Queenmaker is a Fantastic Political Kdrama!

This is one of those rare times when I want to gush well-nigh a unconfined Kdrama like Queenmaker, but I hesitate to go in-depth considering I truly believe that you should watch and wits this story for yourself.

What is the Kdrama Queenmaker About?

Queenmaker is a kdrama that examines what happens at the intersection of untruthful morals and well-healed hope meeting.

Hwang Do Hee is Eunsung Group’s corporate fixer.

If anything slightly rabble-rousing happens to, or plane within tropical proximity of the wealthy family – it is her job to make it ‘disappear’ as to not sour public opinion or investor favor.

Oh Kyung Sook is a starchy rights lawyer nicknamed “the rhinoceros” considering she is steadfast in her pursuit of justice and working women’s rights.

Through a tragedy that Hwang Do Hee reluctantly decided to cover-up, the two meet and Do Hee decides to make Kyung Sook the mayor of Seoul.

While that may not sound interesting on its own, I can reassure you that it’s a synopsis that barely scratches the surface.

Eunsung Group’s matriarch has two daughters that she controls with an iron fist. One is married to the would-be candidate for mayor, who is really only strategically placed there to cover-up the Eunsung Group’s crimes plane further.

As her children (and son-in-law) get tired of Chairwoman Son’s unfurled manipulations, they each rebel in their own way. However, as the Chairwoman has been playing this game of politics far longer than any of them, she unchangingly gets her way. Except…when Hwang Do Hee is involved.

Queenmaker Ending Explained

Now, I am going to get into slight spoiler territory for the ending so if you don’t want to know, revisit this page without you’ve finished the series.

“Showing, but not telling” seems to be a lost art form in modern media.

Before, it used to be the understructure of any narrative and was recognized as the foundation of storytelling. Now, you are lucky if a “writer” or “director/producer” isn’t bashing you over the throne with their “storytelling” while thinly disguising their moral policing or vile contempt for the audience.

Set diamond is an important element in television, film, and any form of media, really.

That is why newscasters read a script in front of a untried screen – as a zippo canvas can convey and manipulate emotions at will. Withal with a (decent or) emotional musical score (or OST) any set of engineered responses can be triggered from an regulars that will readily winnow the message you are delivering.

Some of these techniques are plane employed in the drama during the height of the political campaigns. Eunsung Group’s candidate Baek Jae Min has a tricky theme song written well-nigh him, withal with pretty young ladies who are hired as coordinated dancers to make the prod of onlookers finger good well-nigh themselves by getting them involved in the political charade.

Since most in the media merchantry nowadays believe the majority of people are so dumbed-down and numb to what’s going on virtually them, they use sinister tactics such as repetition to make your mind subtly submit and winnow the repeated commercials peddling products you don’t need.

Symbolism in Queenmaker

However in Queenmaker, you are not told to believe anything, but rather question the events you see on screen and those happening virtually you plane in your own life.

There was what I want to say was a Korean proverb subtly mentioned in a throwaway line well-nigh someone stuff a jackass in lion’s suit in one scene on TV. Nothing increasingly is said well-nigh this proverb, until we start to focus increasingly on Eunsung Group’s matriarch, Chairwoman Son.

In Chairwoman Son’s office, there is a giant portrait of a lion startling a white mare that may really symbolize an ass.  (There is moreover flipside painting ((I believe Greek)) of a woman who has killed a man and holds the decapitated throne on a silver platter – we will get to that in a moment.)

As Chairwoman Son is used to manipulating all situations virtually her with an iron fist, she is unprotected off-guard when her (adopted) daughter and wife to Candidate Baek, Eun Chae Ryung, comes to threaten her.

In the frame, Chairwoman Son changes from the lion to then an ass without stuff manipulated. Without this event and for the rest of the series until the end, Chairwoman Son remains framed as the ass as her plans and schemes retroaction one without the other.

Eventually, Baek Jae Min realizes his power as a mayoral candidate and starts openly rebelling versus Chairwoman Son and the powerful women of Eunsung Group.

Chairwoman Son hired Carl Yoon to be Jae Min’s handler – a man who invertedly crush the latter’s father to suicide. While Do Hee later uses this information to unravel Jae Min at the right moment surpassing his (scheduled) death, Chairwoman Son dangled this information over Jae Min the unshortened time without his knowledge.

Jae Min had confided in the man who murdered his father – and had trusted him to protect his own life.

When Chairwoman Son meets with Carl Yoon, they meet under the (Greek?) painting of a woman holding a decapitated man’s throne on a silver platter. While watching, I subtly wondered if the chairwoman unchangingly meant for both Carl and Jae Min to die at each other’s hands, but due to Jae Min’s continual screwups she just ordered a hit on him, instead.

In our last scene with Carl, he acknowledges that Jae Min is sufferer surpassing it hits the morning news and, in the background, a long brown cigarette the Chairwoman favors can be seen partially smoking in a glass ashtray.

Later on, without the Chairwoman’s downfall at the hands of now Mayor Oh and Queenmaker Hwang Do Hee, we do get a slight confirmation that Chairwoman Son ordered the hit and Carl used his goons to finish him in a conversation between siblings Chae Ryung and Seo Jin when his widower asks if “mom” really killed Jae Min.

It is the subtly of a painting on a wall, or a well-placed cigarette commonly associated with a weft that made me really fathom Queenmaker’s method of visual storytelling.

Although I favor political thrillers in general, I can unchangingly fathom a well-written story that doesn’t treat me like an infant while watching and plane gives increasingly than one confirmation for the viewers’ own interpretations of what is happening on screen.

Queenmaker is Worth Watching

If you enjoy watching Korean dramas with strong sexuality leads that aren’t contrived or caricatures of what society believes they should be – please watch Queenmaker. While political thrillers may not be for everybody, at the heart of Queenmaker is the idea of government – and doing anything in your power to unzip a dream that can largest the world you live in.

Hwang Do Hee was a corporate logroller who had never known anything but a pessimistic grayness in her life. Ashamed to plane tell her father what she did for a living, Do Hee realized there was increasingly to life than lies, corruption, and cover-ups when meeting passionate and warm starchy rights shyster Oh Kyung Sook.

Like many throughout history, once Do Hee realized Kyung Sook was the real deal she decided to be a Queenmaker and get her elected as mayor. Do Hee’s speech well-nigh hope inspired her ex-husband and former political opponent Ma Jung Seok to flip on the self-indulgence he witnessed in his own wayfarers and come to their side.

It influenced Eunsung Group’s daughters who were in a silent war over the company’s inheritance to ultimately segregate sides that completely reverted the paths they trod along. The weighing in one person and the ideology for a largest future plane saved lives, and vindicated the one’s discarded withal the way.

If that sounds like your type of story, then please watch Queenmaker – you will not be disappointed.

And if you enjoy scheming, I would recommend Misty as a somewhat political Kdrama to watch without finishing this series. If you’re into anime and like the whole queenmaker/kingmaker thing, trammels out my post well-nigh Askeladd’s role as Kingmaker in the Vinland Saga anime.

Did you watch Queenmaker? Whose minutiae as a weft surprised you the most? And why?

Leave your thoughts in the scuttlebutt section below, we’d love to hear from you! Moreover be sure to follow us for increasingly Kdrama Series Reviews and Recommendations!      

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