#lee lim

So. Chapter 2. If you haven’t guessed already by the title of this chapter, it covers the topic of that fateful night back in 1994, when Lee Lim kills Lee Ho, little Gon comes in, gets traumatised, they both leave with half of the Manpasikjeok, etc etc. That’s kind of… the first half of this chapter? The whole chapter is definitely affected by this, but after this there are two more scenes in this chapter: one where Gon is looking at Taeeul’s ID card in his Alice in Wonderland book (notably skipping over “Are you having fun, Captain Jo?” and that subsequent conversation between Gon and Yeong which is one of my personal favourite scenes, but anyway. They do reference it, but it’s not the same), and then the scene where Gon is at the stables, he hears the sound of the flute, and he runs away on Maximus and goes into the portal.

My first thought? Not enough Yeong. Again. For real this time. Yeong has one line of dialogue, and that’s just a radio call to Hopil and the others to chase after Gon, there’s no new insights about Yeong in this chapter, absolutely nothing. And I know, I know that I can’t really judge a chapter like this on its Yeong content when none of these scenes contained Yeong in the first place, but like… they could have included that conversation between Gon and Yeong in Gon’s study? Instead, the allusion to it we get is this:

Why didn’t ‘he’ who saved him come back? Wasn’t it worth coming to see him at least once?

Yeong said that he didn’t come because Gon had grown up so well that he didn’t need anyone’s help, but Gon wanted to ask, ‘didn’t he want to come and see how well he had grown up?’

There it is, folks! That’s all we’re getting! And look… it’s easy enough to tell from the scene in the show that Gon isn’t really satisfied with Yeong’s answer, but a part of me does feel disappointed that this heartfelt conversation between those two in the first episode was boiled down to this in the book. None of the tenderness, none of the warmth, just “idc yeongie i still want to see my saviour :/.” And then… hoo boy. I can already tell that this book is going to test my patience as someone who is not particularly a taegon enjoyer, because a few paragraphs down we get this absolute gem.

The government ID in his hand was the only trace he had left behind, and it was a question. Every day, Gon would ask the woman on the card, ‘Do you know why he saved me? Why I survived?’ Thanks to this, the woman had become a habit for him. After twenty-five years, she was more familiar than anyone else. For Gon, it was comforting. Before he knew it, she had become the reason he was alive.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, whAT?! The reason he was alive? His reason for living?? More familiar than anyone else????? Bestie… she is a piece of plastic!!! As far as you know right now!!!!! If this is your reason for living… Gon, blink twice if you need to see a therapist. Oh, wait, hang on, this reminds me of another passage in this chapter…

Was he really dead? Suddenly, he felt a surge of doubt.

Maybe it was because that night, twenty-five years ago, was still so vivid. The stickiness of stepping through the blood of innocents, the smell of blood that stung his nostrils. The pain of the strangulation, the thinning of his breath. The sight of his father’s lifeless body in front of him. The underlying dread, the fear. The emotions were as sharp as the sensations.

However, now that Gon was the king, they were emotions he couldn’t show anyone. Walking slowly to his desk, Gon composed himself as he sat down. The good news was that he wasn’t weak enough to be consumed by the memories of that day.

Oh, well, that’s ok then! Don’t worry everyone! Gon is fine, actually! Sure, he still has very vivid memories of that awful night, he still hates people touching his body, he can’t wear a tie without getting flashbacks to that night, he doesn’t feel like he can share this with anyone because of his status as the king, but don’t worry! He’s not so weak that he’s super affected by this or anything, that would be totally cringe.

Gon, I’m going to say this once again, blink twice if you need to see a therapist. Because this… my god. That’s an unhealthy thought pattern if I’ve ever heard one. I think the show wants the solution to this to be “gon is fine enough to be a great boyfriend, but if he ever does need to talk to anyone, this will only ever be taeeul because he the king to her.” What I’m hearing, however, is “gon needs to trust his loved ones, and learn to be comfortable with the fact that he’s both the king and a person, and he needs to be comfortable with communicating with people like yeong and lady noh and prince buyeong who have loved him for a very long time and want gon the person to be alright.” Like… surely the message here isn’t just that Gon can never ever trust anyone from the Kingdom with his emotions, right? Where’s the growth there? Finding someone from another universe is the most convoluted loophole in this situation, when he could just like… talk to his best friend? Even if that’s hard for him, growth is hard! But it’s important!

