Director Lee Byung Hoon, Heojun and Medical-Inspired Dramas

In these crazy times, I hope you are safe (and have toilet paper).

At least, with so many great Korean dramas on Netflix at the moment, we’re spoilt for choice. There’s plenty to watch if you’re stuck at home. I’ve just started season 2 of Kingdom and I like the look of the court room drama Hyena. And Netflix has recommended I watch ‘Hospital Playlist‘…

These strange times are making me nostalgic too. I see the Korean Times has been running some articles on medicine in the Joseon period, and it reminded me of my all-time favourite drama – Heojun (MBC 2000).

The drama is based on the life of famous doctor, Heo Jun (1539-1615). And it’s 64 episodes of cliff-hanging intensity.

(Hur Jun, The Original Story (Guam Heojun, MBC 2013) is a more recent version of Heojun’s story. I haven’t seen this version yet.)

Heojun changed the face of Korean historical drama reaching record-breaking viewing figures of over 60%!! And it made Director Lee Byung Hoon a household name.

In his book, the director recalls being asked for his autograph whilst filming Heojun. It was the the first time he’d been asked for an autograph in his 30 year directing career!

HISTORICAL DRAMAS WITH A MEDICAL THEME

But this isn’t the only drama with a medical theme directed by Lee Byung Hoon. He has directed several big dramas around the theme of medicine.

JEWEL IN THE PALACE

After Heojun, he went on to direct the massive international hit Jewel in the Palace (MBC, 2004). The heroine Dae Jang Geum became the first female doctor to treat the King (that’s true) – although the drama became popular for its theme of FOOD and Jang Geum’s skills in the kitchen as well as the exciting storyline!

The idea that Jang Geum worked in the Royal Kitchens before moving into medicine is fiction – or at least there are no records of this. But in the drama, food is treated as medicine, reminding us all that we should take more care about what we are eating! (I’ve just eaten half a bar of chocolate. I’ll stop now…)

HORSE DOCTOR

Horse Doctor (MBC 2013) takes a similar theme this time from the angle of a vet who goes on to become the King’s Doctor!

This drama is set later than Heojun in the 17th century. Our hero is brave because he wants to carry out operations – not just acupuncture and herbal remedies! And this is something that has not been done before in Joseon…

Director Lee Byung Hoon on filming Jewel in the Palace.

notes from the book by Director Lee Byung Hoon.

I’ve seen ‘Heojun’ (I should say actor Jun Kwang-ryul) in real life a couple of times in Seoul – once in Shinsegae department store and once in a spicy octopus restaurant. That was exciting. 💕

The drama might be 20 years old this year, but Jun Kwang-ryul will always be Heojun.

HEOJUN, THE STORY

At first, Heojun is an angry young man. He’s the son of a yangban nobleman, but his mother is a concubine and so he can’t claim nobleman status. He spends his time smuggling herbs to China. But when he meets an impressive local doctor, he discovers his purpose in life …

Heojun lived through unstable times.

He became a doctor in the court of King Seonjo (1567-1608) when there was famine and plague and political fighting. Then the Japanese invasions (r.1592-1598) and the devastating aftermath. We also meet King Seonjo’s son and successor Gwanghaegun (r.1618-1623) who at the time is wrapped up in a political battle over becoming Crown Prince.

Heojun was ahead of his time in the medical field. But things have changed a lot since then, of course.

Here’s a brief look at life as a doctor in the 16th century Joseon…

HERB DIGGERS

A lot of the medicine used in traditional medicine was made up of herbs and roots growing in the mountains.

In the drama herb diggers are employed by the clinic to scour the mountains for different plants. This could be a dangerous job and they are armed with a two-pronged wooden stick to protect themselves from tigers!

At the palace, herbs were stored in the royal herb storage room. Heojun has to go to the mountains to pick fresh herbs for his patient (Consort Gong Bin – Gwanghaegun’s mother) when another doctor pulls rank and grabs all the freshest herbs for his own patient!

These days, leaves, herbs, and roots are still picked from the mountains to make healthy food.

You have to be careful though…

When Heojun was first aired, there were cases of fans having to be hospitalised after enthusiastically going off to the local mountains to pick ‘herbs’ and make their own concoctions…

Last winter my parents-in-law bought us a case of arrowroot which grows wild in the mountains. They didn’t pick the arrowroot themselves -it’s picked and prepared by professionals!

Arrowroot is said to be good for all sorts of things from improving digestion to lowering cholesterol. The root is boiled for a long time and made into a black concoction.

It looks like cough mixture and tastes like ‘medicine’. It’s bitter with a sort of liquorice aftertaste. I quite like the taste in a weird way.

NO OPERATIONS ALLOWED

Medical knowledge must have been relatively limited at this time as dissecting bodies was illegal. It went against Confucian teaching – the body is a precious gift from your parents and shouldn’t be messed about with.

(That’s also why everyone in the Joseon period had long hair – they were not supposed to cut it.)

So the doctors had to get creative.

Heojun discovers a doctor living in the mountains who runs around catching animals and cutting them open! Since it’s illegal to cut open dead bodies, he wants to understand how the body works.

Later he works with a monk (outcast doctor) trying to cure leprosy. He goes off into the mountain to see if can find any dead bodies frozen on the mountain after the winter. (that he can dissect!)

Autopsies were non-invasive.

An ‘autopsy’ had to be quite simple – like checking inside a dead official’s mouth with a silver spoon to see if he had been poisoned (if the spoon went dark it meant the victim had been poisoned.)

The king used silver chopsticks as they could detect poison.

NO ONLINE COPIES OF MEDICAL BOOKS

During the Japanese invasion in 1592, angry mobs of peasants set fire to the palace as it is revealed that the king has run away and left them to deal with the enemy.

Heo Jun and his team have to leave too, but he doesn’t want to leave all the hand-written medical books behind. Once they burn they are gone forever. So they pack what they can before evacuating from the capital.

Joseon wins the war and the king is happy. But Heo Jun is disturbed because many civilians died – not because of direct contact with the war, but due to disease and epidemics. He wants to write medical books to help the ordinary people know about the medicine growing all around them, for free.

Heojun wrote The Donguibogam – The Book of Eastern Medicine.

Lee Byung Hoon has also directed Yi San (MBC 2007), Dong Yi (MBC 2010) and The Flower in Prison (MBC, 2016)

Although there are lots of modern hospital drama, I do enjoy a medical historical drama? Do you have a favourite historical drama?

Dramasrok KOREA