Untold Scandal
スキャンダル
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Dangerous Liaisons relocated to 18th-century Joseon, with Yonsama as the seducer Japan never expected.
Joseon, late in the eighteenth century. Lady Cho, clever, rich and childless, performs the part of a virtuous wife and takes lovers in secret. Her husband, Minister Yu, announces that he is taking a concubine, So-ok, a girl of sixteen. To take revenge on him, Lady Cho asks her cousin Jo-won, her first love, to make the girl pregnant before the wedding. Jo-won passed the state examination and refused office; he paints erotic pictures and seduces women. He says the girl would be too easy. He would rather conquer Lady Jeong, a devout Catholic widow who has kept faith with her dead husband for nine years and been honoured with a gate of virtue. Lady Cho makes it a bet: if he wins, she will give herself to him; if he loses, he must become a monk.
Jo-won pursues Lady Jeong with gifts to her Catholic circle, a staged rescue from thugs he has hired himself, and letters she sends back. At the same time, under the pretence of teaching So-ok to write letters, he sexually abuses her. When he announces that he is giving up and leaving for Qing China, Lady Jeong comes to say goodbye, and soon she becomes his lover. Jo-won writes to Lady Cho to claim his prize. She reads in his letter that he has fallen in love, refuses him, and spreads the rumour that Lady Jeong's Catholic gatherings are corrupting public morals. Jo-won tells Lady Jeong coldly that it was never serious. She wastes away, then goes to nurse the sick in a village struck by an epidemic.
Lady Cho, posing as So-ok, writes to In-ho, the young man who loves the girl, revealing what Jo-won did to So-ok and to Lady Jeong. In-ho passes the story to Lady Jeong's brother-in-law, who attacks Jo-won. Dying, Jo-won rides to find Lady Jeong and dies before he can reach her. She reads his last letter, sees the portrait he painted of her, learns that he is dead, and takes her own life. Jo-won's erotic paintings are published as pictures of Lady Cho, and she flees the capital by boat. So-ok goes to her husband's house already pregnant.
Starring
Bae Yong-joonas Jo-won
A nobleman who refuses office to paint erotic pictures and seduce women, and who makes a virtuous widow the object of a bet.
Jo-won’s story
When his cousin and first love, Lady Cho, asks Jo-won to make her husband's sixteen-year-old concubine pregnant before the wedding, he calls it too easy and bets instead that he can conquer Lady Jeong, a widow honoured for nine years of chastity; the prize is Lady Cho herself. He courts the widow with gifts, a rescue he has staged and letters she sends back, and meanwhile, under the pretence of teaching So-ok to write letters, he sexually abuses her. When he announces that he is giving up, Lady Jeong comes to say goodbye and becomes his lover, and his letter claiming the prize tells Lady Cho that he has fallen in love. He tells Lady Jeong coldly that it was never serious. Stabbed by her brother-in-law, he rides to find her and dies before he reaches her.
Lee Mi-sookas Lady Cho
Jo-won's cousin and first love, the brilliant, childless wife of a minister, who plays with other lives out of rage at her own.
Lady Cho’s story
Lady Cho has mastered the Confucian classics despite being a woman, plays the virtuous wife and takes lovers in secret. When her husband, Minister Yu, announces that he is taking a sixteen-year-old concubine, she asks her cousin Jo-won to make the girl pregnant before the wedding, and when he chooses Lady Jeong instead, she makes it a bet with herself as the prize. She reads in his letter claiming it that he has fallen in love, and she spreads the rumour that Lady Jeong's Catholic gatherings corrupt public morals. Then, writing in So-ok's name, she tells the girl's young admirer, In-ho, what Jo-won has done, and In-ho sends word to Lady Jeong's brother-in-law, who kills Jo-won. Jo-won's erotic paintings are published as pictures of her, and she flees the capital by boat.
Jeon Do-yeonas Lady Jeong
A devout Catholic widow honoured for nine years of chastity, who becomes the target of the bet and falls in love.
Lady Jeong’s story
Lady Jeong has kept faith with her dead husband for nine years and been honoured for it with a gate of virtue, and she worships with a small Catholic circle. She knows Jo-won's reputation and keeps him at a distance, sending his letters back, until he says he is giving up and leaving, and she goes to say goodbye. She becomes his lover. When he tells her coldly that it was never serious, she wastes away, then goes to nurse the sick in a village struck by an epidemic. She reads his last letter and sees the portrait he painted of her; then she learns that he is dead, and she takes her own life.
Lee So-yeonas So-ok
A sixteen-year-old taken as the minister's concubine, whom Jo-won abuses as part of Lady Cho's revenge.
Jo Hyun-jaeas Kwon In-ho
A young man in love with So-ok, whom Lady Cho uses to bring Jo-won down.
Why it matters
Untold Scandal moves Les Liaisons dangereuses to late Joseon, and the move sharpens the novel. In a Confucian society that honoured widows with gates of virtue and gave a minister a sixteen-year-old concubine for the sake of an heir, Lady Cho's games are the only power a clever woman is allowed, and she uses it as cruelly as the men around her use theirs. The film understands her rage without excusing it. It was the fourth most successful Korean film of 2003, with more than 3.5 million admissions. In Japan, where it opened in 2004, it was seen above all as the first film lead for Bae Yong-joon, the star of Winter Sonata, cast against type as a seducer. What it leaves is the cost of the game, paid mostly by women who never agreed to play it, one of them a child.