I’ll continue my write-up on Ep 5 later. I’m behind my write-ups for Doctor X.

1. The opening scene

Frankly, I found the pace of this scene rather slow, I had to speed up the playback time. But I get why there were long dramatic pauses as this was a melodramatic moment.

The key points of the dialogue are:

a. SoRan (SR) receives the news of her ex-husband’s death stoically.

I like that she shows concern that GyeGeong (GG) is drenched to the bone and offers her a cloth to dry with. This tells me that though she’s hurting, she prioritizes the needs of others.

b. The meaning of “castella cake”

The “castela cake” is a secret language for Soran and her ex-husband, like “please” is for GG and TU.

Back in March 1919, the ex-husband had to leave even when Soran asked him to stay because their baby SeoHee was being fussy. He had something important to do, i.e., secretly organize the pro-independence protest in their village Gyeamri, so he made her a promise instead.

His exact words: When spring comes, let’s take Seohee to Gyeongseong and have some castella.

My reaction: Ugh! What was this man talking about?

Spring in Korea comes in May, just two months away. Did he really think the demonstrators could pressure the Japanese government to leave their land in TWO MONTHS when even their own emperor Gojong failed to persuade the international community to pressure Japan to withdraw from Korea for more than a DECADE? Why would world leaders be swayed by a peaceful uprising led by relatively unknown religious leaders, grassroots organizers, and youth activists, when these same leaders ignored the diplomatic maneuverings of the late Gojong?

I get it that mentioning the castella cake is the ex-husband’s way of telling Soran that he never forgot about his promise and he was forever sorry.

But if I were Soran, I’d be seething mad all over again. From the beginning, he gave me a false hope since he had no credible post-demonstration plan to follow through with his promise.

c. I like Philip Yoo for seeing through SoRan’s pretense. He knows that she’s crying under the blanket, so he walks out of their bedroom to give her privacy. Sure enough, she lets it all out the moment he’s gone.

But her inability to share her burden with him should also tell PY everything he needs to know about her real feelings for him. Her behavior is a red flag. She still regards him as nothing than a comrade in the pro-independence struggle.

2. TaeUng and his little kid + drenched puppy look

According to Sato:

Sato: Have you had a change of heart since coming to Joseon? I told you not to show it, didn’t I? Even with me, do not let it show. And yet look at you now. You look like a pathetic little kid.

Notice how his bangs are plastered against his forehead? It’s a popular Korean belief that wearing one’s bangs down makes a person look younger while having the bangs off the face/swept up gives the air of maturity.

According to GG:

GG: And why does he look so sad, trudging along like a drenched puppy? He’s making me feel awful.

It’s because his head is tilted down, his shoulders are slump, and one hand is in his pocket. She feels awful like she’s kicked a puppy.

I had hoped that TU was the typical shrewd, worldly-wise hero who’s just pretending to be gullible. I’m disappointed that he’s turning out to be one of the weakest male leads I’ve seen so far. He’s gullible, slow-witted, and green. In real life, I’d find a boyfriend like him exhausting to deal with because I would need to step in and do the “adulting” for him.

That’s why it didn’t come as a surprise to me that he didn’t know Kkotnim and NoMa were GG’s friends. I already said in my Episode 5 write-up that I doubted he could make a connection that Kkotnim was the little girl coughing outside the photoshop, while NoMa the youth who delivered the seolleongtang and teased them as a horny couple.

No. Looking like a little kid or a drenched puppy has no appeal to me.

3. The comparison between the Government-General Building and the throne room of the Gyeongbokgung complex

In my Episode 3 write-up, I told you about the significance of the Japanese Government-General Building (GGB). I said it was meant to show the dominance of the colonizers over Joseon. The GGB back then was imposing, grand, modern and westernized. It had five floors (including basement) and many rooms per floor that the place felt like a labyrinth to GG.

In comparison, most of the buildings inside the Gyeongbokgung complex are just single stories (I remember one pavilion has two floors, and the guide made much ado about it, lol).

The GGB had an elevator with glass doors reserved only for Japanese. It had glass doors.

