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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast: Bona, Yook Sung-jae, Kim Ji-hoon
Latest Nielsen rating: 9.8 per cent
The past has a scary way of catching up with K-drama protagonists and that goes double for the leads of period drama The Haunted Palace, a supernatural mystery with a romantic comedy twist.


Bona (Twenty-Five Twenty-One) plays Yeo-ri, a spectacles maker who has long attempted to deny the powers and responsibility that go with being born to a line of shamans.
Although she renounced this identity in the wake of her grandmother Neup-deok’s (Gil Hae-yeon) freak death during a ritual many years ago, the past has never let go of her.
Kang-cheol (initially played by Kim Young-kwang of Somebody), a dragon who turned into a demon after failing to ascend to heaven, has stuck near Yeo-ri since her youth, waiting for an opportunity to possess the body of a shaman and break his curse.
When Yeo-ri’s childhood friend Yoon Gap (Yook Sung-jae, The Golden Spoon), a scholar in the royal palace, shows up and is promptly killed by men chasing him, Kang-cheol sees his opportunity and possesses his body.

They both return to the palace, since the real Yoon Gap wanted Yeo-ri to make glasses for King Yi Sung (Kim Ji-hoon, Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economy Area).
Yi Sung, who already has glasses and does not need a new pair, figures out that Yoon Gap must have had another reason for wanting to bring Yeo-ri to the palace.
Over the course of the following episodes he learns that she has a special ability to commune with the dead and that the thing sashaying around the palace as Yoon Gap is in fact a supernatural being – which explains why he never uses any honorifics with him.
Yoon Gap’s reason for bringing Yeo-ri to the palace seems to have been to exorcise the spirit tormenting Yi Sung’s young son, who is prone to acts of violence and has been sequestered in his room.

Yeo-ri discovers that the son possessed by the malevolent Eight-Foot Spirit, who, befitting his name, occasionally takes on the form of a hulking monster with bulging muscles covered in blood and festering boils.
She is thus forced to accept her shamanistic powers, but as her supernatural investigation burrows into the past, she finds herself and Kang-cheol there as well.
The Eight-Foot Spirit has long plagued the palace, having claimed the life of the former King, Yi Sung’s father, after possessing him for years. Back then, Yeo-ri’s grandmother’s services were engaged to rid the kingdom of this evil spirit. Though briefly successful, this is what led to her demise.
We then learn that whatever binds this spirit to the royal family stretches back even further into the past. Pung-san (Kim Sang-ho, Sweet Home), a blind shaman seemingly acting in the interest of the Queen Dowager (Han Soo-yeon), is briefly possessed by the Eight-Foot Spirit in the presence of Kang-cheol.

He tells Kang-cheol that he was the baby who saw him during his failed ascent to heaven 100 years ago – it was because he was seen by human eyes that he was unable to complete his ascent.
The big question now is who that baby was and what has caused his resentment of the royal family? During that moment 100 years ago, the village was being burned to the ground, so it is easy to imagine some nefarious political machinations leading to the death of innocent civilians.
Deepening the mystery while also providing us with a clear endgame, this titbit of information focuses the frame of the narrative and most of the characters within it as we head into the climactic episodes.
Kang-cheol in particular needed this, as his connection to the story had grown a little thin over the course of his sojourn in the palace, besides developing a love of pumpkin taffy and a growing affection for Yeo-ri.

The show has almost managed to deliver several memorable supernatural scenes, such as those featuring the water spirit with a habit of grabbing onto people in a river and vomiting black ooze all over their faces, poor Yeo-ri among them.
Despite this, the pure-hearted Yeo-ri helps him soothe his grudge and even lets him briefly possess her to talk one last time to the daughter he left behind.
As we head into the final weeks, Yeo-ri and Kang-cheol must figure out the identity of the baby from 100 years ago and how to carry on a relationship as a shaman and a spirit.
The Haunted Palace is streaming on Viu.


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Bona’s reluctant shaman Yeo-ri visits royal palace with her childhood friend, who is possessed by a demon that has romantic feelings for her


Bona’s reluctant shaman Yeo-ri visits royal palace with her childhood friend, who is possessed by a demon that has romantic feelings for her.


K-drama The Haunted Palace midseason recap: Bona, Yook Sung-jae mix romance and mystery

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Bona’s reluctant shaman Yeo-ri visits royal palace with her childhood friend, who is possessed by a demon that has romantic feelings for her

Bona’s reluctant shaman Yeo-ri visits royal palace with her childhood friend, who is possessed by a demon that has romantic feelings for her