For an eight-episode drama, The East Palace (or 동궁) packs in an impressive amount of plot. The Netflix series is set in a fictional version of Korea’s Joseon dynasty in which the line between the world of mortals and the world of spirits is traversable. In this high-stakes setting, the kingdom’s royal family has been plagued by a 30-year curse that targets the line of succession. When the life of his last living son is threatened, King Ju-sang (Divorce Attorney Shin’s Cho Seung-woo) summons ghost hunter Gu-cheon (Twenty Five Twenty One’s Nam Joo-hyuk, in his first post-enlistment role) to break the curse in this big-budget K-drama that blends palace intrigue with occult mystery.
Gu-cheon is joined in his mission by Saeng-gang (Crash Course in Romance’s Roh Yoon-seo), the daughter of King Ju-sang who was banished from the palace as a young girl for her ability to hear spirits. While Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang are forced to stay in the palace by King Ju-sang’s royal command, Saeng-gang is eager to return to her former home and family in order to get revenge for her mother’s murder years prior. The two make a reluctant team, but soon grow close as they take on evil—both mortal and ghostly—in an attempt to save the kingdom, the royal family, and one another.
The rich worldbuilding realized in The East Palace is arguably the K-drama’s strongest element. Writers Kwon So-ra and Seo Jae-won, the team behind The Guest and Bulgasal: Immortal Souls, drew from Korean shamanist tradition to craft the world of The East Palace. In Korean folklore, ghosts are known as gwi-shin. In the world of The East Palace, gwi-mae are the ghostly spirits of people who died with lingering remorse that keep them tied to the mortal world. Won-gwi are the spirits of those who died with great resentment, and that are looking for revenge. An ak-gwi, which Gu-cheon fears becoming, is a spirit that has killed people and that has grown more corrupt with the act.
The East Palace also incorporates ggeomeoksali, spirits that drain living things of their “Yang” energy. Gu-cheon, who lacks Yang, is fearful of ggeomeoksali, but accidentally befriends one during his time in the palace. A small, bumbling gremlin in the realm of mortals, the ggeomeoksali grows big and fearsome in the spirit world.
The elements are brought to articulate life by director Choi Jung-kyu, who previously helmed dystopian thriller The Devil Judge. “When we were creating creatures, we wanted to make sure that they come off as something that's intuitive and something that you would realize what it is right at the moment that you see it,” says Choi. “They're based in folklore, so they have their own distinct features, but we want to recreate them in a way that fits our script and our show.”
The Realm of the Gwi, explained
Much of the action in The East Palace occurs in the Realm of the Gwi, an The Upside Down-like mirror world where spirits dwell. Gu-cheon is able to physically enter the Realm of the Gwi to trap, fight, and vanquish the supernatural entities that are wreaking havoc on the mortal world. In an effort to distinguish the world of the gwi from the world of humans, Choi casts the mirror-world in an orange haze. While he says he was initially “quite intimidated” by the task of creating the realm, he saw it as “a fun challenge.”
Many directors rely on CGI to build otherworldly realms, but Choi notes that visual effects only took up about 20 to 30 percent of the final cut when it came to realizing the Realm of the Gwi. “I tried to do as much as I could with production design, so for instance, we would create one set for the real world and another for the Realm of Gwi,” he says. The on-screen result is a visually distinct world that still feels grounded in logic and consequence.
When The East Palace begins, the court assumes that the recent death of a crown prince is a result of the 30-year-old royal curse. When it began, a court lady favored by the then-king was executed for allegedly having an affair with and getting pregnant by a royal guard. The person who started that rumor is the present-day, extremely status-conscious Queen Dowager (Our Unwritten Seoul’s Jang Young-nam), who is furious at the idea her husband would make a lowly maid a concubine.
Before her death, the court lady vowed to seek revenge on the royal family for her own death and the death of her unborn child as a won-gwi. Shortly after, the royal princess began to die, leaving King Ju-sang as the then-king’s only living son and the next to rule.
Who really cursed the royal line?
The story of the royal curse was orchestrated by Lady Choi Suk-bin (Hwang Young-hee), the current king’s mother and Saeng-gang’s beloved grandmother. When Lady Choi witnessed the favored court lady’s execution-day vow, she saw her chance to ensure her son’s place on the throne. She poisoned his older brothers, born to the Queen Dowager, and framed the won-gwi of the favored court lady for the deaths.
Saeng-gang, who considers her grandmother one of the only people she can truly trust in the court, is devastated by the revelation, and by the knowledge that both her mother and father were aware of her grandmother’s actions. “[Her] grandmother had been her only source of support, and when that grandmother turns out to be not just a betrayer but, in a sense, the root cause of everything… I don’t think I could presume to measure what Saeng-gang felt,” Roh told Netflix. “It made me imagine just how far a person can [be corrupted], how far that collapse can go. And [adding to the shock, she finds out that] her mother had been right there beside the grandmother.”
Saeng-gang’s mother didn’t just know of Lady Choi’s murders—she helped carry them out. As a court maid, she didn’t have much power to refuse Lady Choi’s demand. Eventually, Saeng-gang’s mother becomes King Ju-sang’s concubine and Saeng-gang is born.
