The Haunted Palace: Episodes 1-2
by mistyisles
The Haunted Palace is off to a strong start, and so far it’s exactly what I’d hoped it would be: fun, intriguing, and just a little spooky. With ghosts aplenty everywhere she goes, our not-quite-shaman heroine may have more problems on her hands than the relentless imoogi who refuses to let her live in peace.
EPISODES 1-2
Our main characters have a whole lotta history between them, which The Haunted Palace doles out in pieces, slowly peeling away the layers of how these people came to be where they are. First up is KANG-CHEOL (for now, a cameo appearance by Kim Young-kwang): an imoogi who spent 1,000 years preparing to ascend and become a dragon. But, in a stroke of bad luck, he was seen by a human infant and unable to complete his ascension. Thus, he hates humans. And because he treats them hatefully, they hate him, too.
Our heroine, YEO-RI (Bona), heard Kang-cheol’s story from her grandmother and vowed to someday put that petty serpent in his place. But she would come to regret those words, because Kang-cheol set his sights on her and spent the next thirteen years making her life miserable. Born into a family of shamans, Yeo-ri’s soul is pure enough to help Kang-cheol ascend at last. But to do that, she’d have to accept him as her guardian spirit and give him direct power over her. Realizing what Kang-cheol wanted, Yeo-ri’s grandmother gave her a powerful ward stone to keep him at bay… and died soon after in a seaside ritual gone wrong.
Yeo-ri, understandably, blames Kang-cheol for her grandmother’s demise. But it gets worse, because the rest of the villagers blamed Yeo-ri for bringing Kang-cheol — and the misfortune that follows in his wake — into their midst. As a result, Yeo-ri grew up alone, relentlessly bullied by children and adults alike, and haunted by an imoogi who wrecks everything and everyone she dares to love. All because she refused to help him and walked away from her calling as a shaman.
Now, Yeo-ri works as a glasses crafter. But you know what they say — you can take the girl out of shamanism, but you can’t take the shaman out of her. Everywhere she goes, she can sense spiritual beings, and sometimes that means chasing young girls possessed by vengeful spirits through the marketplace and getting into all-out brawls when they refuse to let her help them release their generations-long grudges. (And no, she does NOT want Kang-cheol’s help — not when she knows he wants to use said spirit to possess her.)
But Yeo-ri isn’t the only one plagued by spirits. A dark “eight-foot spirit” has attached itself to the (very) young prince, causing him to slaughter his own servants. Despite undeniable evidence, however, the KING (Kim Ji-hoon) isn’t ready to admit his son is possessed. Instead of seeking spiritual guidance, he sends his trusted advisor, YOON GAB (Yook Sung-jae), on a top-secret mission to ask the former Left State Minister CHOI WON-WOO (Ahn Nae-sang) to lend a political hand.
Lord Choi turns out to be Yeo-ri’s most recent customer, and Gab eagerly seizes the chance to deliver her toolbox, which she left behind while chasing down the vengeful spirit. Turns out, they have history, too. Gab grew up in the same village as Yeo-ri, and he was the only person who defended her from the other villagers’ cruelty. When he and his mother moved to Hanyang, he even invited Yeo-ri to come with them. But, having just watched Kang-cheol knock Gab out of a tree to mess with her, Yeo-ri couldn’t bring herself to risk putting him in harm’s way again.
Now, Gab invites Yeo-ri to return with him to the palace as the king’s designated glasses maker. Yeo-ri desperately wants to say yes, despite her misgivings. So when she receives a vision of her own future — raising a happy family with Gab — she lets herself hope that things will turn out okay.
Which means, of course, that things are about to go horribly wrong. Even if Kang-cheol weren’t making himself a complete nuisance and making them walk in circles (which he is), Gab is pursued by political enemies who appear to have a personal grudge against him to boot. While Yeo-ri is off “gathering herbs” (read: begging Kang-cheol to leave her be for once), Gab is attacked and killed for refusing to give up the king’s secrets. Kang-cheol sees it all go down, possesses Gab’s corpse, fights off the men, and walks back to Yeo-ri.
Upon seeing both the possessed corpse and Gab’s very confused ghost, Yeo-ri assumes the worst: Kang-cheol must have killed him. Gab is too distraught at having died to be of any help in setting the record straight, and anyway Kang-cheol is more interested in getting control of Yeo-ri. He throws her ward stone away and prepares to jump from Gab’s body into hers… but now he’s stuck. A struggle ensues, and both topple over a cliff into the river below. And that’s where the king’s guards find them.
They’re carried back to the palace, where everyone tries to figure out why Gab wanted to bring Yeo-ri here. The king, you see, already has a magnificent pair of glasses (made from a ward stone, curiously). We can deduce that Gab hoped Yeo-ri could solve the problem of the possessed prince (who has to be subdued by his own guards to stop his killing spree), but all Yeo-ri knows for sure is that Kang-cheol was right when he said Gab was lying to her.
Then, as she wanders the palace grounds, she hears Gab’s ghost calling her to a well. It is a ghost, but it’s not Gab, and by the time she realizes she’s been tricked, it’s too late to stop the ghost from pulling her under the water. Kang-cheol rescues her in the nick of time, but Yeo-ri’s takeaway is that Gab’s soul must still be lingering nearby, otherwise the ghost wouldn’t have been able to imitate his voice so perfectly. Secretly hoping she can return him to his body, Yeo-ri makes up an excuse to stick around the palace.
In the meantime, she has her hands full trying to keep Kang-cheol from destroying Gab’s reputation. The imoogi only cares about two things: 1) escaping Gab’s body and making Yeo-ri help him ascend, and 2) enjoying the newly discovered wonders of human tastebuds. (Who knew tasting a simple rice gruel would be a euphoric experience for an imoogi?) For now, the royal physician deems “Gab’s” abrupt personality change, monstrous appetite, and disregard for his own injuries as symptoms of amnesia (lol). But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before his superhuman strength and disdain for social graces tip someone off that he’s not Gab at all.
Between dragging Kang-cheol out of places he’s not supposed to be, Yeo-ri focuses on getting answers from the ghost in the well. Unfortunately, the only answer she gets is that Gab’s soul is beyond recovery. Even more unfortunately, the QUEEN DOWAGER (Han Soo-yeon) is overseeing a shamanistic ritual of her own, and not only does it interfere with Yeo-ri’s conversation, but it also causes the eight-foot ghost to stir inside the young prince.
Overall, this premiere hit all the right notes for me, but most of all I love Yeo-ri as our heroine. She’s clever, brave, and doesn’t back down from what she wants; but she’s also lonely and afraid of letting herself be happy. (And who can blame her, when her whole life has consisted of waiting for the other shoe to drop and kill the source of her happiness?) I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Kang-cheol, too, in spite of… well, himself. He can be downright awful at times, but deep down he’s not all bad, and I look forward to watching him earn Yeo-ri’s partnership and maybe even forgiveness.
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