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

As I organized the synopsis, I felt that the review would almost write itself. The structure of the musical is remarkably well constructed.

I initially expected a courtroom drama set in the afterlife. However, what the musical ultimately presents is closer to psychological healing than a courtroom drama. The story loosely draws on Janghwa Hongryeon jeon, a well-known Korean folktale about two sisters abused by their stepmother, and imagines what happens after the original tale. The courtroom setting remains throughout, but the trial gradually takes on a different meaning. It is not a device for passing judgment. It is a process of putting shattered memories back together.

The interrogation scenes were particularly effective. Bari questions Hongryeon one detail at a time, asking whether her confession could actually be true. Could a sixteen-year-old girl kill her much larger father with a single blow? Could she move his body by herself? Could she even mutilate her brother's limbs on her own? These questions function less as legal arguments than as a way for Hongryeon to confront the contradictions in her own story.

When Gangrim warns that Hongryeon's soul is breaking into pieces and that she may eventually become an evil spirit, I was reminded of an Obscurus from the Fantastic Beasts series. In that sense, Hongryeon seems like a character whose suppressed grief and deprivation have gradually consumed her sense of self.

The tale of Princess Bari is traditionally a story of filial piety, in which an abandoned daughter ultimately saves her father. I do not like this kind of filial narrative. The idea that a daughter should risk her life to save the father who abandoned her simply because he is her parent appears repeatedly in traditional stories of filial devotion, including The Tale of Sim Cheong. Within the patriarchal order of the time, this may simply have been regarded as a daughter's duty.

That is precisely why I was bothered when Bari describes what she did as both "revenge and mercy." Saving her father out of filial duty, showing mercy to the man who abandoned her, and taking revenge on him are three different things. To call it mercy, Bari must first have had the choice not to save him. To call it revenge, the musical also needs to explain how saving him constituted revenge. The musical connects these three different ideas in a single line, but does not fully explain the logic between them.

If I were writing this part, I would have pushed the logic much further. Bari begins within a world of filial duty, where a child is expected to save a parent. But the moment she obtains the Water of Life, the relationship is completely reversed. The life of the father who abandoned her is now in the hands of the daughter he abandoned. You were the one who decided when you abandoned me. Now I am the one who decides whether you live or die. If Bari had made her father fully confront that reversal and still chosen to save him, I could have understood how the act might be both revenge and mercy.

Taking this one step further, the scene in which Bari refuses the great wealth her father offers could follow the same logic. If the greatest thing you think you can give me is wealth, I do not even need that. Instead of returning to the father who abandoned her and finally becoming a daughter worthy of his recognition, Bari leaves for the afterlife as someone who no longer needs either his approval or his reward. Saving her father becomes her own choice. Leaving him becomes her own choice as well.

Of course, this is not an interpretation explicitly presented by the musical. It is the logic I had to fill in myself to make sense of the phrase "revenge and mercy." That is exactly why I found the scene somewhat frustrating. Even one or two additional lines making this connection clearer could have made Bari's transformation from a daughter bound by a traditional narrative of filial duty into the judge of the afterlife much more convincing. It would also have made her refusal to give up on Hongryeon through 139,998 trials feel more deeply rooted in her own story. Bari survived a world that once discarded her. Perhaps that is precisely why she refuses to let another discarded daughter destroy herself.

The 139,998 trials are eventually revealed to have been a process not of judgment, but of reconstructing Hongryeon's shattered memories. It reminded me of scenes in Doctor Who in which the Doctor encounters fragmented versions of himself inside the TARDIS and gradually puts his broken identity back together.

The ssitgimgut, a traditional Korean cleansing ritual, also feels less like a religious ceremony here than a device for emotional release. It becomes a ritual of purification that allows Hongryeon to forgive herself. In that sense, the scene reminded me of The Lion King, when Simba finally confronts his guilt and begins to accept his past.

Musically, the production feels closer to a play with music than a conventional musical. The score moves between musical theatre numbers, rap, and elements that evoke traditional Korean vocal styles. The mixture can feel somewhat eclectic, but it works surprisingly well. The female duets in particular create some of the most emotionally intense moments in the production.

The story begins with Korean folklore, but many of its narrative devices are familiar across cultures: a fractured soul, a search for truth through recovered memories, and a ritual of purification that leads to release. Framing the story through these more universal devices may make it easier to communicate to international audiences than explaining it primarily through its Korean mythological background.

In the final scene, Hongryeon quietly walks toward a white circle representing the gate to the afterlife. She softly says, "Thank you," to Bari before walking toward the Samdocheon and leaving the stage. The scene suggests that her soul has finally found peace.