SYNOPSIS

Hongryeon is summoned to Cheondojeong, the court of the underworld. Her wrists are bound with red cloth restraints resembling shackles. The judge is Princess Bari, assisted by three underworld messengers: Gangrim, Woljik, and Iljik. Bari announces that Hongryeon’s trial is the 139,998th trial held in Cheondojeong—and the final one.

Gangrim reads the charges. According to the story told among the living, Hongryeon’s twin sister Janghwa became pregnant by another man, miscarried, and died. Hongryeon then followed her sister in death. Hongryeon, however, denies this rumor. Instead, she claims something far more shocking: that she killed her father, Bae Mu-ryong, and mutilated the limbs of her half-brother Jangsoe. Janghwa, she insists, died unjustly.

When Gangrim asks whether she tried to appeal to the local magistrate while alive, Hongryeon laughs bitterly. The world never listened to the voice of a powerless girl while she lived, she says, and only shows interest now that she is dead.

Bari then asks Hongryeon why she still lingers instead of crossing the Samdocheon, the river that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Is it because she still holds regrets? Hongryeon claims she does not know why she remains and treats the trial itself with open sarcasm.

Princess Bari summons the spirit of Hongryeon’s father, Bae Mu-ryong. Gangrim becomes possessed by the spirit and speaks in his voice, accusing Hongryeon of being an evil ghost rather than his daughter. Hongryeon responds with scorn.

Next, Woljik becomes possessed by Bae Mu-ryong. Bari asks him whether, if the spirit speaking before them were not truly Hongryeon but an evil ghost, he would wish for the real Hongryeon to be brought back to life. Instead of bringing Hongryeon back to life, Bae Mu-ryong asks that the severed limbs of his son Jangsoe be restored. Bari replies that she rules only over the realm of the dead and cannot alter the fate of the living.

Hongryeon begins mocking Bari herself. She points out that Bari’s name, Baridegi, means “the abandoned child,” and ridicules her past. Bari had been born the seventh daughter of King Ogu, who had wished for a son, and was cast away. When the king later fell gravely ill, she was summoned back and traveled to the underworld to retrieve the water of life, saving her father.

Seeing Hongryeon openly attacking the judge, Gangrim suggests suspending the trial. He warns that Hongryeon’s soul has already begun to fracture into pieces and that further agitation could transform her into a vengeful spirit. Bari, however, insists that this trial is unlike the others and must continue.

Bari then tells her own story. The abandoned daughter who saved her father had also sought revenge, she explains, but the end of that revenge was mercy. Hongryeon does not understand. Although King Ogu promised her great wealth in gratitude, Bari refused and instead chose to guide lost souls in the underworld.

Bari again asks Hongryeon why she killed her father. Hongryeon answers that the true source of the tragedy was her stepmother, Lady Heo.

Bari begins to read a letter left behind by Janghwa.

“If my sister Hongryeon is wandering the nine heavens, please tell her this.
I know how terrible…“

Hongryeon interrupts bitterly.
“Yes. It must have been terrible.”

Fragments of the past begin to surface.

Whenever Lady Heo abused Hongryeon, Janghwa intervened to protect her younger sister. After that, Janghwa herself became the primary target of their stepmother’s cruelty. As Janghwa’s marriage approached, Lady Heo devised a scheme. Jangsoe stole a norigae ornament, the only keepsake left by the sisters’ late mother. In the struggle that followed, Janghwa was severely injured. They left her unattended for seven hours. She eventually died.

Hongryeon cries out in anguish at their cruelty. At the same time, she feels that she herself was both a bystander and an accomplice, unable to do anything to stop it.

When Hongryeon insists that she killed her father and attacked Jangsoe, Bari presses her further. Why, she asks, did she commit these acts a full year after Janghwa’s death? Hongryeon replies that she only discovered the truth at that time.

Bari continues questioning her. Could a sixteen-year-old girl truly kill her father with a single strike of such a heavy blade? Could she move the body alone? Could she really mutilate Jangsoe’s limbs by herself? Hongryeon insists that she did.

But as the contradictions in her testimony grow, Hongryeon begins to lose her certainty.

