice. If they can humanize him without excusing his tyranny, like RTWSTP did, then I’m seated for now.

I mean, k-dramas with mature themes aren’t new. Cable channels like tvN and JTBC have been doing them since the 2010s. The difference is that broadcast rules kept a tight lid on things: no nudity, no graphic sex, and even knives or tattoos had to be blurred. Netflix isn’t making K-dramas more graphic, it’s just not bound by those rules, which is why you now see nudity and more realistic portrayals. If you prefer a more conservative style, stick with the big 3 networks (KBS, SBS, MBC). If you’re fine with sexual themes but want them without nudity or explicit sex scenes, cable dramas (tvN, JTBC) are usually a safer bet. Netflix simply adds more options rather than replacing the old formats, and if you’d rather avoid that kind of content altogether (yes even in American dramas), you can always stick to platforms like Disney+ or Hallmark for family friendly shows. Also friendly reminder thatyou can always check the maturity rating before watching, since it’s there to help you pick what fits your comfort level.

This is one of the fusion sageuks that I remember very fondly, though the ending initially left me a bit dissatisfied. But watching it again after 3 years, when I needed a really good laugh, made me appreciate it more. I guess already knowing how it ended, helped me gain more from the story and the characters than during my initial watch, while still LOL-ing at the hijinks. It’s still a bittersweet ending, but it feels sweeter than bitter this time around, so I raised my rating by 0.5 point. The only small thing that still bugs me is the worldbuilding, since it’s never really clear why and how the time-travel body possession happened, which I feel would have helped the storyline if the writer had left a small clue about it.

That's true though. Gun violence is virtually nonexistent in gangster conflicts in SK because use of guns is tightly regulated. Civilians who use guns for hunting/sport shooting are not allowed to even keep guns at home and they are required to store them at police stations and have them checked out legally when they want to go hunting/sport shooting and they have to return them later to the police station. That's why movies/dramas usually portray gangster fights with either bare hands, knives, pipes, or baseball bats. And any high profile cases involving guns are usually when soldiers desert their posts with military weapons (look up 2014 South Korea shooting spree), or after civilians check out guns/hunting rifles from police station (look up 2015 Sejong and Hwaseong shootings).

to show how the easy availability of illegal guns allows anger and frustration to escalate into deadly acts, how school bullying and career failure can push people over the edge, how a lack of trust in the justice system drives people to take matters into their own hands, and how any sense of social peace quickly collapses once guns are widespread, making violence both easier to commit and harder to contain.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think the series has a lot of clear social commentary on guns and violence that comes through in the storyline, rather blatantly even (I personally wish it was more nuanced). It just seems that these days, unless a character says it outright, the message tends to go unnoticed. Just from the storyline, some of the commentaries it's trying to make are...

the series is rated as 18+ because there are 18+ scenes...

I totally get not suspecting him.

My issue was that KJM told them his daughter got home safely and sleeping, and Oh Ji Hoon confirmed that with KJM even though he never saw her in person. So if anything happened to her, it must have been during their dinner/get together or later that night, this is if the police even not assuming KJM wasn’t a suspect. But the police took in OJH and PJJ under the assumption they might have harmed her after she left the police station, which is also how it was shown to us. Plus, OJH was acting as if he forgot that KJM told him that his daughter got home and sleeping when he was interrogated and said that he last saw her with PJJ (which is true, but he should have said that KJM said that the daughter got home). That’s why I said the writer dropped the ball procedurally. I don’t like to throw around the term "plot hole" every time something doesn’t make sense, but after thinking about it a lot, I do believe this one exists because the writers trying too hard to keep the suspense and mystery high and make everyone a suspect.

If KJM said she was home in her room and they ruled him out, then the kidnapping timeline should have shifted to during dinner/get-together and after. But why did they put PJJ in the detention cell as if he did something to her when he was walking her home after she ran away from the police station? I think he arrived at the get-together, either around the same time or even before KJM and OJH arrived.