But *ahem* anyway, sorry, this is meant to be about the novel, not my wider thoughts about the show in general…

You might be wondering, hey KitKat, you said that this chapter was half about the night of the treason, so why haven’t you spoken about that? And that… is because I don’t really have that much to say? It’s mostly just an action sequence, there aren’t really any character moments that made me like !!!!, like the other parts did. The main detail is that it really hammers in the detail that Lee Lim feels unfairly treated because of the nature of his birth. He’s jealous of his brother and his nephew for being born into a life where they never really had to struggle.

Actually, you know what? I am going to share this paragraph, purely so I can go on another side tangent.

Prince Imperial Geum. Lee Lim was crowned Prince Imperial Geum at the age of thirteen. He was the firstborn son, but his mother died before she could become queen, and she was posthumously declared a noblewoman. So, his younger brother, who knew nothing and was only good, became the king.

Now, let’s do some maths, shall we? Both Lee Lim and Lee Ho have confirmed dates of birth in the show. Lee Lim was born on 27th February 1951, and Lee Ho was born on 23rd October 1952. (Another fun fact is that Gon’s mother was born on 8th August 1965, so when Gon was born on 28th October 1987, his mother was 22 and his dad was 35, and I know that age gap relationships can be perfectly consensual and loving but man… I can’t deny that something there feels a little bit icky… but anyway.) Assuming neither Lee Ho nor Lee Lim were born prematurely, this implies that Lee Lim was conceived in May 1950, and Lee Ho was conceived in January 1952. If their father, King Haejong, was doing everything by the book, if Lee Lim’s mother was his official partner, and the earliest that she died was 27th February 1951, this means that King Haejong moved on from this love of his life to get to the baby-making stage with Lee Ho’s mother in less than a year. It’s… plausible? But if Lee Ho was legitimate, then King Haejong and his new partner had to be married somewhere between February 1951 and October 1952, and it would have had to have been a big royal wedding with a lot of planning, and… mmmMH I don’t want to make any conclusions, because there are a few explanations for this quick timeline and it’s much more fun if this is left up to individual interpretation, but what I am pretty sure on is that this situation with King Haejong and his lovers wasn’t as simple as “:( lee lim’s poor mother died before she could be made the queen.” It’s giving… less tragic, more scandal, somewhere on this timeline. Either way, I am narrowing my eyes at you, King Haejong.

Mmmh… anything else? Maybe this:

In the Cheonjongo scene, Yoo Gyeongmu, Lee Lim’s second in command, says to him that they need to leave because the “Golden Army” is coming. In the official English subs on Netflix, this is just translated as Royal Guard, BUT it’s definitely a different word. Royal Guard, in the book, has always been 근위대, but Yoo Gyeongmu specifically refers to a certain 금군, and this had specific Hanja next to it in the book, so it must be a thing. What is this Golden Army? Will it be referenced again, other than in this scene? It’s not a code name, little Gon also thinks to himself that his saviour is leaving because the Golden Army is on their way. Is it a specific task force within the Royal Guard? If so, what do they do?? I have a horrible suspicion that we’ll never know.

Oh, and one more thing before I bullet point exactly what we’ve learnt from this chapter.

It was said that the prince was a prodigy, a genius who could read, write, and do mathematics at an early age.

*quietly adds ‘hyperlexia’ next to ‘savant mathematical abilities’ onto my imaginary list of evidence of gon being autistic*

That post will come eventually. But not for a while.

So!! What have we learnt in chapter two?

Somewhere on the palace grounds, vaguely near Cheonjongo, is a gingko tree!

Where Lee Lim was described as being bold and cruel, Lee Ho was described as having a “cool temperament that could be considered weak.” Even if Lee Ho isn’t in my good books for getting a 21 year old pregnant when he was 34, that still feels kind of mean.

Cheonjongo was home to “various treasures, from crowns to cash, ceramics to swords, treasures handed down from generation to generation.”

The current Captain of the Royal Guard died that night, stepping in front of Lee Ho.

The Netflix subs miss out Lee Ho saying something that roughly translates to “What the heck?!” before he asks “Brother, what do you think you’re doing?” which is something that I wish they’d kept in.

When Lee Lim killed his brother, he was happy to prove that Lee Ho was weaker than him.

Gon was commended as a little genius, and this is the only measure by which Lee Lim thinks he might be better than his father. That doesn’t change the fact that Lee Lim still has to kill him, though.

