"You can catch ten thieves hiding in the mountain, but you can't catch the one thief in your heart." - Sam Maek-Jong
Introduction
First impression — 2016
When Hwarang first came out in 2016, I watched the first episode but did not finish the entire season. I think it was partly due to my ignorance of Hwarang’s historical background and the fact that I thought the producers of the K-drama came up with the idea as an excuse to bring together a group of handsome actors and singers in one show. On hindsight, even if that were the case, that should have been okay too. I mean I did watch Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo that year :P
Second impression — 2020
Fast forward four years later and in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, as usual, I was channel surfing to see if there was anything interesting to watch. It so happened the KBS channel was showing the first episode of Hwarang and perhaps out of boredom, I decided to check it out since I had watched it before. Strangely enough, I found the first episode intriguing enough when I watched it the second time. The disclaimer at the beginning of the episode must have contributed to the experience as well: “This drama is a work of fiction based on real facts of Hwarang in the era of King Jinheung of Silla.” I had heard of Silla as one of the kingdoms of ancient Korea, so the fact that the drama is based on history made me curious.
Entering the world of Silla, around 540 CE
In the first episode, we are introduced to life among the common folks outside of the palace but within the kingdom’s capital. There are merchants selling medicine, accessories, liquor and meeting places in the form of that period’s bars and restaurants. We get a glimpse of the capital with people coming and going about their businesses. The people appear well-dressed and generally content. The scene I watched showed A-ro (Go Ara), a physician’s daughter regaling an audience in the streets with a story from erotic literature. I liked how A-ro did not look like the conventional female lead of a K-drama. One guy was listening to her from one of the wooden benches a little further away. From the way he looked at her, I thought he was an acquaintance but turned out he was caught in her storytelling skills like the rest of her audience and also because her storytelling helped him fall asleep later on. It turns out that he is actually King Jinheung/Sam Maek-Jong (Park Hyung Sik), who had returned to the capital after being sent away by his mother, Queen Regent Jiso, twelve years ago to protect him. We later discover that the palace is full of traitors who would seek to kill the young king.
Political and social situation in Silla
From early on in the drama, we are introduced to two guys, Mak Moon (Lee Kwang Soo) and Moo Myung (Park Seo Jun) who are trying to sneak into Silla’s capital. For reasons not made known in the beginning, Mak Moon had been separated from his father and sister who currently live in the capital and is trying to find them. Unfortunately, Mak Moon and Moo Myung are peasants and therefore forbidden from entering the capital. Peasants caught trying to sneak into the capital are usually beheaded. Such is the law during that time. In the capital, there is also a social hierarchy whereby the aristocracy is divided into the top two tiers of True Bone and Sacred Bone. I will not go into details as there are a few other levels but basically True Bone is the top and marriages are usually among the same member of your social group. If you were to marry someone outside or below your social group, it would lower your social standing and your offspring be known as a half-breed. To sum it up, it wasn’t an egalitarian society.
The people in the capital appear to be comfortable. I like looking at their attires which among the aristocrats were usually silk with in pretty pastel hues and flower motifs for men and women. Men and women alike sported long hair (hard to differentiate from behind) but men usually wore a band around their forehead while women either braided their hair, put it into a bun or let it loose but accessorised with dainty ornaments. I don’t know how historically accurate this K-drama and I don’t presume it to be, but scenes at the watering hole of Oktagak reminded me of any modern day fancy bar albeit in a traditional wooden setting. The meeting place for the young people of the kingdom featured a shop with showcased the latest merchandise for sale such as shoes, clothes, and accessories. A-ro also works at Oktagak telling stories and teaching the female staff there how to sew. Other times, she would be treating people for free at her father’s house. She is not an official physician but has learned the trade from her father. I liked this aspect very much because this drama featured a female lead with a non-typical job featured in period dramas (by typical I mean princess, court maid, courtesan, daughter of a high-ranking official).
