Review of The Red Sleeve / 옷소매 붉은 끝동

Lately, at the time of typing this, I’ve been on an incredible Korean drama binge. If you’re a more dedicated follower of my blog, you’d probably notice that I’ve been putting out a lot of content involving Asian dramas recently, as I had a lot of free time not only between graduate school and being shipped off to Korea, but also within the time I was waiting for my Indian visa to arrive.

That meant I had a lot of free time to catch up on the shows I’ve always been meaning to watch, but simply never got around to doing. The Red Sleeve was a show I’d heard so much hype about in the past, but I’ve been iffy about historical dramas.

So what changed? I did my master’s thesis on colonial Korean women’s literature, which meant I’m now deep in the hole again when it comes to Korean history. I read a lot of Korean history during this time, especially when it comes to how women were depicted and seen during Joseon and the colonial period.

That’s howI ended up watching The Red Sleeve. And I rarely do something like this, but I stayed up until about three in the morning to try and get through as many episodes as possible the night I started it. I was hooked.

Let’s get into the review!

The prince, and later king of Joseon, is smitten with a lady of the court.

This is a drama about events that really happened: so something to note when watching this is that these people really existed. The drama itself might be fictionalized in some ways, especially when it comes to period appropriate representation, but it is based on a core series of events.

Our female lead in this series is Seong Deok-im, who, at the beginning of the series, is training to be a court lady. She’s a maid who doesn’t realize the young man she keeps running into is the prince of Joseon, Yi San.

He doesn’t exactly disclose his identity to her, and she has no idea, thus living blissfully unaware. She’s summoned quite a bit because of her talent at calligraphy and copying notes down, but eventually she catches the drift the man she’s been summoned in front of often is the same one that she keeps running into.

And because this is Korean political history too, there are some important facts to note down involving Yi San. He’s the son of Prince Sado, who was most likely mentally ill and would lash out at those in his court, sometimes even killing court ladies in his fits of rage.

He was not well, but because he was a problem in the court, his father ultimately had him murdered. Because Joseon rules dictated you could not straight out execute a royal, Sado was subject to an unusually cruel way of dying. He was locked inside of a rice jar and left to slowly die in there in the middle of the summer.

So this is Yi San’s father, which means he has a lower status in some ways because of it. However, he would become next in line, and as we see in the series, he fell hard for Deok-im.

Throughout the course of the drama, Deok-im is going to try to resist her feelings for the prince, as she feels that she needs to be able to chase after her own dreams and goals. Because she is a commoner, and only a palace maid, she would never be allowed to marry the prince. She would be delegated to concubine status.

It’s because of these multiple layers that I consider The Red Sleeve to be a tragedy in some ways. It’s definitely a romance piece in the historical drama world, but there are also so many elements to this show that are really sad—especially when it comes to the ending.

There aren’t a lot of happy endings historically, and this one that was as happy as it could get considering the circumstances these two lived under.

Overall Thoughts

I think this was an excellent show, and it definitely got me interested in wanting to watch more historical dramas down the line. I had a slight aversion to them before this, but now I want to be more open minded like I was with this show.

The acting is fairly solid, although I didn’t find either of the leads to be standouts. They do well in their roles, but I’m not sure if they would be considered going above and beyond in my book. Or maybe I’m just being picky when I type this out.

Anyways, go watch this one if you haven’t already. As you get closer to the end, you might want to have some tissues ready if you’re more of a crier. I was close to crying and I never cry at television shows. And I knew what was going to happen, too!

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