Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo (2016)
달의 연인 - 보보경심 려
Starring: Lee Ji Eun (IU), Lee Joon Gi, Kang Ha Neul
Seen: April 2020
Damn what a sad drama. Have those tissues close by, 여러분 (everyone)! It started out light and fun, interesting and quite endaring but as it goes on and as the years pass it gets so dark, so rough and so heartbreakingly sad. It's a very capturing drama, this one too, because of it's historical setting (in my opinion). It gives a vivid view of how life could look like in the different social statues of Goryeo, Korea, as Ha Jin gets to experience them all. I don't remember how I first found this drama, but I'm sure it as something to do with IU. I'd seen her in previous dramas and followed her to this one. As a sucker for history, as I might've mentioned before, I was very interested in possibly learning something about the founding of Korea. Well, if I didn't learn much of their history I at least learned some more vocabulary! 예, 폐하! (Yes, your majesty!)
Storyline:
The story is about Go Ha Jin who finds herself in the newly founded land of Goryeo - 9th century Korea - after drowning. While she thinks she's died, it seems to be she's been put into the body of someone else and has to live as Hae Soo to continue surviving. Hae Soo is the younger cousin of a woman married to the 8th prince of Goryeo - Wnag Wook. As a member of his household, she learns her way around the palace and its people. She grows close to the princes still living at the royal palace and ends up experiencing life in ways none like the one she knew from the 21st century. She settles in a life unknown to her and gains friends as well as enemies, memories of happiness as well of horror and loss. She gets to see behind the scenes of the king's ruling, the slave work of a servant, the respect as a nobel, the love of princes, the hate of a princes and the loss of them all.
First impression:
For being someone who "will get through it" she's very bold. She has no idea how life works where she is, no idea how HER life works where she is and opening her mouth at the wrong time to the wrong person could get her killed. Yet perhaps, that's why the princes take such a liking to her? She's not whipped for them like everyone else. She even gets in a fight with the 10th prince, demanding an aplogy for spying on an undressing woman. I do love how their friendship grows after that though, they're really the kind of "similar age brother and sister friends".
One of my favorite parts about this drama is how Ha Jin/Hae Soo starts making soap and makeup for her friends and family. Bathing and beauty has been an important thing to many ancient civilisations and makeup has in many cultures been seen as a sign of welth and fashion forwardness. She brings modern touches into the ancient art of makeup and makes soap a thing of frequent usage among her nobel/royal friends. She hasn't altered anything historic /there/ merely used her knowledge and interest to apply it to their raw way of making rather than artificial. It feels pure, like her true way of "getting through it".
Onto Wang So. I like the actor and I like the character. So is a greatly damaged soul, who only wants and craves one thing - love. He's been cast aside and treated like a dog by his mother, the person who really should love him above all else. She blames him for her mistakes, her misfortune and failiure. I understand why he does certain "evil" things he does, all he wants it to try and gain his mother's acceptance. But she always tricks him. Always decieves him. Hae Soo, however, always believe in him. Even when she's shaking with fear from her visions of his brutal reign as a king, she never truly fears him - she fears who he might become. Which is why she works to change that vision, to change peoples ill perception of him. She is the only one who has ever believed in him, no wonder he falls so hard for her. Wang So was brutal and murderous in the beginning, but it was clear why. He lacked love. His mother threw him away, despised him, called him her shame and flaw. There is actual science about the importance of love and physical affection towards children during their prime years of development. He didn't get it. That's why he's so confliced and confused when Hae soo cares about him, bothers about his blood and not the blood on him fron people he killed. She wants to nurse him, like his mother never did.
I do however love how she ends up marrying the third male lead character. I've never seen that before! That was the most unexpected thing in this and any drama I've seen so far, but I loved it! I did of course find it really sad that Wang So couldn't marry her, but at the same time he did treat her very badly and more or less exciled her along side his brother so he didn't know anything about her pregnancy, his child or her death until so much later. I don't want to say he deserved the heartache afterwards, but I'm glad he honored her wishes of being a kind king and not forcing his daugther to the palace - when he realized she was his.
After all Ha Jin went through as Hae Soo, all the hardship and heartache, I'm happy Jung made sure she had a friend by her side until the end. It's touching to see how her 'husband' and child remember her long after she's gone. It means that even though she died, lived a whole life in another era, and thought it was all a dream when she woke up back home in modern time, she had indeed lived and loved in the 9th century Goryeo, for they remembered her.
An honorable mention in this review is Court Lady Oh. I admire her sacrifice for Hae Soo, claiming herself as the culprit of the Crown Prince's poisoning attempt, even if she had nothing to do with it. Her attatchment to her, motherly feelings, made her offer to take Hae Soo's place at the execusion. She was dying painfully anyways, she might as well go heroically. No matter how much pain this brings Hae Soo, I believe it was a very noble and heartfelt thing to do. She saved her life, afterall.
