A Scarred Song Hye-Kyo Exacts K-Drama Revenge In ‘The Glory’

The first episode of The Glory is not easy to watch, but then bullying is brutal, leaving physical and psychological scars that may never heal. In this Korean drama Song Hye-kyo plays Moon Dong-eun a victim of brutal and relentless bullying. Dong-eun is repeatedly assaulted by her high school classmates, but despite her obvious wounds, the wealthy classmates are never punished. Teachers look the other way and her parents quickly accept settlement money for her torture, none of which she gets.

When viewers meet grown-up Dong-eun, she’s standing on the roof of her new apartment building. It’s an ideal location where she can look down at the home of the former classmate she wants to destroy. Dong-eun’s first act after moving to the apartment is to cover the walls with photos of the sadistic bullies who tormented her, as well as the adults who looked the other way. The photos soon fill her walls and windows, blocking the sun. While revenge cannot heal the scars of bullying, Dong-eun can’t stop longing for it. After barely a minute of watching her being tortured in high school, so might the audience.

It is the need for revenge that saves her life. Without the desire to destroy her bullies, Dong-eun’s seemingly hopeless existence might end in suicide. Instead, she drops out of school and works difficult jobs while earning a GED and a college degree. Years pass before she is well equipped to execute her revenge.

Dong-eun’s enemies do have an Achilles heel. They are still the cruel, careless people she knew in high school, and, although most are successful, they have more enemies than actual friends.

While planning her revenge, Dong-eun unexpectedly acquires some friends of her own. An intern, played by Lee Do-hyun teaches her how to play Go, a game that fine tunes her strategy. He’s one of the few people to ever express concern for her. The housekeeper at her former classmate’s house, played winningly by Yum Hye-ran, agrees to look the other way when Dong-eun is discovered rifling through their garbage. Both of her allies have a history with violence.

In her nuanced portrayal of Dong-eun, Song delivers a fractured fixated character, so hell-bent on destroying her tormenters that she derives little happiness from her own existence. Even if she achieves the justice she longs for, it will not erase the scars she acquired.

The Glory features a fair share of unexpected plot twists, veering the story from almost horror to melodrama to murder mystery. The inventive screenplay was written by Kim Eun-sook, who also wrote Descendants of the Sun, a 2016 hit drama that Song starred in. One of South Korea’s most successful drama writers, Kim wrote the hits The King: Eternal Monarch, Mr. Sunshine and Guardian: The Great and Lonely God.

Jung Ji-so, who recently appeared in Curtain Call, gives a heartbreaking performance as a teen Dong-eun. Her cruel classmates are played as adults by Lim Ji-yeon (House of Lies), Park Sung-hoon (Psychopath Diary) Kim Heora (Bad Prosecutor), Cha Joo-young (Again My Life) and Kim Gun-woo (Record of Youth).

The first eight episodes of the two-part drama air now on NetflixNFLX
. The second part will be available in March.