Gangrim warns again that Hongryeon’s soul will shatter if the trial continues. Hongryeon cries out that she is guilty. Gangrim replies that while she once begged for love in life, she now begs for guilt.

At that moment Bari finishes reading Janghwa’s letter.

“If my sister Hongryeon is wandering the nine heavens, please tell her this.

I know how terribly you loved me.
I loved you terribly too.”

Overwhelmed by guilt, Hongryeon wishes to vanish. She tries to cross the Samdocheon and throw herself into the flames of hell, hoping to end everything before her soul fragments completely into a vengeful spirit.

Just before she crosses the river, Bari begins a ritual of cleansing—the ssitgimgut. It is a ceremony meant to purify a wounded soul.

Its meaning is simple.

Hongryeon must forgive herself.

Within the ritual, the fragments of Hongryeon’s memories finally come together. The truth emerges: she took her own life shortly after Janghwa died. She never killed her father nor harmed Jangsoe.

The truth behind the 139,998 trials is revealed.

They were never meant to judge her.

They were attempts to restore her lost memories.

Cheondojeong turns out not to be a court of judgment at all. The trial is merely a staged process meant to restore Hongryeon’s shattered memories.

Hongryeon finally releases her guilt. With Bari’s help she removes the red shackles binding her wrists. The circular gate leading to the underworld slowly shifts from red and blue into white light. Beyond it flows the Samdocheon.

Hongryeon quietly says,

“Thank you.”

With a peaceful expression, she walks toward the gate.


REVIEW

While organizing the synopsis, I found myself thinking that the review almost wrote itself. The structure of the show is remarkably well constructed.

At first I attended the performance expecting a courtroom drama set in the underworld. What the production ultimately delivers, however, is closer to a psychological healing narrative. The story draws loosely on Janghwa Hongryeon-jeon, a well-known Korean folktale about two sisters who suffer under a cruel stepmother. The courtroom setting remains present, but the trial gradually reveals itself to be something else: an attempt to reconstruct a shattered memory.

The interrogation scenes were particularly effective. Bari questions Hongryeon about the plausibility of her own confession—whether a sixteen-year-old girl could really kill her much larger father with a single strike of a a blade, move the body, and even mutilate her brother’s limbs. These questions function less as legal arguments than as devices that force Hongryeon to confront the contradictions within her own story.

Gangrim’s warning that Hongryeon’s soul may fracture and turn into a vengeful spirit immediately brought to mind the Obscurus from the Fantastic Beasts universe. In that sense, Hongryeon appears as a figure whose suppressed grief and deprivation have slowly consumed her sense of self.

The folktale of Princess Bari traditionally emphasizes Confucian filial piety: the abandoned daughter who ultimately saves her father. In this production, however, Bari is reinterpreted as a judge of the underworld who rescues wounded souls. She is both a cold magistrate and an empath who understands suffering. This reinterpretation makes the story more culturally accessible to audiences unfamiliar with Korean mythology.

The 139,998 trials ultimately reveal themselves not as judgments but as attempts to reconstruct Hongryeon’s fragmented memories. The process resembles scenes in Doctor Who in which the Doctor confronts fractured versions of himself within the TARDIS, gradually piecing together a broken identity.

The final cleansing ritual, the ssitgimgut, functions less as a religious act than as a form of emotional release—a ritual that allows Hongryeon to forgive herself. In that sense, the moment recalls the scene in The Lion King where Simba confronts his guilt and begins to accept his past.

Musically, the piece often feels closer to a play with music than to a conventional musical. The score moves across several idioms—musical theatre, rap, and elements reminiscent of traditional Korean vocal styles. The mixture is eclectic yet surprisingly coherent. The female duet numbers in particular stand out as some of the most emotionally focused moments in the score.

Although the story originates from a Korean folktale, its narrative devices are familiar across many cultures: a fractured soul, the search for truth through memory, and a cleansing ritual that allows release. Framing the story through these universal motifs may make the work more accessible to international audiences than explanations grounded solely in Korean mythological references.

In the final scene, Hongryeon quietly walks toward the white ring marking the gate of the underworld. Crossing the Samdocheon, she leaves the stage in silence. The image suggests that her soul has finally found peace.