I would interpret the ending of the drama as open, or at least it's wishful thinking. You could easily start a season 2 from where she broke down in the art gallary, remembering her lover, and turns around and he's standing there reincarnated in modern time and how he grows to remember her. The story could easily get a happy ending, but somehow I still liked the ending - however tear streaking and heart crushing. It was different.
It is a very malicious story, of brothers betraying brothers, the brutal royal politics and an ever example of what happens in the wake of human greed. Prince Moo would have been a good king, in the story, had he not been victim to sure mind games and the betrayal of slow, undetectable poisoning which weaked him in all aspects. I do not have any siblings myself, and had I been a royal at his time I am happy that I don't. They portray family as a burden while power is the ultimate price. All princes somehow go against one another, whether it be in greed and hunger for the thrown or desperation to remain the long forgone peace between them. Square in the middle is Hae Soo. A loyal friend, servant and lover. She wishes no harm upon any of them, but she has no choice but to see it happen, caused by each other. I find it utterly selfless of her to carry the hurt herself, considering she knows that she cannot interfer too much for the sake of history being altered. Thinking about this, it's not hard to understand the actual depth of the ending.
I don't think she was given another chance at life. I think she just got to relive her memories of her past life. That's why she was in a coma in modern times and kept feeling incomplete, kept dreaming about Wang So, like something was missing. I believe she died for a short period of time when she went into the water to save the child, and when the eclipse filled over the sun completely and moved away on the other side it symbolized a new sun rising. This one happened to be in a different time. Since the science of time and space features a lot of theories about how it can be a moving mass rather than a set one, meaning it could technically be possible to travel back in time, I really like how this show starts. Some theories about reincarnation and past lives state that you have no way of remembering your past life after somewhere around the time our brains starts developing at a more intense rate, becuase we start being more affected by society. Our brains aren't as pure as they were at birth where memories we don't remember when we're older very well could exist. For example, there are a lot of theories about birthmarks and moles being in places where we were kissed the most or injured severly in our past lives. Some say past lives are just vivid dreams you dream about when you die. I think that's what happened to Ha Jin. She died and while she was dead, she dreamt about living her past life again. I don't think she was supposed to remember it afterwards, but she did. That's why she felt so lost and defeated in the gallary. The modern Ji Mong, I believe did infact recognize her, know her and waited to see whether or not she would remember everything. He gives sweet little hints, "did you know the lastname "Go" was "Hae" in Goryeo times? There's no such things as coincidences, just things going back to their original place". For Ha Jin, that was true. She had in fact been Hae Soo, a thousand years ago. The princes in the pictures were her friends and the king was her greatest love, and she had foolishly promised to forget them all.
Cultural imput:
This cultural imput will be a little more historical, to fit the creative license of history the drama has adapted!
In the first episode, while Ha Jin (Hae Soo) is piecing together the fact that she's woken up in a different time, the King Taejo (founder of Goryeo, later known as Korea) mentioned that it's been 24 years since he founded the land "Goryeo" which with a quick google search tells us that as Goryeo was founded in the year 918, the year in which the story begins is 942 (this is also said in the imprinted little notes but when you need to look at the translated subtitles you don't notice those little date records until the second time you watch the whole drama again, eheh).
I find this super fascinating, how the world could look so different in different places during the same time. In the 9th century, it was "the viking age", as we call it, in Scandinavia. In reality we've had kings longer than we've recorded in history, but they weren't kings over a united nation but over smaller areas of the same geographic land. Korea looked like that during this time too, smaller kingdoms sharing a geographic land, but since Goryeo was the biggest that's the one that's being held in focus here.
Our first "king" was in 970 but it's really not until after we were christened officially (even though the process took several hundred years) that we can follow historical documentations of our royals. I'm fascinated by how far ahead of the Scandinavian countries the Asian countries were with their way of life, inventions, ideas, medicine, colourful fabrics and social lives in the higher statues. Like I mention in my review of K2 as well as Legend of The Blue Sea, we don't have a hiearchy system like Korea does. For most westerns I do believe it's concidered a typical asian cultural thing to have that social system, but none the less. This story shows different sides of different social levels during this time and it's very interesting to see how gravely they differ and what impact and outcomes that could have on someone's life. Ha Jin/Hae Soo gets to experience royal life, maiden life in three levels, slave life and then back up to a nobel life as the king's unofficial wife, and I think it changes her greatly for later on when she wakes up in modern time again. She lived that life, those lives, and she loved and cherished those people whom to others were only names in a history book. It must be very difficult to realize that reality.
AAAAAAHHHHH this drama is a special one. I love it so much. GO BINGE IT!
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