The World of the Married
夫婦の世界
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A doctor discovers her husband's affair with a much younger woman and dismantles her whole town; JTBC's highest-rated drama.
Ji Seon-u is a respected family doctor and associate director of a hospital in Gosan, a prosperous provincial city. Her husband, Lee Tae-oh, wants to be a film director and runs an entertainment company she helped to fund; their son, Jun-yeong, is a teenager. A long hair on Tae-oh's scarf starts her looking. In his car she finds a second phone, and on it Yeo Da-kyung, a young Pilates instructor from a rich local family, along with photographs of a holiday the lovers shared with Seon-u's neighbours and friends, Go Ye-rim and Son Je-hyuk. The people she trusted have known for a long time.
Seon-u sets out, coolly, to take everything from him. She uncovers his debts, sleeps with Je-hyuk to get at the company's accounts, and at a dinner in the Yeos' house tells Da-kyung's parents about the affair and the pregnancy, sinking the investment keeping his company alive. The marriage ends in a violent fight at home; Tae-oh attacks her, Jun-yeong sees it and turns against his father, and the divorce goes through.
Two years later Tae-oh comes back to Gosan married to Da-kyung, with a small daughter, and sets about driving Seon-u out of town. He hires a man to frighten her and has her removed from her post at the hospital. Jun-yeong, pulled between them, starts stealing. When the man Tae-oh hired falls to his death at the railway station and Tae-oh is suspected, Seon-u gives him a false alibi so that their son will not be known as a murderer's child. Jun-yeong moves in with his father. One night Seon-u and Tae-oh sleep together, and the boy sees them.
Seon-u quits her job and leaves town, and at her lowest tries to take her own life; a psychiatrist from the hospital, Kim Yoon-gi, saves her. When Tae-oh slaps Jun-yeong, the boy phones his mother to come and get him, and Seon-u tells Da-kyung that Tae-oh slept with her. Da-kyung sees at last that he has dressed her in everything that once drew him to his wife, and her family cut him off and leave Gosan. Ruined, Tae-oh takes Jun-yeong without warning and begs Seon-u to start again as a family. She refuses, he tries to take his own life and survives unhurt, and Jun-yeong, watching his mother run after his father, runs away.
A year later Tae-oh is pitching scripts that no one buys, Ye-rim has left Je-hyuk and opened a café, and Da-kyung is studying again. Seon-u, back at work, has searched for her son without success. Then one day someone lets himself in at her front door. He is barely seen, but her face says it is Jun-yeong come home.
Starring
Kim Hee-aeas Ji Seon-u
A respected family doctor in Gosan who discovers her husband's affair and sets out to take everything from him.
Ji Seon-u’s story
Seon-u lost both parents at seventeen and built her life herself: a medical career, a marriage, a place in her husband's home town. A hair on his scarf leads her to his affair, which her friends have hidden. She answers coolly, sleeping with Je-hyuk to get at the accounts and telling Da-kyung's parents everything, until the marriage ends in Tae-oh's violence and a divorce. When he returns to drive her out, she fights for her post and her son, gives him a false alibi and sleeps with him once; Jun-yeong sees them and shuts her out. After trying to take her own life, she tells Da-kyung about that night. At the last she refuses Tae-oh, then runs to him when he tries to take his own life, and her son runs away. A year later he comes home.
Park Hae-joonas Lee Tae-oh
Seon-u's husband, a would-be film director living on her success, who cannot let go of the life he wrecked.
Lee Tae-oh’s story
Tae-oh wants to make films and lives on the entertainment company his wife helped him start. He has been seeing Da-kyung for two years and tells Seon-u he loves them both. When Seon-u exposes the affair to Da-kyung's parents and his backing is withdrawn, he attacks her, signs the divorce papers to settle the case and leaves town with Da-kyung. Two years later he returns, married and successful, to drive Seon-u out: he hires a man to frighten her and has her removed from her post. Cleared of suspicion by her false alibi, he sleeps with her. He hits his son, and Da-kyung's father ends the marriage and fires him. Ruined, he takes Jun-yeong, begs Seon-u to start again and, refused, tries to take his own life. A year later he is pitching scripts that no one buys.
Han So-heeas Yeo Da-kyung
A young Pilates instructor from a wealthy family, Tae-oh's lover and later his wife.
Yeo Da-kyung’s story
Da-kyung is the only daughter of Gosan's most powerful businessman. She studied dance to please her mother, gave it up to teach Pilates, and has been Tae-oh's lover for two years. Pregnant, she comes to Seon-u as a patient. After the affair comes out she leaves Gosan with Tae-oh and returns two years later as his wife, with a small daughter. Soon she is suspicious: she slips into his office to find a second phone, finds a bloodied shirt after the death at the station, and wants Jun-yeong sent abroad. Told that Tae-oh slept with Seon-u, she resolves to forgive him, until Seon-u shows her that he has dressed her in Seon-u's own perfume and clothes. The marriage ends and her family leave Gosan. A year later she is studying again, and turns away a young man's offer of coffee.
Park Sun-youngas Go Ye-rim
Seon-u's neighbour and friend, a piano teacher who knew about the affair and whose own husband strays.
Kim Young-minas Son Je-hyuk
Ye-rim's husband, Tae-oh's old schoolfriend and accountant, who pursues Seon-u and cannot stay faithful.
Jeon Jin-seoas Lee Jun-yeong
Seon-u and Tae-oh's teenage son, pulled between his parents until he runs away from both.
Why it matters
The World of the Married takes the oldest plot in television, a wife discovering an affair, and asks what it costs everyone else. Seon-u's revenge is clever and justified, and it still wrecks things: a company, a friendship, and above all her son, who runs from both parents and comes home only a year later. The drama is frank about the violence that can live inside a respectable marriage, and about a small town's appetite for watching a woman fall. Adapted from the BBC's Doctor Foster, it became the highest-rated drama in Korean cable history, its finale reaching a nationwide rating of 28.371 per cent. It was also criticised for its sex and violence, and Korea's broadcasting standards commission issued administrative guidance over its scenes. Kim Hee-ae won Best Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards. The question it leaves is whether Seon-u could ever have left without taking everything down with her.