Even in that horrible moment, and despite Gon being seven years old internationally, he was actively thinking about strategy, wanting to strike Lee Lim with the Four Tiger Sword while he was laughing, because it was a moment of weakness.

Lee Lim got his royal title when he was thirteen, Korean age, so presumably he was 11/12 years old internationally.

The first time little Gon heard the flute music was when his saviour came for him, not before, which begs the question as to why he went to Cheonjongo that night in the first place. Maybe because his dad wanted to show him the Manpasikjeok?

This “Golden Army” section of the Royal Guard existed, at least in 1994. Maybe it still does in the present. Maybe it doesn’t. That remains to be seen.

The official story was that Royal Guards shot Lee Lim dead on the beach, not that he was found washed up dead like I assumed in the show. Maybe this was just a detail in the show that I forgot about, but I’m including it here because it confused me at first.

Lee Lim’s “death” had always seemed futile and meaningless to Gon.

Apparently, according to Gon, all the fear, grief, and hurt has already faded away from that night with time, and the only thing he still has is the question of why his saviour hasn’t come back for him. Apparently.

Please imagine a strained voice for this next point: Jeong Taeeul’s ID card became Gon’s reason for living. *sigh.*

This is something I’d noticed before, but this whole scene where he looks at the ID card in his book, and everything in the show immediately preceding it that the book cut - this all happens on 10th September 2019. Is there a significance to this date? YES! THERE IS! IT’S YEONG’S BIRTHDAY! THEY CUT OUT YEONG’S SCENE ON HIS GODDAMN BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

The Royal Guard was on high alert after the shooting at the rowing competition, and yet Gon still managed to escape? He’s quite impressive.

The main reason Gon was suspicious that Lee Lim wasn’t dead, despite them having a corpse, was because Lee Lim risked everything to get the Manpasikjeok, but his half wasn’t found on this corpse. This is what Gon is thinking about as he’s looking at the portal for the first time.

As Gon is riding through the place in between, in the portal dimension, he’s thinking of the passage of Alice in Wonderland that he read to the children a few days ago, of Alice following the clock rabbit into the rabbit hole, and then falling further and further down.

And that’s it! I’m… actually surprised at how long this ended up being, because I definitely found the first chapter a lot more entertaining than this one. Though to be honest, that was mostly the shameless Gon worshipping. There was definitely some of that this chapter, but not at all to the same extent. Next time… I haven’t really looked very hard at the next chapter, but I think it’s going to cover Taeeul and Gon’s first meeting, from their very first interaction to Gon’s time in the police station. And now I say that, I’m suddenly realising that I’m quite excited to find out what Gon is thinking when he sees Eunseob for the first time. But not too excited. I don’t think it’s wise to have expectations that are too high with this book.

Final thoughts? Underwhelming. I know this book can’t deviate much from the show, but I was disappointed with how little extra information we learnt about Lee Lim in the Cheonjongo scene. Does he really just want *gestures vaguely* power? Is it really just because he feels it’s unfair that he wasn’t born to be the king? Come on, where’s the flavour? Does he want to be more powerful than God because he just wants power? Does he want to rule Corea? Does he want to rule the world? The multiverse??? What is his endgame here??? He gets the Manpasikjeok, then what??? I was hoping that the book would give us some more insight, but it absolutely has not done that so far. Ah well. I suppose it’s only Chapter 2. There’s still time.

Other than that, my main takeaway is that Lee Gon is taking a long, long swim in a certain river in Egypt in regards to how he’s Totally Fine And Ok after the night of the treason. Did he ever get therapy after that night? If so, his therapist didn’t do a very good job if he still thinks that he can’t tell his loved ones about his “weak” feelings because he’s the king. If he didn’t get therapy, then I want to have serious words with whoever looked at this child who just saw his father murdered and almost got murdered himself, and decided “yeah, he’ll probably be ok.”

It sounds like a lovely fairy tale. I wasn't even sure that it was a real story, but I did some research, and it literally an actual Korean folktale, that a flute exists and that you got it from the Dragon King of the East Sea, etc. It all checks out [online]. So in this case the Traitor is not lying to us [keep your guard up, nonetheless].

This page at Korea.net says “it is based on the Legend of “Manpasikjeok (The Flute That Calms Ten Thousand Waves), written in the Samguk Yusa (삼국유사), a book that contains tales and legends from the Three Kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla).”