But in the Gyeongbokgung complex there are stone stairs in their important buildings, like the main throne room and the king’s executive offices. The palace is actually a complex, sprawling over 140+ acres. It isn’t one single building like the GGB but numerous buildings, which are either standalones (like the throne room and the king’s executive office) or connected by corridors to other buildings.

But I guess the most impressive feature of the GGB that time was the copperplate dome with glass window ceilings to allow light to come into the main hall. Remember GG’s face in Episode 3 when she looked up at the ceiling and light was shining though? Her astonishment was real.

Meanwhile the structures in the Gyeonbokgung complex were all just made of wood. Even the ceiling of the throne room is painted wood with some dragons, phoenixes, cranes, and/or flowers carvings.  Since no glass was used, it was dark indoors too. Instead of glass, light came through the traditional paper over wooden lattice frames.

Even today, the Gyeongbokgung Palace looks like a relic from a bygone era.

But why am I bringing this all up? It’s to give you scale.

4. “Hill of beans” 

I’ll have to borrow that line from the film “Casablanca” — “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

The scene when TU shares his childhood story with GU is a flop for me for two reasons:

one, he isn’t saying anything unexpected to me, so his exposition sounds more like a recap to make sure all the viewers are on the same point, and

two, his family woes appear puny and insignificant when compared to the MASSIVE scale of the pro-liberation fighters’ struggle and hardship. It’s like he was standing on the rooftop of GGB industrial complex and looking down at the Gyeongbokgung palace’s wooden throne room — lol, which he was LITERALLY DOING — and whining, “Woe is me!”

I find it hard to pity him. But whatever….

TU: My mother was a Joseon person. Ah. I mean my stepmother. Or I suppose I should call her my adoptive mother. I don’t remember my birth mother. My father took me in as his son and then married her. Apparently even more so than today, marriages between Japanese and Joseon people were encouraged back then.
GG: Right. I know that.

She’s being ironic here. She’s actually disagreeing with him because she knows from her own experience that marriages between Japanese and Joseon people were NOT encouraged even back then. She was looked down on – and spat on – because her mother was believed to have been consorting with a Japanese man.

TU: But my mother taught me what love was.

He too is being ironic here. He saw his adoptive mother walking outside his room and followed her outside. Then, hiding behind a cherry tree, he watched her embracing a man. Later, when she gave him two fistfuls of cherries, and one fell on the ground, he crushed it with his foot.

His life lessons about love from his adoptive mother? A love isn’t trustworthy, and he’s better off stomping on love.

TU: She even taught me how it would feel to be abandoned by that love.

Flashback to the time he clung to his adoptive mother’s hand and called her to stay, but she still left his sickbed. A teary-eyed Sato Shinichi told him later that his mother wasn’t coming back. Their housekeeper Yanagi cried as she eavesdropped on them. She was holding a baby, presumably a baby from Sato Shinichi and GG’s mother’s union.

My comments:

a. Yikes! GG has a half-sister. The “princess” on board the train in Episode 1 is her half-sister?

b. For me, TU’s monologue is important only because it confirmed and disproved what I wrote about his adoptive mother in Episode 4. For one, I thought the “princess” was the daughter of Mrs. Sato #2 because of the way TU glanced at her when their dad Sato shrugged off his wife’s death. As it turned out, she was Mrs. Sato #1’s child.

c. For another, I pointed out that the director made a point of hiding Mrs. Sato #1’s face, which I theorized was an indication of deception. I wrote in my Episode 4 review that I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Sato #1 too deceived Sato when she married him and moved to Japan with him. I speculated that she could’ve had a lover somewhere and/or participated in the resistance and spied on Sato.

d. I never really considered Sato as GG’s father, and my reason is his pride. I doubt he would’ve abandoned his own flesh and blood in Joseon when he resettled in Japan with TU and brought Mrs. Sato #1 over.  It would be out of character for him to leave his daughter behind. Of course, it was possible that Ms. Sato #1 kept their daughter’s birth secret from him, but why would she do that?

e. This is where he sounds a bit self-pitying to me. Boohoo. 

Anyway, to continue –

TU: My mother left us out of the blue one day.

