Drama Review: Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (MBC/ Netflix 2019)
I’m not into serious romantic dramas these days, but this is the kind of light-hearted comedy where the prince leans in for a kiss but stumbles head first into a nearly bush instead. It’s fun!
THE PLOT
The story is set in the late Joseon period when the fictitious king Yi Tae is on the throne. Our heroine Goo Hae Ryung (Shin Se-kyung of Deep Rooted Tree; Six Flying Dragons) comes from a well-to-do family but decides that she doesn’t want to follow the norm and get married. So she manages to get a job as one of the first female scribes (sagwan) at the palace instead.
The scribes are assigned to different members of the royal family to keep records of everything that happens throughout the day. And the romance between Hae Ryung and the prince (played by Cha Eun-woo from K-pop band Astro) begins.
Most of the drama focuses on the gentle romance along with the trials and tribulations of the scribes at the palace. But towards the end, the plot gets more exciting when mysteries about the prince’s identity along with inevitable power struggles to be king quicken the pace. (This is a court drama after all!)
see more from dramasrok about life in Korea on Facebook Pinterest and Instagram
COMEDY
But it wasn’t the kind of drama where I was on the edge of my seat willing our heroine to survive the next episode: she’s never really in danger. I watched it mainly for the humour.
The script is funny and I laughed out loud. The deadpan delivery from the straight-forward Hae Ryung often leaves other characters speechless.
But a lot of the comedy is non-verbal. There are the prince’s two court ladies who talk in unison and react to everything like identical twins. Then there’s the eunuch with his over-the-top gestures and reactions. The rather unmanly scribes are fun too: their fight scenes reveal they are unaccustomed to fighting and have hilariously limited skills. The arrival of a fair-haired westerner causes chaos at the palace. And when he escapes, the wimpy scribes are too scared to go out to the loo by themselves.
THE SOUNDS EFFECTS
But my absolute FAVOURITE part of this drama is the sound effects. (It reminds me of when I was in charge of knocking the two coconut halves together for the clip-clop sound of the ‘horse’s hooves’ at our school play!)
There is no pantomime horse here, but there are squeaky kid’s shoe sound effects, croaking frogs, and perfectly timed chimes and gongs. The music is perfect too with characters running around to flight of the bumblebee.
THE ROLE OF THE PALACE SCRIBES
Despite the light comedy, the drama does address the serious issue of how history is recorded and how it can be manipulated and biased depending on who is writing it.
The history of Joseon was recorded by over 80 scholars called sagwan. They worked full time in the Office of Annals Compilation (춘추관 chunchukwon) government department keeping detailed records of everything that went on from daily life to state affairs. Whenever the king went anywhere there were always a couple of sagwan assigned to go with him.
It must have been frustrating at times having someone following you around and writing down everything that you did or said! And this is used to comedy effect in the drama too.
(There’s a record in the annals of an embarrassed King Taejong falling off his horse while hunting and trying to persuade the sagwan NOT to include the incident in the annals. But they did…)
Read about the Annals of King Taeojo (now available in English)
Another job of the scribes was to fact check and make sure that all the info was correct. The aim was be objective. Facts before feelings or subjective interpretation. At one point in the drama, Hae Ryung is told off by her superior Official Min (my favourite character 🙂 ) for not writing things down objectively. She’s loved up and he complains that he can read her feelings through her writing!
Read more about the sagwan in the Joseon Kings Overview
see more from dramasrok about life in Korea on Facebook Pinterest and Instagram
Although it’s a historical drama, it still follows the trends in changing values of contemporary society – Hae Ryung is in no rush to get married and perhaps won’t see the need for it at all.
It’s an entertaining and beautifully made fusion historical drama.
Read more fusion historical drama reviews:
Kingdom (Netflix 2019) this drama is not set in a specific period of Joseon and it’s about zombies – so not completely historically accurate…but what drama ever is? And it’s certainly entertaining!
My Love from the Star (SBS 2014). so technically this is not a sageuk drama! But I do like time travel and we can feel the difference in culture between Joseon and modern-day Korea!