Cheapest (but most exclusive) way to visit Busan

Of course, this probably begins one of the questions that apparently dogs a lot of viewers through the series, which doesn't don't affect me, doesn't affect me. Which is what? What are we looking at? So we're in a bamboo forest, but we don't know which world the bamboo forest is in [we also don’t know if it's Lee Gon’s forest or Lee Lim’s]. That’s the question that many viewers, or perhaps just particularly vocal viewers, have an ongoing issue with: not being able to differentiate which world they’re being shown. [obviously, easily fixable with additional subtitles, but I’ll have to say there are only two instances I find myself uncertain, b/c usually within a moment or so something in-scene will clue you in as to where you are IF YOU ARE PAYING ATTENTION. I’ll be sure to mention going forward any times I experience uncertainty, as well as any signifiers that answer this persistent question]

There are some credits in Korean at the bottom of the screen. I think they're just credits but I can't be sure because I don't read Korean, and with the shot of--I don't know what you wanna call it--I'm gonna call it a gazebo. I'm sure that's not what it's called [the temple at the Busan palace of Cheonjongo (Vault of the Supreme Heaven, according to the Korea.net page referenced above) *I don’t know if there is any significance to it, but JTE works at Seoul Jongo Police Station—both these locations use the word “Jongo”, but again I am Korean illiterate]—Emperor Lee Ho is opening the case to get the flute out.

What I'll say is this is where my troubles on my first viewing began. They played out something like this: I don't know where we are and I don't know what year we're in. So, I will tell you, 'cause it's kind of silly, what I thought I was watching. Well, first of all, I knew it was supposed to be a supernatural show, so I'm, you know, checking it out for moments of super- naturalness. So to me, I thought that what I'm calling the gazebo, I thought that it was something like a Stargate, a portal to travel through time or space or both. And that somehow this is where you would leap from place to place (as the show description cited parallel worlds). I thought this because Lee Ho is in, I don't know if we can call what he's wearing hanbok--but if hanbok means Korean clothes, he's certainly in Korean clothes, in some kind of kingly robe.

I won't try to get into the Korean words for these things because I don't know them. I would have to look them up to begin with, and that might take some time to figure it all out.

[A “gujangbok” (九章服) is a ceremonial robe worn by the Joseon king, adorned with nine symbols, either painted or embroidered, representing the consummate authority and virtue of the king. -you’re welcome]

But Lee Ho's in traditional clothing. Nobleman clothing at the very least, but most certainly I'm sure that it denotes that he's the king.

Naturally this means nothing to me as a Western viewer, I can't tell that he's a king. He's not wearing a crown. Even with a small bit of Kdrama exposure, I could not tell that he was a king. His hat looks to me a lot like the hats that other noblemen wear in sageuk. Anyway, the scene that is set is, to me, not located anywhere in time and so I can't tell if it's the 1200s, or if it's present day.

I assumed on my first viewing that this was a man from the past that somehow had shown up in this Stargate gazebo and in this sort of area, I mean sidebar, the gazebo in Cheonjogno. It also looks a whole lot like where Snow and Prince Charming got married in Once Upon a Time that's neither here nor there, but I share it with you nonetheless.

Sorry, it is what it is

So we don't know—who is he? Does he belong there? Has he traveled from another time? Why does this whole scene and his costuming look so arcane? He's got a flute from a case. We don't know what's going on. If you're me, and you're watching this the first time, you don't even know where you're located in the timeline, much less what world you might be in. 'Cause we haven't been told there are multiple worlds yet [except in the description]. *again, this would likely be far less confusing for a Korean viewer

There is Korean writing down the right side of the screen. I have no idea what it says. I don't believe that Netflix ever translates it out, but I'm here to tell you if you were watching Viki, somebody would have translated that out for you. And for that and for Viki, I'm very thankful. It might be. It might be a translation of what? Lee Lim is saying ‘where enemies would retreat, diseases would be cured’. It might be a translation of what's probably something like a poem that’s about the flute. [this of the poetry on the Four Tiger Sword] “When the flute was played, the enemies fled, the plagues receded, the rain came in drought, the wind was soft and the sea was calm; it was called ‘the flute that calms ten thousand waves’ and considered a national treasure.” [additionally of interest may be that in the tale, the flute was crafted from a bamboo plant that grew as two separate plants that united into a single plant each evening/night.]

