The east palace

At the king’s single promise to the families they left behind—“I will care for each one”—every last one of the wronged spirits finds peace and passes on. They are also, every last one, people who were unjustly killed at a single word from the king. A single utterance is a frightening thing. In both this world and the next, it gives life and takes it away, breeds resentment and lays it to rest. It even moves ghosts.

The trouble is that most of what the characters in this drama say is a lie. All their talk of caring for the people and watching over them is nothing more than a desperate expedient to get through the crisis at hand. There is no sincerity in it whatsoever. Yet, as Gu-cheon, the protagonist, says, “Won-gwis are remarkably simple.”

Simple? If they are the ones who believe the hollow promises of those in power, who, exactly, are they?

In moments like this, Gu-cheon keeps crossing the fourth wall, though never quite explicitly. He belongs neither to the living nor to the dead. Just as he moves between this world and the next, he moves in and out of the story, all the way to where the viewer sits. Come to think of it, Gu-cheon is also the one who points out that the king’s promise—“I will care for each one”—is a lie. Perhaps the won-gwis are none other than us: the governed in the real world. The king who promises to “care for each one” is the ruler in the real world. Perhaps that is why Gu-cheon spends the entire series sick and tired of everything. For someone able to see the hidden underside that remains invisible to everyone else, there may be no escaping such disgust.

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