Later, when Saeng-gang and her mother leave the palace to hide Saeng-gang’s spirit-hearing abilities, the mother is poisoned by treats sent from the palace. Though Saeng-gang suspects it is the work of the Queen Dowager, it was actually Saeng-gang’s own grandmother who poisoned Saeng-gang’s mother, ensuring that the concubine could never reveal the plot that put King Ju-sang in power.
Who is killing the princes?
The East Palace begins with a funeral that sets many of the events of the series in motion. The Crown Prince (Kwak Dong-yeon), King Ju-sang’s adult son and the next in line for the throne, has died from yet another mysterious poisoning. This leaves the king with only one living son, Prince Yeongan, who quickly begins to show signs of mortal peril and also passes away mid-way through the series. When Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang slay the pond spirit and the “curse” continues, it becomes clear that someone or something else is behind the recent killings.
The late Crown Prince, whose death opens the series, is the one behind his younger brother’s death—and the deaths of his two older brothers, which predate the start of the series. The Crown Prince—who, like half-sister Saeng-gang and their father, can hear spirits—learns about how his father came to power. He is inspired to try the same thing, killing the brothers ahead of him in the line of succession.
When King Ju-sang learns of his own son’s actions, he kills him rather than let him inherit the throne. The Crown Prince becomes an ak-gwi, and sets about killing the rest of the royal line. Ironically, the actions of King Ju-sang and his mother had led to an actual royal curse. “Out of one person’s desire to put her own son on the throne, she set off that chain of incidents … and killed everyone,” Roh told Netflix. “So really, human greed was the origin of [this curse].”
Roh Yoon Seo as Saeng-gang and Nam Joo Hyuk as Gu-cheon —Garage Lab/NetflixGu-cheon takes down the Crown Prince
Heading into the series finale, a plague has infected the palace and the kingdom, powered by the fury of the slain Crown Prince and the won-gwi of a village King Ju-sang had slaughtered in an attempt to contain the plague. Gu-cheon must travel to the Realm of the Gwi in order to vanquish the ak-gwi that the Crown Prince has become once and for all. As Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang prepare for Gu-cheon’s trip to the mirror world, Saeng-gang hears a spirit proclaiming that Gu-cheon will die that night.
Desperate to keep Gu-cheon safe, Saeng-gang drugs him and goes into the Realm of the Gwi herself to face her half-brother. She almost succeeds in defeating him, but the Crown Prince gets the upper hand and Saeng-gang’s life hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, Gu-cheon has woken up from his drugged slumber and heads into the Realm of the Gwi. Fearing for Saeng-gang’s life, he makes a deal with the Primordial Gwi-mae: he will chain himself to the Realm of the Gwi in exchange for a weapon that can kill an ak-gwi.
“I thought the Primordial Gwi-mae was like the center of all the vicious things that happened,” Choi says. Gu-cheon meets the massive, faceless spirit-figure on the rocky shores of an eerie island. For Choi, the god-like creature is the source of the palace’s turmoil. “I thought deep down, under all the layers of all the gwi, maybe there's the Primordial Gwi-mae, which is like the root of all desires and darkness that humans possess. Because palaces are usually all about desires, darkness, and fights between people, I thought maybe because the Primordial Gwi-mae exists on the under layer of that place, and that's why we have the palace.”
The subsequent fight between Gu-cheon and the Crown Prince is the epic climax of the series, and took about seven days to film. “To show that there's a different kind of atmosphere to that clash, but since this is the very last action scene, I wanted to go the traditional way and make sure that it's a very direct and very intuitive type of action scene,” says Choi. The wuxia-style sword clash makes use of the gravity-defying logic of the Realm of the Gwi, with the Crown Prince and Gu-cheon flying through the air to meet again and again in the deconstructed rubble of the mirror courtyard.
Meanwhile, back in the mortal realm, King Ju-sang takes accountability for the slaughtering of the villagers in his own palace courtyard, speaking to the spirits he wronged. The gesture quashes the anger of the won-gwi that the Crown Prince has been using to increase his power, and allows Gu-cheon to get the upper hand. He drives his sword through the Crown Prince, and vanquishes his soul. The act makes Gu-cheon an ak-gwi, but he has made his peace with the choice.
Gu-cheon manages to bring Saeng-gang back to the mortal world, but collapses into a coma soon after. He is unconscious for days, but Saeng-gang doesn’t give up on him. Upon waking, King Ju-sang grants Gu-cheon freedom from the palace. Gu-cheon and Saeng-gang leave together, with their ggeomeoksali friend by their side. Though Saeng-gang cannot see it, Gu-cheon is still chained to the Realm of the Gwi following his deal with the Primorial Gwi-mae. But, for now, he can roam the mortal world.
“[Since] Saeng-gang isn’t chained, maybe only [Gu-cheon] will get dragged back one day?” Nam posed in an interview with Netflix. “But the three of us are a set,” Roh added, “so [if we do, we’d] all get dragged along together.” For now, however, they could probably all use a break from adventuring.
Choi, who wanted to “leave a little bit of hope at the very end” of the series, would be open to revisiting this world, should the opportunity exist. “I still think nothing much has changed at the palace,” he says. “We've eliminated the risks, but, you know, the king's still there.”
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