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The 2017 Korean drama, starring Yoon Kyun-Sang as Hong Gil-Dong, Chae Soo-Bin as Song Ga-Ryung, Kim Sang-Joon as Hong Ah Mo-Gae, Kim Ji-Suk as Lee Yoong, Lee Ha-Nui as Gong-Hwa/Nok-Soo, and Shim Hee-Sub as Hong Gil-Hyun.
Brief summary: Legend has it that when the country needs it most, the heavens will raise up a Child Warrior, or a child with supernatural strength, to save the people. Ah Mo-Gae is a servant of several generations, but he’s more brilliant than his lowly name suggests and his son Gil-Dong is stronger than he looks. Ah Mo-Gae is smart and cunning and this eventually leads him to great fortune with a band of thieves. But when his dealings are discovered by his master, Ah Mo-Gae loses everything, including his wife. He and his children run away, establishing themselves in the forgotten place Ikhwari an gaining followers. But when the forces of evil threaten to destroy everything again, Gil-Dong is the one to step forward as a leader to protect his loved ones and any one that wishes to join them! Joseon is about to have it’s hands full with the strongest revolutionary in all legend.
I should have put exclamation points at the end of those five stars! This historical drama is incredible! It’s one of the longer dramas I’ve ever seen at 30 episodes, but it was just amazing and I was thoroughly invested all the way through. It’s a heart-warming story, as well as tragic, and adventurous to the core! So I have a few things to say about what I noticed that made me love it so much.
- Ah Mo-Gae’s parenting. We grow to know Ah Mo-Gae as the strong ambitious parent, who may or may not be doing legally questionable activities. He has ambitions for his children and they are his motivation for all that he does, but his boys have different ideas in their minds. Of course Ah Mo-Gae wants the absolute best for his children. He’s already decided that Gil-Hyun will become a scholar and Gil-Dong will become a general to receive a sword from the king. Yet, in his children’s minds the best kind of life is not what Ah Mo-Gae thought. But he lets them pursue their choice of career anyways. Gil-Hyun follows in his father’s footsteps in ambition to lead Ikhwari. Gil-Dong becomes a traveling merchant. Ah Mo-Gae never tried to dissuade them or coerce them into his ideals, but he gave them all he could as a tender parent. And even though both boys eventually became even more, I thought it was funny that at different points during the drama they circled back to the lives their father wanted for them.
- Yoo Kyung-Sang made the rest of the cast look like shrimp. He definitely gave Gil-Dong a majestic vibe that I liked although he certainly switched his character’s style a bit. :)
- The sweet feeling of vengeance. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve been so invested in a drama. This one had me feeling the spirit of justice all the way. I got chills when Hong Gil-Dong stood in front of the walls of Hwangjumok and said “The blood of Ah Mo-Gae that flows in my veins is more precious than any name!” Watching Hong Gil-Dong and the other Hong family members made my heart throb!
- Mo-Ri got a happy ending. You have no idea how much I really wanted that to happen. I didn’t even build a ship for him, I just wanted him to live. And I got double blessings! He lived and he lived happily, too! It seemed his character was a lot deeper than we all thought.
And then some other things I noticed:
A) Ga-Ryung’s scar. We never get to learn about it. I thought it would have some cool tragic backstory, but no. We only saw it once and then it never came up again, not even when she went into the palace. That was just a little bit mildly disappointing.
B) The violence in this drama is definitely not for the faint of heart or stomach. This is a drama about revolution, almost a civil war. There’s bound to be quite a bit of blood and gore, so it’s probably not the best choice to have small kids exposed to.
C) In the beginning, I was confused about the role of the king because he wasn’t doing anything either good or bad. So I labeled him in my mind as a neutral character. That sounds ludicrous just as I was typing that. Yeah, just kidding. I was very wrong. It’s interesting, though, that I was deceived like that. Did that happen to a lot of the viewers when they first saw this drama? Did they also think the king was a neutral character? I’ve never been so surprised by my own pure amount of error! Maybe I was an anomaly, though, and everyone else could already see it coming.
D) Following up point C, I came to assume as I watched that the tyrannical king was nothing more than that— tyrannical and bloodthirsty. So imagine my further shock when I watched the king truly heartbroken over Nok-Soo. I didn’t think that the king could feel anything other than greed, but I guess I was wrong again.
I was also wrong in supposing that Hong Gil-Dong was going to be the picture-perfect protagonist. It’s something not to like, but also something to love in this drama; Gil-Dong doesn’t always have our sympathy. We love him as the naive boy, but then he becomes so cold-hearted after the incident with his family and is only driven by revenge. We didn’t really like watching him act out like that. We didn’t like watching him behave harshly or so stoic with Ga-Ryung, either.
Speaking of Ga-Ryung, there is a line of romance in this drama, it’s just not the main plot of the drama. It can’t be the main story, but I liked how it was worked into it as an embellishment.
The lines in this drama! Talk about goosebumps! I’ll give you a sneak peek at a couple.
Sample A:
King Yeonsan : “Answer me. I heard that you are the descendent if the Goryeo royal family who were all sentenced to be killed. Is that true? And if not that, I also heard rumors that you were born of a concubine and you started this uprising because you felt wronged that you were stripped of any stays you could’ve had. Is that true? Who are you, then? Just who the hell are you, then?”
Hong Gil-Dong: “I am neither the heir of a royal family nor the child of a concubine. Nor am I the child of a noble family that fell from grace. I am merely my father’s son. The son of Servant Ah Mo Gae. The lowest of the low.”
King Yeonsan: “There’s no way that’s true. There is no way that that pathetic man calls someone like you his son”
Hong Gil-Dong: “And yet you were of a king who is the child of the heavens. So how did you end up becoming so pathetic?... but do you know this? The ones who gave birth to me may have been my parents but there is someone else who made me into who I am today. And that person... is you. I was Gil Dong the merchant, as well as “Footrest,” a kitchen servant. I would’ve eventually died as a merchant selling liquor during the prohibition and as someone who punished wicked nobles. That’s all I would have done in life. There wasn’t much else to it. Quite a boring life, really. However... on that day, when you destroyed my body the blood-tears that you wrung our of your own people flowed to me and re-aligned all my bones, and stitched up all my wounds. So if you wish to stop me now, all you need to do now is stop yourself.”
Sample B:
Hong Gil-Dong directed towards the king: “Does not the chance you missed make your heart ache?”
Sample C:
“Force is only used by cowards.”
If the lines in this drama were not enough to sell me on it alone, the OST was sure impeccable! It was different than anything I was expecting, full of adventurous mood music and classic Korean to make your feet stomp. Needless to say, I just downloaded the entire album.
This one is really impressive! I can almost guarantee you’ll enjoy it!
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