Now we see that Lee Lim’s splattered with blood. This, on my first viewing, because he's so prominent in the early part of the show I thought that he was going to be the hero, I thought that he was going to be the main character because so much focus is to him now. JTE reads Lee Lim’s statistics, you know, his age, but he's supposed to be 70. It talks about the year 2020, and there's a document that we're shown. I can't read Korean. I don't know Korean symbols/logos that strongly. It's possible that that document, although Netflix isn't gonna want me to look at it 'cause it's just gonna pop that add up if I pause the screen--that that document makes it clear that it's from the Kingdom, because that document--I don't believe there's a document in the Republic which sometimes I will probably refer to as our world because I assume that it is in fact our world--OK, looking at it as much as I can, it does look to me like it has a symbol on it that is not a Republic symbol, but instead it is a Kingdom symbol. It's on the back of the sheet that says maybe…personal information, top secret. Those are words in English that appear on it.

So it's possible that if you were a Korean viewer, you would understand that what you were looking at, what was being talked about, was unusual from what you should be seeing [a document with Republic symbols on it].

Interesting sidebar: If you look up stories about the flute, you will discover that King Sinmun (681-692), who was given the flute, is actually the son of the man King Munmu, who would go on to become the Dragon King of the East Sea, that gave the flute to his son. Which makes both of those people a direct part of the ancestral line of our Emperor Lee Gon. His great, great, great, great plus granddaddys were the one that gave the flute and the one that received the flute.

I suppose this is as good of a time as any as Lee Lim is talking to Shin-Jae to note that as far as I'm concerned, the Traitor is remarkably handsome. He looks great--perhaps another reason that I thought for a moment that he was going to be the lead in the show.

It is a royal family of good genes

The Traitor Lee Lim is talking about the deeper details on his list, so we get the reveal of his age, but it's inconsistent with his appearance, and that he actually is, in fact, 70, and that time runs slower for him.

I feel like it's already too much [this scene]—like, it needs [narratively] to cut there and take us somewhere else.

I have a lot of feelings about this first, like I said, third of the first episode because it's so disorienting and we're trying so hard to grab onto something we're supposed to pay attention to as viewers, and it just keeps throwing more wild stuff and more people at us, and we just can't locate our story, if you will.

So you know, Lee Lim is starting to, sort of, what--villain blather? I don't know. He's gonna start to tell us things about the flute. He's gonna tell us how his brother didn't believe in the flute, and [this speech/exposition] needs to be, I think, tighter and quicker to get us where we're going faster. I say that on a first viewing. On subsequent viewings, I think that this works fine. Like, I think we are already invested. We're curious about what he has to say. There's a lot of interest going on. But first viewings when you're just trying to get your bearings in a story? We've already been shown a bamboo forest. We've already been shown Cheonjogno, and a person that we don't know [it’s un-introducted Emperor Lee Ho] with the flute. We've been told--we've heard Lee Lim's voice over it all, and we're now in this interrogation room, where we've been introduced to Lee Lim himself and then two other characters that we don't know, and including the credits that have rolled [which we watched].

It's, we're two minutes and 48 seconds into a show, so we're confused, muddled and I think exhausted and although, as I said in its defense, it plays just fine once you've seen the entire show. On re-watch I'm not bored. I know what's going on. I'm even interested in it.

But that's gonna be to me [I’m going to be interested in it b/c I’ve got the whole weight of the show behind me and it is NOW of interest]. That's the song, so to speak. That's the theme of the whole first third of the first episode [this murky-if-you’re-not-in-the-know-about-the-treason]. And I often tell people, if I encourage them to watch the show, don't give up. Make it all the way to the end of the first episode and halfway through the second one before you decide it's not for you.

I feel like this is something you almost just have to get past, to endure [the first time]. Kind of like taking your medicine, although that sounds a little more negative than it is, but you have to get past this part in order to get into the show and then you'll be glad for this part on the end of the show 'cause you will go back and re-watch.

So the Traitor villain blathers about how his brother was close- minded and did not appreciate the flute when he had it and did not know that it would bring the world into his hands. And then Lee Lim specifically states actually two worlds [he can say this in the police station b/c at that point he knows about two worlds]. And so, of course, we know that this scene is from the actual, you know, very close to the end of the series. And even at that time the knowledge is simply of two worlds because the pathway through the obelisks is [still] just a two-way pathway [though Lee Gon seems to suspicion other doors, though he does refer to them as closed]; you can go to the Kingdom, you can go to the Republic.

