I’ll work on the King Ghost connection later today after my morning jog. It might take me quite a while so I’m going to throw all these trivia that I’ve gathered while watching Episode 6.

Shout out to my old soompi friends who are visiting this blog.

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1. “I hate to be poor.”

If you don’t know about it yet, now you do. 🙂  IU was poor in real life.

Here’s an article from allkpop about it.

Last week, IU revealed that she would be speaking frankly about her family and her past for the first time through KBS’s ‘Win Win’. On December 13th, IU finally shared some stories about her past, which was impacted by poverty.

According to producers, IU said, “When I was younger, I had no choice but to live separately from my parents because we were so impoverished. I lived with my grandmother, a cousin, and my younger brother for a year and a half in a studio room.”

She continued, “The room was always cold and there was never enough food to eat. We were barely able to live by on money my grandmother made from selling small hair accessories at the market. I rarely met with or spoke to my parents and consoled myself whenever I felt lonely that I still had my grandmother.”

Because of the poor conditions of her home, IU confessed that she liked spending time at the rehearsal room than her own home. “Instead of my lonely and cold home, I liked my rehearsal studio better. More than anything, I was glad to be able to eat as much as I could and sleep in a warm bed at night.”

A year before her debut, IU revealed that she had been dropped from 20 different auditions and had even been tricked into being involved in fraudulent activities.

source link: IU opens up about her past life

2. “Give me chocolat-ey. Thank you very much-y.”

It’s true. American soldiers gave out candy to children in Korea during the war. If I’m not mistaken, Hershey bars because those were part of their rations.

Here’s more info from another blog.

Chocolates from the Korean War to the 1950s

Not until the US Forces who came to the Korean peninsula with chocolates (and candy and other cultural unknowns) did chocolate become “accessible” to the common people. Actually it wasn’t all people who had access but chocolates and candies were something that soldiers passed out, especially to the young children who flocked around them and reminded the lonely soldiers of kids back home. At this time, the wealthy people were starting to enjoy chocolates, but all chocolates in Korea were import items and therefore scarce.

source link: History of chocolate in Korea

3. “Ghosting”

This is meta.

Meta is self-referential, like a director filming a movie about a director filming a movie.

“Ghosting” is a new word.  It’s suddenly shutting down all links with a formerly good friend or family member, and ignoring that person’s real or online attempts to re-connect. One good example is Meghan Markle ghosting her whole family (except for her mom because she’s a useful prop). pwahahaha.

Ghosting can mean the shutdown/ceasing of communication with someone without notice. This can include but doesn’t always require the closing or shutting down of social media accounts or ports of contact such as email addresses or phone numbers.

source: Urban dictionary

4. Who’s Gwanghaegun?

Is this a subbing error? 

CS: Honestly, when I saw him earlier, I saw that he had a scar on his face. You didn’t see, right? A scar on the face of a king of the Joseon dynasty makes no sense! You know “Deposed Queen Yoon” right? You must have seen it because you enjoy drama.

lol. That was a zinger. She enjoyed drama because she was a drama queen herself.

MW: I know that too. That was Gwanghaegun’s mother.

Queen Yoon and Gwanghaegun’s mother are not the same person. Queen Yoon is the loopy queen who scratched her husband’s face.

Queen Yoon, formally known as Queen Jeheon, served Seongjong of Joseon as a concubine until the death of Queen Gonghye of Han, Seongjong’s first wife. With no royal heir, the king was urged by counselors to take a second wife to secure the royal succession.

Lady Yoon was chosen for her beauty,[1] and was formally married in 1476. Several months later, she gave birth to her first son, Yi Yung, later to become King Yeonsangun of Joseon. The new queen proved to be temperamental and highly jealous of Seongjong’s concubines living inside the palace, even stooping to poisoning one of them in 1477.

One night in 1479, she clawed the king, leaving visible scratch marks on his face. King Seongjong tried to conceal the injury, but his mother, Grand Queen Insu, discovered the truth and ordered Lady Yoon, now known as the Deposed Queen Yoon, into exile.

After several rehabilitation attempts initiated by her party, influential government officials petitioned for her execution. She was sentenced to death and poisoned shortly thereafter. The manner and matter of her death became a pretext by her son to purge the court and government of opponents and critics of his rule.

source: wikipedia

Now, according to wiki, this Deposed Queen’s son is YEONSANgun. He’s the king in that other 2018 drama hit, “Queen of Seven Days.”

Her son is NOT GWANGHAEgun. Gwanghaegun’s mother is Lady Kim.

Gwanghaegun was the second son of King Seonjo, born to Lady Kim (Gongbin), a concubine. When Japan invaded Korea to attack the Ming Empire, he was installed as Crown Prince. When the king fled north to the border of Ming, he set up a branch court and fought defensive battles. During and after the Seven Year War (1592–1598), he acted as the de facto ruler of the Joseon Dynasty, commanding battles and taking care of the reconstruction of the nation after the devastating wars, in the place of old and weak King Seonjo.

Although it brought prestige to him, his position was still unstable. He had an elder but incompetent brother Prince Imhae (Imhaegun, 임해군, 臨海君) and a younger but legitimate brother Grand Prince Yeong-chang (Yeong-chang Daegun, 영창대군, 永昌大君), who was supported by the Lesser Northerners faction. Fortunately for Gwang-hae, King Seonjo’s abrupt death made it impossible for his most favorite son Yeong-chang Daegun to succeed to the throne.

source: wikipedia

And Gwanghaegun is the king portrayed by Yeo Jingoo in The Crown Clown. lol. The Hong sisters were really trying hard to create this connection with The Crown Clown.

But were they also trying to test our knowledge in kings?

5. Wolverine! 

I laughed when this guy Lee YiKung appeared. It’s a Pavlovian reaction. Because of his poor-man/stupid-man role in Euchalala Waikiki, I’ve been conditioned to laugh at his face.

In this drama, he played a popular actor whose acting was terrible. His voice cracked in the middle of his performance but he blamed the director for hating on him.

In Euchalala Waikiki, he played an aspiring actor, Lee Joonki, who could never land his break-out role, no matter how good he was or how hard he tried, because the whole world conspired against him. lol. @flying_tool, note the reversal, lol. 

He played Wolverine. 

If you want to know more about his funny exploits, here’s the blog for it.

Wolverine’s Series of Unfortunate Events

The irony about this whole “inspired performance = possessed acting” is Lee YiKyung’s acting chops. He’s seriously a good actor. He didn’t need to be possessed by a spirit of another actor to deliver an inspired performance all by himself.

6. The extra hands

Did you see two?

One hand of the floor, and another hand in the crook of Chansung’s arm. They were a nice touch.   

Okay, that’s it for now.  See you in a while, crocodile!