In Netflix’s “The Glory”, Song Hye Kyo’s method of revenge is similar to how the game of Go is played.
“Go is a fight where the person with the most territory wins. So you have to build your own territory well from the end to the center and slowly tighten it while destroying the opponent’s territory fiercely in silence,” said Joo Yeo Jeong (Lee Do Hyun) in Netflix’s original series “The Glory” when he teaches Moon Dong Eun (Song Hye Kyo) how to play Go for the first time. Upon hearing the explanation, Moon Dong Eun puts a slight smile on her always expressionless face and says, “I like it.“
Does Moon Dong Eun say she likes it because of the characteristics of Go? Not necessarily. It is because Moon Dong Eun likes the way Go is played. She suffered severe school violence when she was young. The school, the police, and even her mother did not help her. Rather, after her mother received money from her perpetrator’s parents and signed an agreement, she abandoned Moon Dong Eun. In the luggage left behind by her mother, there are books related to architecture. It can be inferred from why Moon Dong Eun once dreamt of becoming an architect. And what home means to her.
Moon Dong Eun worked part-time at a kimbap restaurant without a home to stay. She was in pain and had no hope of living. However, when she endured day by day wandering outside, her perpetrator, Park Yeon Jin (Lim Ji Yeon), lived in a luxurious and fancy house.
Thanks to parents with wealth and power, Park Yeon Jin lived a clean life without having any scars or traces even after committing crimes. She married the CEO of a well-known construction company, and gave birth to a daughter. The perpetrators’ houses are always strong and warm, but the victims and the weak who are trampled by them live a life enduring the cold wind without a home. For Moon Dong Eun, who has lived with a single dream of revenge against her perpetrators, the meaning of “home” is very different.
So, at the start of the drama, the scene where Moon Dong Eun moves into the apartment complex across from the villa of Park Yeon Jin, also has a special meaning for “home”. Moon Dong Eun eats kimbap with a nonchalant face while looking down at Park Yeon Jin’s house from the roof there. The strength to survive each day in the kimbap restaurant where she worked part-time is probably a determination for Moon Dong Eun to destroy Park Yeon Jin’s “territory”.
Moon Dong Eun’s method of revenge is the same as that of Go. It’s a way of “building one’s own territory well while destroying the opponent’s territory and slowly tightening it”. It’s not just revenge that uses physical violence, but it’s a method of revenge that gradually tightens the opponent and eventually “dries them to death.”
Writer Kim Eun Sook uses a metaphor of Go to add a sense of social revenge rather than just a personal one. “The Glory” not only covers the issue of school violence, but also depicts the division of classes in society and the violence of discrimination that is created in it. The idea of social inequality, which is divided into the rich and the poor, is based on the theme of school violence, which makes viewers look at this problem as a more polarized social system.
Even when excluding the landscape of hierarchical capitalism, which is divided into ground, semi-underground, and underground, as shown in Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite”, the subject of home in society is a space where such polarization is revealed to the extreme.
The perpetrator Park Yeon Jin’s house is neatly and splendidly decorated, and the people who live in it are constantly smiling, while the victim Moon Dong Eun’s house has no furniture, no electricity or running water. All the walls are covered with pictures related to the perpetrators, filled with vengeance.
Will Moon Dong Eun be able to slowly enter Park Yeon Jin’s “territory”, her house, expose the ugly reality to the whole world, and destroy it as she has dreamed? The answer can only be found in Part 2 of “The Glory”, premiered this March.
Source: Daum.