You don't get other options that are open and available to you. We don't know that yet. So that's all that he knows [two worlds].

It's interesting why he couldn't see [the flute] on other days [beside the every 20 year presentations to the people]. Was it literally like he would ask? Lee Lim would go and be like, hey, can I see the flute? And people would be like, “no”.

Because if you don't believe it has any particular powers [Lee Ho], what does it matter if you let, you know, your half-brother go look at it or whatever? Like, what's he gonna do with it if it's just a flute? For example, what if it was a famous painting? Like, what does it matter to you if you happen to own this famous painting as a king and then your half-brother is like, can I go check that famous painting out today? Stare at it for awhile? You would be like, what? “No, how dare you! Only I am allowed to look at the famous painting, except once every 20 years!” Does that even track?

So that that has Lee Lim upset and feeling traitorous. He seems to be, perhaps, even more upset that Lee Ho doesn't believe in the power of the flute. He consistently calls Lee Ho names b/c of his unbelief.

I read someone online who felt like Lee Lim considered the flute a religious object and wanted to or had developed a cult around it, so the sin of unbelief I guess would be a great one in that case.

I think it would have been nice--I'll probably say this a lot--during the first episode--Uh, I really think it would have been nice to be able to see them [Lee Lim and Lee Ho], perhaps argue about the flute and its potential abilities, or its mystical powers outside of, you know, the bloody massacre. Maybe over dinner, maybe following their father’s ancestral rites? Like, prior to this night of the treason, had they had spirited discussions about it? In all the years of growing up? Had Lee Lim tried to gain access to it in the past and been denied? Um. We don't get to see that, we don't get to see anything of their relationship prior to murder? Which I think is very unfortunate. [We don’t get to see it later on in flashbacks, either.]

Not that I'm trying to drag this [show-establishing] part out, but if some of what was the exposition of their conflict was cut, and instead like a shot inserted here or there of like action where the two of them were arguing, establishing the conflict through action, I think that works better narratively. [It helps flesh out Lee Lim far more than he ever is in the narrative that exists.]

It's three minutes and 39 seconds in and in the bamboo forest, standing in front of the obelisks, we see Lee Gon for the first time. He is in his ceremonial robe and he looks very, I think that we're seeing him prior probably to when Yeong shows up, before he is going through the obelisks, specifically to change the night of the treason the second time. [I assume it’s the second time and not the first—not the time he ended up visiting Tae-Eul and giving her the flowers. It SHOULD be LG waiting to enter the obelisks at the SAME TIME Lee Lim is about to be shoved in by Tae-Eul, for the sake of story continuity, but often kdramas don’t play that way (that Western storytelling would dictate)] But you know, I will admit as many times as I've watched this show, I have not made a flow chart, and without one, while I can understand the show while I'm watching it, trying to piece everything back into a timeline that's correct is very challenging. So when I look at this, that's what I think is happening.

And so we must be close to the time that JTE is going to take Lee Lim and walk through the obelisks on the side of the Republic if Lee Gon is already on the Kingdom side getting ready to go in in his ceremonial--is it a robe is it a jacket?

Probably if you're reading this, you're aware of the anticipation that after some two years away from entertainment because Lee Min Ho was doing his military service, he hadn't been in/acted in anything. But I think it's possible that he hadn't been anything since 2016, like The Legend of the Blue Sea is his last big work. I think that he was in a movie [Bounty Hunters] that was a Japanese movie in the interim, but nothing on television and maybe he was on, you know, some kind of a web or a short form program, but it's a long time for him to be gone, and then for them to feel totally comfortable not giving him to viewers, so to speak, immediately, but making you wait for his appearance.

presented without comment

It's gutsy. So you get this flash at the 3:40 mark. Around the 3:40 mark of his face; he doesn't speak, he doesn't interact with anyone. And then you have to wait considerably longer. I wanna say it's like 40 minutes--I'm sure I'll notate it when we get there--to actually see him do some acting and interact with people.

That's like a bold move. Like I think it's, I don't know if it's the right move. I'll say that not because of LMH, but because of Lee Gon [as a character]. And like I said, I just feel like for first time viewers this first third really stumbles and makes it a challenging road for people to stick to, but you know feel free to let me know if you disagree with that, if you love the beginning and it totally whetted your appetite for what was to come and it fulfilled everything that you wanted from setting up a story. I would love to hear about it if that's the case for you for sure.