In the flashback, he came across the necklace with the half-circle pendant. It wasn’t given to him like GG’s mother did. Perhaps Mrs. Sato #1 left it for her new baby girl, but TU found it and kept it for himself.

GG: Uh. Why are you telling me all this?
TU: I want to apologize for the things I said yesterday. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.

He was sorry for accusing her of saying things or promising something she doesn’t mean or intend to keep. He likes a woman of her word. He dislikes untrustworthy people. (lol. Remember what I just said about SoRan’s ex-husband? TU wouldn’t like him either because he threw “words around with no intention of standing by them.”)

In other words, his sob story is just a roundabout way of saying, “I’m sorry.” I don’t know about you, but for me, he would’ve sounded more sincere if he’d simply apologized without trying to excuse, justify, or rationalize what he did. Just “I’m sorry; I’ve trust issues.” That’s all he needed to say.

But I get it. It’s the screenwriter’s way of ensuring the viewers are all on the same page about the identity of his adoptive mother and GG’s mother.  

GG: My mother abandoned me, too. She married a Japanese man and then, she died. But I’m not someone to pity. I’ve felt that way a few times. But really, I was just unlucky. The only this is, if she was going to leave me anyway, I only hope she was happy with him until the very end. Whatever you do, you should at least make sure it was worth it.

My comments:

a. Her brazen attitude is kinda funny, and has a practical application. What she’s saying is this: if you’re going to get scolded for missing your 10:00 pm curfew, you might as well make the most of it and stay out till midnight (or 1 am, lol).

Or “go big or go home.”

b. Did GG’s mother die naturally or did Sato kill her? I already said before that Yanagi looked troubled when TU asked about his mother. She acted like she knew a dark secret, e.g., Sato shot her dead then lied that she abandoned them.

c. It is hinted in the second half of this episode that the Gugukdan regretted destroying a member’s life. I’m guessing it involves the comatose Suzuki because of the audio match-cut.

Butler: What happened in the past? Last time, you were telling us something, but you never finished.
Soran, Philip Yoo, and the doctor all looked at each other.
Soran: Years ago, we… I put someone’s life in danger.

Soran is seen passing an envelope to someone, but that person’s face is again concealed.

Soran: And I put the person she loved through hell.

As Soran narrates, the scene fades to the hospital where Suzuki lies comatose in bed. This is the audio match cut. It’s the director’s way of connecting two different scenes to imply who lived through hell was Suzuki.

The nurse briefs the doctor that Hideo Sateo aka TU brings his co-worker flowers and regularly drops by since Suzuki has no relatives. The doctor looks uncomfortable and excuses himself to go on his rounds. Right then Suzuki wakes up. He jokes that he’s gone to the afterlife and back, that is, he went to hell and back, and they still haven’t won their independence.

Do you get the joke? Suzuki went through hell the first time when the person he loved, GG’s mom, married Sato. Suzuki then went through hell the second time around when he got shot while pushing GG — his own daughter — to safety.

It’s reasonable to assume that Soran is referring to GG’s mother.

GG’s mother is shamed for having an affair with a Japanese man and Suzuki is Japanese – or a Joseonling. For all we know, his Korean name is Sin TaeJin. The Gugukdan “orders” GG’s mother to marry Sato and move to Japan. Suzuki sacrificed her and their relationship for the Gugukdan’s mission. (But why didn’t he know that they had a child? Why didn’t he take care of GG after her mother left her?)

But he couldn’t keep away from her and visited her in Tokyo. He was the man the young TU saw having a late-night rendezvous with his adoptive mother. After her child with Sato was born, she disappeared. As she didn’t return to either GG or Suzuki’s side, there’s a good chance that Sato killed her when she asked for a separation.

I wish however that the timeline is clearer.

5. Kkotnim

Seeing her and the shantytown folks, I’m reminded of SoRan’s daughter and the April 1919 massacre in Kyeamrim. If ever the story comes full circle, and Sato threatens to kill Kkotnim and the people in the slums, it’ll involve TU and GG. I doubt TU will make the same mistake as Soran’s ex-husband. GG will also ensure that she has a plan to deal with Sato and his minions.

That’s it for now.