Inside the palace, the situation is a tenuous one for the royal family. The palace officials are divided into two groups. The first group are those that support the Queen while the second group are made up of those that opposes her and are seeking ways to supplant her. The Queen sent her son many years ago because she feared that due to his young age, he would be assassinated by the second group of officials. True enough, when word spread that the capital gate was opened during the night, the second group suspected the king had returned and sent assassins to kill him while he stayed at an inn outside the palace. During Silla’s reign, it became quite common to have a king that was a mere figurehead and was at the mercy of the officials. There is a saying that goes, “There are many kings in Silla,” which refers to many factions of officials that hold greater wealth and military strength than the royal family. Under such a political landscape, it is understandable why Queen Jiso would want to keep her son away. In the drama, it is the Queen that came up with the idea to set up Hwarang.
Hwarang — Poet Warrior Youth
To protect the king and reduce the officials’ power, the Queen decided to set up Hwarang, a group of elite young men knowledgeable in arts and military skills. The idea was strongly opposed by the second group of officials who didn’t want their sons to be a part of Hwarang; they saw it as an attempt by the Queen to make their sons hostages. Master Wehwa (Sung Dong-il), the soon to be chief instructor of Hwarang sought the help of Pi Joo Ki (Kim Kwang-gyu), a businessman in the capital (and if I am not mistaken, owner of the Oktagak establishment) to find out suitable candidates among the young men of the capital for Hwarang. Joo Ki then hired A-ro, who is always looking for work to reduce her debt, to do research on potential Hwarang recruits. Wehwa had doubts when he first met A-ro before she presented the results of her research, I suspect because she’s a woman but after her presentation he said of her, “A smart girl with a debt.”
Wehwa had his list of candidates but no one was signing up. For the sons of officials in the second group, there were just following their fathers’ stance. For others, there was the stigma of being seen as the Queen’s “dog”. Wehwa used a creative method to get Ban-Ryu and Su Ho, two rival groups of youths caught fighting at Najeong, a sacred well that was supposedly the birthplace of Silla’s founder. Desecrating the sacred site was akin to treason and Wehwa offered a chance to escape punishment if the offenders would join Hwarang. After getting a taste of the coming punishment, all of them naturally agreed to join Hwarang and the rest followed.
In an interesting twist, the king decided to join Hwarang. It was partly to make himself stronger after his mother the Queen scolded him for being weak in one of their secret meetings at the palace. Needless to say, she was livid that he had the audacity to return to the capital when it was not time yet. Still hiding his identity and going by the name Ji-dwi, the king tried to Wehwa to let him join Hwarang. It was his thoughts on wanting to change Silla and this speech about a king’s responsibility that finally convinced Wehwa to let him join Hwarang under the guise of being his nephew who had just returned from studying in the West.
“A nation with happy subjects and a suffering king. The subjects do not worry about the nation, but the king worries about the subjects. I want to live in a nation like that.”
Another unexpected recruit for Hwarang is Moo Myung. He and his friend managed to sneak into the capital. Mak Moon almost found his sister but unfortunately, he accidentally saw the face of the king and as a result was killed by the Queen’s commandant. Moo Myung almost died as well but was protected by Mak Moon. Before he passed out he also heard the voice of the king, who said, “Someone died because of me again.” Moo Myung didn’t see the king but saw the double dragon bracelet he wore. He was then saved by Mak Moon’s father, who belatedly found his long-lost son Mak Moon and finally reunited with him for a few precious seconds before he succumbed to his wounds. Master Ahnji, who is also A-ro’s father, brought Moo Myung back to his house and tended to his injuries. When he regained consciousness, Ahnji requested of him to step into Mak Moon’s shoes and live as Mak Moon. Moo Myung didn’t want to but out of guilt, agreed to Ahnji’s request and took up the name of Seon-u. Initially, A-ro had trouble accepting him as her long-lost brother but eventually accepted him. Due to an altercation with the Queen’s commandant (in his quest to seek revenge for his friend’s death) during a royal parade through the capital, Seon-u agreed to join Hwarang at the request of the Queen who told him she would spare the life of Ahnji and A-ro so long as he followed her orders. This was in punishment for his act of disrupting the royal parade in front of the Queen. Seon-u couldn’t quite kill the commandant since he is the Queen’s commandant but he would continue seeking the owner of the double dragon bracelet.
