Netflix K-drama The Glory: Song Hye-kyo plays bullying victim in deliciously overblown revenge saga

“I’ll be your killer.” Who knew those words could be so romantic? Kim Eun-sook, apparently, who penned the line for her new show and first Netflix original series The Glory. After a relatively quiet year, Netflix looks set to end 2022 with a bang by launching this revenge drama starring Song Hye-kyo, which reunites her with writer Kim six years after Descendants of the Sun. In between, Kim scripted the 2018 hit drama Mr. Sunshine. In the director’s chair for the eight-episode series is Stranger and Happiness director Ahn Gil-ho. Glossy genre shows like Squid Game have been generating plenty of column inches around the world, but the real innovation brewing in the K-drama industry these days seems to be the production of high-class soap operas. Korean soaps, known as makjang dramas, have long been a major draw. A few years ago a new breed of prime time soap emerged, spearheaded by Sky Castle. Shows like The Penthouse went on to add some gloss to the trashy thrills of melodrama, while The World of the Married lifted the genre further and added a touch of sophistication. This year the genre has pushed on further still, first with the superlative Little Women and now with the delightfully excessive The Glory. 11 new Korean drama series to look out for in December 2022 The story is simple. Song plays Moon Dong-eun, a woman who was horrifically bullied in high school and who has been plotting her revenge ever since. Sixteen years after her trauma, she is now a teacher with immaculate credentials who has just been hired at a prestigious junior school. One of her students is the daughter of Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon), who was her chief tormentor in school. All of Dong-eun’s bullies are still part of the same tight unit they were in while at school, and still share the same uneasy internal dynamic dictated by their social class. Dong-eun has plans for all of them. Yeon-jin is now a popular weather announcer on the news and is married to construction industry tycoon Ha Do-yoon (Jung Sung-il), who loves to play Go – a strategic Korean board game similar to chess. Over the years, Dong-eun has become quite a Go player in her own right and has deliberately made herself noticed by Jung. Sixteen years is a long time to plot one’s revenge, but viewers might remember that a similar thing happened in Park Chan-wook’s drama Oldboy, which also hinges on a high school student unable to move on from the past. The Glory appears to acknowledge the connection through stylistic and musical choices that call to mind Park’s classic film. Dong-eun’s quest begins as a solitary one but, as her plan grows more complex, other people enter her orbit – including co-conspirator Kang Hyun-nam (Yum Hye-ran) and handsome young plastic surgeon Joo Yeo-jung (Lee Do-hyun). Hyun-nam becomes Dong-eun’s accomplice by chance when she notices her rifling through someone’s trash for incriminating documents. Rather than report her, she asks her for a rather big favour: kill the husband who brutally beats her all the time. The pair become firm allies, but Dong-eun remains detached and professional while Hyun-nam tries to get closer to her. Dong-eun acts in similarly cool fashion towards Yeo-jung, who has been interested in her for years, during which time he volunteered to be her Go tutor. Yeo-jung’s position in the tale eventually solidifies in a compelling way, but until that happens he floats in and out like a diverting but disconnected piece of the puzzle. There is a word in Korea – eogulhada – which is extremely common but does not have a satisfactory translation in English. Korean-English dictionaries say it means “to be unfair”, but more specifically it is the personal feeling of having been wronged or unfairly treated. Now, We Are Breaking Up: Song Hye-kyo in tawdry K-drama It is a powerful word heard constantly in K-dramas. This single word is like a short cut, whose force and clarity conveys a lot of meaning, especially in an aggressively top-down society like South Korea’s. The feeling of suffering great injustice drives a lot of drama on Korean screens, and revenge dramas are the most concentrated form of this. But even among revenge dramas, The Glory stands out for being merciless – both from the standpoint of the aggressor and the victim-turned-avenger. Violent school bullies are a dime a dozen, but Dong-eun’s main tormentor, Yeon-jin, is in her own league. Played in her teenage years by Shin Ye-eun, she bores into Dong-eun with shining, malevolent eyes and attacks her with a curling iron, permanently covering her whole body with large welts. There is not much subtlety in The Glory, and its politics occasionally come across as a bit conservative – sex is a vice exclusively practised by the villains – but this is rip-roaringly overblown entertainment that will have you screaming bloody murder early on before settling in for a satisfying revenge saga. The show’s seductive mise-en-scene and Kim’s elegant writing, demonstrated in Dong-eun’s lyrical voice-over, are just the icing on the cake. The Glory will start streaming on Netflix on December 30.

Netflix K-drama The Glory: Song Hye-kyo plays bullying victim in deliciously overblown revenge saga

Netflix series The Glory tells the story of a woman who, 16 years after being mercilessly bullied at school, exacts revenge on her aggressors The Korean drama, starring Song Hye-kyo, is gloriously overblown entertainment that will have you screaming bloody murder at the characters on the screen

Netflix series The Glory tells the story of a woman who, 16 years after being mercilessly bullied at school, exacts revenge on her aggressors

The Korean drama, starring Song Hye-kyo, is gloriously overblown entertainment that will have you screaming bloody murder at the characters on the screen