Part 1 of the Netflix k-drama The Glory is a pretty straightforward story of revenge. It follows Moon Dong-eun, a woman in her mid-30s who, as a child, was relentlessly bullied by the privileged kids of parents from influential backgrounds who the authorities couldn’t – and in many cases wouldn’t – touch. After trying to lodge complaints with the police and the faculty, Dong-eun realized that any kind of revenge would have to be of her own design, and after a period of wishing herself dead, resolved to bring that revenge about, dedicating her life to making her tormentors pay for what they did.
The Glory Season 1 Episode 8 Recap
The main subject of Dong-eun’s ire is Park Yeon-jin, a sadistic young woman who knew that, because of her influential family, her actions would never be officially punished. She took obvious pleasure in torturing her victims. But while ruining her is the ultimate goal, Dong-eun targets the entire gang for their complicity, and even the educator who allowed the torment to occur.
In the midst of this is, essentially, a love story between Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong, a medical intern who meets Dong-eun by chance – or destiny? – and teaches her how to play Go, which functions as a visual and thematic metaphor throughout. Dong-eun becomes a teacher and, over two decades amasses the right amount of evidence and a watertight plan to ruin everyone who made her childhood a misery.
In the present day, Yeon-jin is a wife and mother, and a semi-famous weather reporter, though her career has been protected by her wealthy and influential husband. Dong-eun moves into an apartment next to her house and begins looking for important documents in her garbage. In this way, she uncovered the last will and testament of Yeon-jin’s father-in-law, Kim Shin-tae, who had bequeathed his sizeable estate to not just his son, Su-hyeon, but also his secret lover, Shin-tae, the chairman of Semyeong Elementary School where Dong-eun, through blackmail, is able to get a job as the teacher of Yeon-jin’s daughter, Ha Ye-sol.
Dong-eun also manipulates Myeong-oh, the group’s gopher in school and even in adulthood, into helping her. Her plans were pretty watertight in a lot of respects. Lee Sa-ra, a drug addict, was easy to manipulate with the narcotic. Jae-joon, to whom Myeong-oh was especially subservient, could be damaged by his past. Hye-jeong, who was barely part of the group anyway and would have been their victim were it not for Dong-eun, kept all of her secrets on the phone she used to pretend she was living a lavish lifestyle.
Dong-eun also enlists the help of Kang Hyeon-nam, Yeon-jin’s home helper, in exchange for help with her abusive husband. With her team assembled, Dong-eun continued collecting evidence against her enemies, including proof that Ye-sol was not Do-yeong’s daughter, but Jae-joon’s. Since Yeon-jin’s husband is so integral to her success and lifestyle, ruining her marriage is an obvious means of taking her down.
The Glory Part 1 ending explained
Jae-joon, it turns out, has been about a bit, and was also having a secret relationship with Hye-jeong, which Dong-eun also uncovers evidence of. In the meantime, she uses her knowledge of Go to entice Do-yeong, so she could be seen with him in public. In Yeo-jeong, a man also desperate for revenge after his father was murdered by a serial killer patient, she found a willing executioner.
The stakes are raised around the death of another of the gang’s victims, So-he, whose parents never dropped the case. Yeon-jin is willing to kill to keep this secret, and it seems – with a pair of green heels being a visual motif – that she kills Myeong-oh in order to do so, using her contacts and privilege to cover up the murder and force So-he’s family to finally drop the case. But Do-yeong, after receiving the pictures of him and Dong-eun as a threat, begins to poke around himself and discovers evidence of his wife’s affair with Jae-joon, Ye-sol’s parentage, and Dong-eun’s connection as her teacher. This eventually brings him face-to-face with Dong-eun, who is heavily relying on him to enact the next stage of her plan. Exactly what shape that will take remains to be seen, but it’ll surely involve destroying Yeon-jin completely.
You can stream The Glory Season 1 Episode 8 exclusively on Netflix. What did you think of the ending of The Glory Part 1? Let us know in the comments.
Additional reading:
- When will The Glory Part 2 be available on Netflix?
- 10 K-Drama Shows like The Glory
- Best Korean Dramas on Netflix Of All Time
- The Glory Season 1 Episode 9 Recap
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