The main story of Hwarang follows the intertwined lives of these two young men: one having to live his life as someone else and the other, having to live in hiding.
Hwarang and other men of Silla
This is quite a long story but that was how Hwarang began. It is made up of several young men with different backstories and the drama follows their progress in becoming learned, warriors with the potential to change Silla. It is a story of friendship, brotherhood, filial duty, loyalty, courage, empathy and love. The Hwarang warriors faced political maneuverings, class differences, a pandemic and diplomacy with a belligerent neighbouring kingdom.
As mentioned before, Silla had a strict social structure which caused much pain to its people. One case in point is Han-Seong (V) who appears to be the youngest member of Hwarang. He has a brother Dan Sae but the two of different social standings because of their mothers. Han-Seong’s mother is an aristocrat while Dan Sae’s mother is a servant. Due to this, the head of their family, their grandfather, treats Han-Seong as the heir to the family and expects much of him. This pains Han-Seong as he feels his brother Dan Sae is better qualified to lead the family. The social structure eventually leads to tragedy and demonstrates just how unnecessary it is.
Ahnji is as every physician/doctor should be. He cares deeply for his patients and treats most of them for free. When a pandemic hits one of the villages outside of the capital, he diligently searched for medicine but was told most of the spices used for the medicine were in short supply. His friend, Woo Reuk, suspected that some of the officials may be hoarding the spices to release it when the pandemic gets worse and get a higher selling price. A-ro, while helping her father search for the spices, discovers that the spices were indeed being held in a warehouse belonging to a top official opposed to the queen. She quickly informed Wehwa and the Hwarang warriors broke into the warehouse and then sent the much needed medicine to the affected village. During this COVID-19 period, one does wonder.
The women of Silla
The drama also delved into the lives of women in Silla. A-ro, despite not being in an official position, was hired as the unofficial physician for the Hwarang warriors even though women were not allowed go inside Hwarang house. She used her skills diligently, even to help prisoners held in Baekje.
Queen Jiso, often pictured by the officials as someone who did not want to let go of her power, was depicted as a mother who truly cared for her son. She had no illusions about the powerlessness of the royal family against scheming officials and did what she could to protect her family even though some of the methods may have been questionable.
Her daughter, Princess Sookmyung, is a strong women like her mother. When asked to oversee the training in Hwarang and faced misogyny from one of the warriors, she coolly showed off her martial skills. She also admirably held her ground in a difficult amity conversation with the Crown Prince of Baekje, Prince Chang.
Another notable character is Sooyun, A-ro’s friend and Su Ho’s sister. Her father is a top official on the side of the Queen so she could be considered an aristocrat living comfortably during that time. She ended up being friends with A-ro because she was the only girl in the capital that her playboy brother did not date while A-ro ended up being her friend because she was the only one who didn’t make fun of A-ro for not having a mother. It was nice seeing them talking about the things girls in any time period would talk about. Sooyun eventually showed her strong side when defending Ban-Ryu against her brother Su Ho from a misunderstanding.
I really enjoyed watching Hwarang because of its assemble of characters. No doubt the main characters of the show were Seon-u, A-ro and Ji-dwi but the combination and encounters between the characters made it entertaining. The love stories intertwined in the story was sweet, awkward, funny and bittersweet. The values imparted were equally captivating: equality, responsibility/service to the people, kindness, discipline, courage and family.
I will close with this quote that Wehwa said to his students as they faced the morning sun from the peak of a mountain in one of the training sessions:
“As members of Hwarang, be like that sun. Be renewed each day and be passionate each day. Burn away any prejudice and arrogance. You must be reborn.”
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