The Glory: The Inglorious Journey

Cast: Song Hye Kyo (Moon Dong Eun), Lim Ji Yeon (Park Yeon Jin), Lee Do-Hyun (Joo Yeo Jeong), Jung Sung II (Ha Do Yeong), Park Sung-hoon (Jeon Jae Joon), Cha Joo-Young (Choi Hye Jeong), Kim Hieora (Sa Ra), Yeom Hye-Ran (Kang Hyun Nam), Kim Gun-Woo (Myeong O)
Writer: Kim Eun Sook
Director: Ahn Gil Ho
Genre: Revenge Drama
Platform: Netflix

Rating: 3.7/5

21st Jan 2023, Preeti Ramesh

The Glory is about a group of high school bullies who took it too far and their victim who is willing to walk the ends of earth to pay them back. Kim Eun Sook’s revenge drama is compelling but it lacks depth. Song Hye Kyo is grey in tones of black, brown and an occasional blue. Full sleeves ,a papery face and carrying a stifled but slightly too loud laughter. Her reticence is attractive to the men she meets and unnerving to her ex-classmates.

There is nothing glorious about revenge. The ones who seek it are also damned. Moon Dong Eun knows this, but the scars left behind run too deep…

Revenge is a dish best served cold and not pretty. And Moon Dong Eun spends her entire adolescence; plotting and planning….even writing letters to Yeon Jinna.

The bullies

Park Yeon Jin

The lead bully. She is a bored teenager, or so it seems. But, it generally seems that issues and unhappiness at home coupled with bottled up anger is taken out on poor hapless classmates. Her reason to do so is because she can get away with it. Her mother buys her freedom out of every situation. Including Dong Eun’s mother, who signs off her daughter’s school leaving form as a case of Maladjustment. It’s interesting that she has modest dreams of being a housewife and a loving mother.

Jeon Jae Joon

Colourblind but rich. With a golf court to inherit, Jae Joon is laid back in everything. Even in torturing Dong Eun. He obsesses over his poor eyesight and the topic is a trigger point which ignites his anger.Fun fact- His dog Louis enjoys a higher status than his lackey Myeong O.

Sa Ra

Daughter of the head priest but full of sin. Debauchery, orgies, drugs pretty much define her life. Art is her only redeeming part. Everything else is a stimulant or a release for her to turn out better art.

Choi Hye Jeong 

She is not shown to directly bully Dong Eun. Low in IQ, she primarily relies on getting ahead by using her body and running favours for the elite in the group.

Myeong O

Jeong Jae’s lackey and lacking in morals. He gets officially employed as an errand runner for Joon Jae after graduation. 

The Male Leads (Behind every successful Woman there is a Man or Men)

Enter Joo Yeo Jeong

He is the male lead, with a backstory of emotional abuse by his father’s murderer. Joo Yeo’s story is not as brutal but he finds Dong Eun compelling and it takes multiple tries for him to get across to her. He becomes an unexpected ally to Dong Eun. Dong Eun calls him her executioner.

Ha Do Yeong

Successful businessman and indulgent husband of Yeon Jin. He meets Dong Eun over a Game of Go and then continues to meet her for several more games which leads him being intrigued and then sympathetic to Dong Eun’s cause.

The bullies’ backstory are not widely explored but there are moments which are hinted at. We can speculate at our ends what could have led to this constant need to make a pastime out of bullying and making hapless people’s life miserable, cause Dong Eun’s not the only one.This subtlety is a thumbs up from my end.

There has been speculation that the drama has been based on real life events. While I haven’t found an official statement online which accepts and publicizes claims that it is based on one particular single incident; there have been several online influencers who have cited very similar examples to real life bullying incidents in korea.

Inspite of all the revenge, they don’t show Dong Eun directly capable of violence or murder. Her dressing, mannerisms and stilted conversations speaks of an individual with much to conceal, seething beneath the surface, doggedly pursuing her revenge. But, she still finds time to dole out kindness. I would have expected her to be more grey, which would have probably been a more interesting portrayal. The characters very conveniently meet their end through other hands or means. Dong Eun in most instances is shown as someone positioned in the background as a threat or a sort of a prop that signals the harbinger of doom in the character’s life. The one who wields the knife or who sets in motion the moves like a line of dominoes is always someone else. Though, we can pass this off as Dong Eun’s years of meticulous planning and plotting to never appear in the scheme of things.

Due to this, I personally feel the story slightly falls short as the execution of revenge is not macabre enough. It leaves a line open for Dong Eun to escape her fate as an avenger and seek a happily ever after. This mercy from the writer, leaves the story and the character somewhat wanting. This could also be an attempt by the creators to make the character’s actions more accepting and justified in the eyes of the viewer. But, revenge is never meant to be liberating and in the larger scheme of things ideal… satisfying, fair, justified even; but never ideal. On those lines, The Glory’s end is perhaps a little too Glorious…