This week we delve into a remake of an adaptation, The Scandal, helmed and portrayed by a dream team, yet with surprisingly mixed audience reactions. Cads, conniving, and virtuous widows abound!
Premiering on September 18, 2026, The Scandal is a brief K-drama at only 8 episodes, but lushly produced and visually beautiful. The striking, visually intricate recreation of the Joseon era is enhanced by the cast, particularly Son Ye-Jin (Crash Landing on You), for whom every scene seems to have been framed as a classical portrait. She is joined by Ji Chang-Wook (Healer), playing very much against type. The lead cast is rounded out by NANA (My Man is Cupid), who is portraying a role significantly different from her usual action and thriller fare.
Ultimately an adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, this is not the first Joseon-era retelling of that classic tale of manipulation; 2003’s Untold Scandal was itself a major Korean adaptation, as well as a smash hit. This retelling differs in some material ways from the source material, with the principal characters being long-separated cousins. Lady Cho (Son Ye-Jin) is the well-educated, high-ranking wife of Lord Yoo, who has taken it upon herself to personally select a concubine for her husband, with the intention of providing him with a male heir. She finds herself thwarted, however, when her husband selects his own concubine, the lovely young So-Ok. Lady Cho has spent her entire life up to this point hampered by the conventions of Joseon society: as a woman, she was privately educated by her father, but unable to enjoy a career as a man would. Instead, she was married according to the customs of the day, after providing her young male cousin, Cho Won, with her own words and writing that allowed him to pass a civil service exam and grow into a position of means. She has simmered in restrained anger since that time. When her husband moves forward in securing his concubine without her consent or knowledge, her rage boils over.
She summons her cousin after a silence of many years and makes a risky proposition: that Cho Won impregnate the concubine, so that Lady Cho may raise his son. Cho Won, who has a well-founded reputation as a libertine, proposes an alternative: that instead he seduce and corrupt a virtuous widow, Hui-Yeon (NANA), and provide Lady Cho with proof; once he has done so, she agrees to finally accept his overtures. If Cho Won fails to ruin Hui-Yeon, then he will seduce the concubine.
**Major Spoilers Ahead**
As in the original French epistolary novel, Cho Won unexpectedly develops feelings for the widow, who in return falls in love with him. Tasked with verifying Hui-Yeon’s suicide as a virtuous widow, Cho Won is faced with a dilemma: Hui-Yeon is a secret Catholic, for whom the expected virtuous suicide would be a sin. Hui-Yeon runs to Lady Cho who believes Hui-Yeon should be convinced to die to save Cho Won from the consequences of lying to the king, but in the ensuing confrontation the plan falls apart. Hui-Yeon flees, heartbroken, and Lady Cho briefly believes that she has won and that her cousin has chosen her. She is wrong: Cho Won realizes he cannot run away with Hui-Yeon, and Lady Cho realizes that Cho Won’s affections are no longer hers to control. With Hui-Yeon safe, Cho Won chooses to jump into the sea. Lady Cho is thus left exactly where she was in the beginning: constrained by the mores of the era, alone, but now essentially voiceless, without even Cho Won to use so that her writing may reach an audience.
**End Spoilers**
The drama received a lot of hype leading up to its release, arriving in the fall lineup and well positioned for awards season. The promotional tour has been comprehensive, including press conferences and cast appearances on daytime staple shows both news-oriented and beyond—most recently, a lot of buzz has surrounded Son Ye-Jin’s turn on a beloved daytime show called Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, for example. But while the drama’s award-season future appears very bright, the show has received mixed reviews from viewers, including that the pacing is a trifle slow. Indeed, the drama’s intricate plot can be difficult to follow around the midpoint of the series, as Cho Won and Hui-Yeon grow closer, until Lady Cho’s plan spirals completely out of control. Ji Chang-Wook, usually cast in more wholesome or heroic roles, took quite a risk in fully inhabiting the role of a libertine and seductor, and has received some negative reviews as a result from viewers who conflate his previous roles with the actor himself. For me, however, this was a risk that paid off handsomely, in a performance that beautifully underscores the frustrations and constraints of the nobility of the era: unable to obtain what he has always wanted, unable to freely accept the widow’s love, and ultimately unable to choose, Cho Won sees no option but to destroy himself. The tragedy of Lady Cho’s desperate wager is complete.
Son Ye-Jin’s portrayal of the refined, luminous, incandescently angry Lady Cho is also against type, but outstanding in its restraint and nuance. Her performance builds the walls Lady Cho exists within, ending finally with solitude and heartbreak as she is left, in her own words in the final scene, with nothing but longing, unable to write another word. This is very different fare from the shmoopy love stories or pirate adventure flicks Son Ye-Jin is most famous for. I would be surprised if a Baeksang Grand Prize nomination, and this time a win, was not in her near future. Gambling is illegal in South Korea, but I’d put a crisp fiver on this sure bet, any day.
