As global interest in Korean culture grows on the back of hits such as the animated film "KPop Demon Hunters," the recently released Netflix original series "Scandal" is drawing attention for its portrayal of what it calls the beauty of the Joseon era through spaces rarely seen in period dramas, including hanok, or traditional Korean houses. Critics say the series opens new ground for the genre by using distinctive interpretations from its Korean creative team and a range of visual devices to render the lives of Joseon-era aristocrats in three dimensions.
"Scandal" follows a virtuous noblewoman, Lady Jo, played by Son Ye-jin, who proposes an audacious wager over love to Jo Won, played by Ji Chang-wook, a talented member of a prestigious family, and the precarious story that unfolds as a young widow, Hee-yeon, played by Nana, becomes entangled in the bet. The series is a remake of the 2003 film "Untold Scandal," which transplanted French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" to the Joseon era.
Bright, Clean Hanok on Winding Hillside Paths Break With Period Drama Convention
The most striking feature is that the series is set neither in the royal court nor among commoners, the settings most often depicted on screen, but in the noble households of Bukchon, where high-ranking officials and aristocrats lived. In visualizing that world, the production fills its spaces with devices that go beyond the conventions of the genre. Jung Yi-jin, the production designer who oversaw the show's spatial design, said the aim was to create visuals that viewers had not seen before and that broke with received ideas. "I wanted to express a story of the aristocracy that is elegant and lofty but still carries the smell of everyday life, and I chose Bukchon, where senior officials and aristocrats of the time lived together, as its center," Jung said.
To build a new Bukchon, Jung first focused on topography. Rather than the wide, open flatland familiar from period dramas, the aristocratic houses were designed along winding hillside paths, with differences in elevation between buildings. "It started from imagining that, much like the wealthy districts of Pyeongchang-dong or Seongbuk-dong today, the aristocratic quarters of that era may also have been a cluster of houses built to each owner's taste on hills carved out of the mountains," Jung said. "An advising professor told us that commoners at the time mostly lived near streams or at the bottom of the hills, and that was a great help in setting the concept." Jung added: "Bukchon still has many hills, with houses packed along the mountain paths. To reproduce that, we put considerable effort into the groundwork as well, embedding large stones throughout the yards and sowing seeds so that trees and wild grasses could grow."
The fresh approach extends beyond the village panorama to the living spaces of the main characters. The rooms of Lady Jo and Jo Won, finished meticulously in bright wood-tone wallpaper, were staged to feel light and comfortable, as though newly built, in contrast to the dark, worn hanok of earlier period dramas. "We wanted to depict a freshly built house," Jung said. "The hanok we encounter today have darkened because oil was applied over long periods to preserve them, but people in aristocratic households would have built their homes with the best new timber of the day, so in a sense it is an obvious approach." The production also drew on the historical fact that royal and aristocratic households did not step directly on wooden floors in their stockinged feet, laying jiui, a traditional form of carpet, on interior floors — attention to detail that extends even to areas barely visible on screen.
Emotions Written Into Space, From Hidden Desire to the Era's Oppression
The spaces in the series go beyond re-creating the period, functioning as devices that reinforce each character's situation and narrative. "We tried to vary not only the spaces but also the paintings, props and costumes in the background according to each character's personality and state of mind," Jung said. "In particular, we set 'layers' as the concept for the room of Lady Jo, who harbors desires hidden deep in her heart, designing it as an inner chamber that can be reached only after passing through several spaces."
Behind the spot where Lady Jo sits, the production placed chaehwa, decorative artificial flowers of the Joseon era, instead of a folding screen. "The flower rendered in chaehwa is a plum blossom, which carries the paradoxical meaning of being more vivid than a painting yet ultimately a fake flower," Jung said. "Through that, I wanted to express metaphorically the inner thoughts hidden behind Lady Jo's gentle exterior."
The room of Hee-yeon, who must give up her own life in the name of chastity and fidelity, was made to convey an atmosphere entirely different from Lady Jo's. To render the era's norms weighing on Hee-yeon as physical pressure, the room's height was designed at less than half that of Lady Jo's space, and its walls were papered densely with phrases that seem to torment her. The contrast in space captures in fine detail the differing scale of oppression felt by characters who live in the same era but occupy different positions in life.
Completed through a range of directorial experiments under director Jung Ji-woo's conviction that the production should show a new kind of period drama, "Scandal" began streaming to global audiences on Netflix on the 18th. Netflix said it worked to preserve the creators' directorial intent as precisely as possible while providing careful subtitles and dubbing tailored to viewers in each language, so that audiences abroad could immerse themselves in the series' distinctive depiction of the period and its characters' emotions. "I hope that the Bukchon unique to 'Scandal' comes across as something new to viewers around the world, while the lives and hearts of the people living within it are conveyed more naturally," Jung said.
