#sageuk

Naegumwijang Acacius 🔥⚔️

Captain of the Naegumwijang (Joseon Dynasty elite royal palace guard)

A Complete List Here:

Jang Hyuk + Historical Roles

Kdrama:

The Slave Hunters (2010)

Tree With Deep Roots (2011)

Shine or Go Crazy (2015)

The Merchant: Gaekju (2015)

My Country: The New Age (2019)

Bloody Heart (2022)

Did you ever hate me?

The day you left me for good, I resented you so much that I stared at you for awhile. However, no matter how long I looked, I could never feel hatred toward you. Instead, I hated myself. How cold of you. Did you even imagine how I must have felt?

In Joseon-era Korea, a bold young woman becomes one of the first female historians at the royal court. As she navigates palace life, censorship, and politics, she crosses paths with a sheltered prince secretly writing romance novels. Their lives intertwine in a tender story of self-discovery, truth, and the power of rewriting history.

I loved this drama's main idea: a historical drama that centers the act of writing history itself and gives that role to a woman.

Our main character, Goo Hae-ryung, is confident, intelligent, and sharp-tongued, a rare combination for a sageuk heroine. I loved how she wasn't framed as naive or innocent, but rather as someone who already knows who she is. And the romance plays into this beautifully. The love interest, Lee Rim, is sweet, sincere, and completely inexperienced in love. It’s refreshing to see a male lead so emotionally honest and unsure of himself while the female lead is the one grounded and self-assured.

The show also gently explores ideas like censorship, intellectual freedom, and how women have been excluded from knowledge and public records. It was genuinely satisfying to watch female characters act as historians, scholars, and observers of truth in a world that constantly tries to silence or erase them. The drama never yells its feminism, but it's there : in Hae-ryung standing up to scholars who ridicule her, in her persistence to be taken seriously, and in the slow solidarity that builds between the women of the palace. It’s a quiet, bookish kind of resistance.

That said, the ending felt a bit rushed. I wish we had more time to see the political resolution unfold. It deserved more than a single episode to tie everything up.

I already have a bunch of suggestions but i need more

If you have a suggestion please add a reply🥺🫶🏾

Original Broadcast

Original draft of the opening, was never released on the soundtracks. It's possible they stopped using this version of the song from ep 25 but I'm not sure

The one everyone knows, I think it was only used from ep 75 or so

Japanese DVD

Royalty-free version made just for the DVD. Was also used for the Vietnamese broadcasts

Hong Kong broadcast

Frances Yip (叶丽仪) - Live Out the Future (活出个未来) Cover of the original soundtrack's A Woman's World by Paige

Frances Yip - Fate Again (又是命运) Cover of the original soundtrack's Path/Love Song/Song of Devotion by Paige (Also used for the Damo OST)

Taiwanese broadcast

SHIN (信乐团) - Die for Love (死了都要爱) OP used for the first 50 episodes, resumed using the original opening afterwards. Cover of Park Wan Gyu's Thousand-Year Love (천년의 사랑)