The Scandal
Two cousins in Joseon's upper crust make a bet on a widow's heart. Netflix rebuilt the 2003 film as an eight-episode series, with Son Ye-jin as Lady Cho, the one pulling every string.
The story has two layers of ancestry. First came Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, then the 2003 Korean film Untold Scandal, which moved it to Joseon with Bae Yong-joon as the rake and Jeon Do-yeon as the virtuous widow. This version dropped on September 18, 2026, directed by Jung Ji-woo and rated adults only, so it doesn't pretend to be shy.
The setting is Bukchon, the neighborhood of noble households. Son Ye-jin plays Lady Cho, given the name Yun here: brilliant, bored, and boxed in by a world that lets women do nothing. So she runs the game from behind the curtain. Her partner is her cousin Jo Won (Ji Chang-wook), her childhood writing buddy, the man she has shared an unspoken pull with, and the most notorious lover in the country. The target is Ahn Hee-yeon (Nana), widowed before her wedding even happened and living in strict chastity. This Hee-yeon also secretly attends Catholic gatherings and studies Western learning, which stacks another Joseon taboo on top.
Real history walks in too. King Jeongjo pretends to be offended by Jo Won's racy writing but secretly envies his freedom. He's obsessed with building Hwaseong Fortress and planning his mother Lady Hyegyeong's sixtieth birthday, both straight from the record. The servants Chilseong and Eunsil both speak Jeolla saturi, click instantly, and end up playing messenger between their masters. Chilseong's name, the show jokes, comes from having served seven masters with seven different surnames.
The score is its own flex. The German Film Orchestra Babelsberg recorded the orchestral parts, and the album mixes gayageum, piri, geomungo, royal daechwita marching music and pansori-style vocals with melodies by Fauré and Lully. A French classic in a Korean court, translated into sound.
In its first week it hit No. 7 on Netflix's non-English shows chart with 1.9 million views, No. 1 in Korea and No. 2 in Japan. It's Son Ye-jin's first streaming original, and Nana's first Netflix series since Mask Girl. Asked whether he felt awkward around Son's husband Hyun Bin, Ji Chang-wook quipped that his only crime was loving Lady Cho. After release, talk about Nana's lip filler took off, and she apologized, calling it a personal choice that didn't suit her as an actor. Reviews were mixed in places, but it shows how far a sageuk can push once Netflix is in the room.