Synopsis

On the night before the First Strife of Princes, Jeong Do-jeon and Yi Bang-won sit across a janggi board. Yi loses a piece but says a small sacrifice is necessary. He calls “check.” Their match leads into memories of the past.

In the final years of Goryeo, Jeong visits Yi Seong-gye in the northeastern region. There he meets the young Yi Bang-won, who has passed the civil service exam. Yi admires Jeong so much that he has memorized his writing. Jeong is also impressed by Yi’s intelligence. They share a wish to reform Goryeo and build a new state. Jeong looks at a budgot flower that has bloomed before spring. Onstage, it looks like a magnolia. He warns against blooming too early.

Their relationship begins to break over Jeong Mong-ju. Jeong Do-jeon wants to persuade his old friend. Yi kills him to clear the way for a new dynasty. Yi says someone had to play the villain. Jeong says a man who chooses murder cannot be the king of the state he wants to build. Yi replies that Jeong cannot be a minister in the state he wants to build.

Their conflict continues after Joseon is founded. Jeong takes a hard line against Ming and supports a campaign into Liaodong. A sensitive document causes a diplomatic crisis. Yi volunteers to go to Ming and barely returns alive. Ming demands that Jeong lose his office. King Taejo sends him to the northeastern region but lets him keep his political power.

Yi took great risks during the founding of Joseon. Yet he is left out of both the list of founding officials and the line of succession. Taejo passes over his adult sons and names the young Yi Bang-seok as crown prince. Jeong orders the princes to give up their private armies. The other princes obey. Yi refuses. He leads a revolt and moves against Jeong.

In their final meeting, Yi gives Jeong a sword and tells him to strike. Jeong admits that he also sought power. He says Yi has finally learned fear and may become a good king. He then tells Yi to kill him. Yi kills Jeong and takes the throne. After a blackout, the two men stand together again before the budgot flowers and face the memory of their shared dream.


Review

I felt uneasy while watching Nanse. The musical presents Jeong Do-jeon as Yi Bang-won’s mentor. They first meet while Yi Seong-gye is in the northeastern region. Yi respects Jeong at once. Jeong is pleased by the gifted young man who has passed the civil service exam. They agree on the need to reform Goryeo and build a new state. Their bond goes beyond a normal teacher-student relationship.

Yet the first meeting already contains a dark sign. Jeong looks at a budgot flower, which resembles a magnolia. It has bloomed before spring. He warns against blooming too early. The words seem to refer to Yi, who has become brilliant too soon. Later, they also apply to Jeong, a man ahead of his time.

The first break between them comes with the killing of Jeong Mong-ju. Jeong Do-jeon says he will persuade his old friend. Yi does not wait. He removes him. Yi says someone had to play the villain to found Joseon. Jeong warns that the people will fear a king who kills for a cause.

Their conflict then grows into a fight over foreign policy and power. Jeong takes a hard line against Ming and supports a campaign into Liaodong. His sensitive writing damages relations with Ming. Yi volunteers to go there and solve the crisis. He barely returns alive. Ming demands that Jeong lose his office. Taejo sends him to the northeastern region, but only in form. Jeong keeps his political power.

The northeastern region is also where the two men first met. Its return seems to stress Yi’s failure to remove Jeong from power.

The musical packs several years into a fast two-man show. After Joseon is founded, Yi is pushed aside. He is left out of the list of founding officials and the line of succession. Taejo passes over his adult sons and names Yi’s young half-brother, Yi Bang-seok, as crown prince. Yi objects. Jeong cries, “It is the king’s command,” and tries to take away the private armies of the princes. The other princes obey. Yi refuses. He draws his sword, kills unnamed people, and moves toward Jeong. Their final clash ends with Jeong’s death.

Once I put these events in order, the political conflict looked tighter than it had seemed in the theatre. Jeong Do-jeon fears Yi after Yi kills Jeong Mong-ju on his own. Yi then solves the crisis with Ming but fails to remove Jeong. Jeong keeps his power even after being sent away. Yi is shut out of the succession and then faces the loss of his army. These events form a clear chain.

The problem is that I could barely see that chain while watching the show. Why not? That is the main question of this review.

Whenever the present conflict starts to build, the musical returns to the warm past. A tense political scene is followed by a memory of the close teacher and student. When the story returns to the present, the conflict has already moved to its next stage. The contrast between past and present should deepen the tragedy. Instead, it keeps releasing the tension.

The musical gives Yi two clear traits. He has a firm will to become king. He also admires Jeong and wants his approval. This could create a strong conflict. Yet the musical only places the two traits side by side. It gives little sense of how admiration turns into a desire to kill.

Yi’s admiration is repeated too often. He respects Jeong from their first meeting. In one flashback, he quotes his teacher’s writing and is told to read it “cutely.” The moment feels like fan service. Its tone does not fit the rest of the show.

The gap could have been interesting. Yi kills Jeong Mong-ju and other rivals without mercy. Yet he acts like a child in front of his teacher. The musical does not examine this conflict. It simply shows both sides.

The political events build in order. But the show does not show how they wear down Yi’s admiration and turn it into a wish to kill. When Yi finally stands before Jeong with a sword, the audience must work backward and decide when he became able to kill his teacher.

Historically, Jeong was a major obstacle to Yi’s goal. That fact alone does not complete Yi’s emotional path in the musical. A short historical drama does not need a long speech to explain everything. But it must show the change through words or action.

The matching lines have the same problem.

“You cannot be the king of the state I want to build.”

“You cannot be a minister in the state I want to build.”

These lines should mark a major turn. But the show does not clearly show what makes the men say them or how the words change their later actions. The parts are present. The links between them are weak.

The musical also reduces the scale of Yi’s loss. He does not lose only the love of his father and teacher. He loses his place as a founder of Joseon. He loses his chance to inherit the throne. He faces the loss of his army and his personal safety.

The show turns this political loss into a son and student asking, “Look at me.” Jeong’s approval later becomes the reward. The anger of a politician who has lost power becomes the pain of a man who was not loved. The Strife of Princes begins to feel less like a struggle for power and more like family and teacher-student melodrama.

The janggi board is a good image for this struggle. Yi loses a piece but says a small sacrifice is necessary. Then he calls “check.” The moment clearly shows that he will sacrifice people to reach his goal.

Later, the small board grows into several chairs. The actors keep moving them while lights pick them out. Yet it is hard to tell which pieces belong to whom or where power is moving. The small board has a clear contest. The chairs only make the scene look larger.

The movement needed a clear direction. Jeong could have pushed the chairs toward his side while Yi took them back. Jeong could have removed Yi’s pieces one by one. That would have shown the shift in power and the loss of the private armies. Instead, the image grows in size but not in meaning.

The final scene brings these problems together. Yi gives Jeong a sword and tells him to strike. Jeong admits that he did not follow pure ideals alone. He also used power. He asks whether Yi has finally learned fear and says he may become a good king.

Yet the audience and Yi already know that Jeong holds power. He has pushed Yi aside and led the move to remove the private armies. Jeong may be the only person in the story who has not understood this about himself until that moment.

Jeong’s late insight does not lead to a deeper political reckoning. Instead, it prepares a final moment of mutual approval.

Yi showed no fear when he killed Jeong Mong-ju. He showed no fear when he went to Ming to face Zhu Yuanzhang. He believed that someone had to play the villain to build a state. Jeong had asked what people would want a king who chose to be a cruel villain.

In the final scene, “fear” does not mean cowardice. It means the ability to step back, question one’s cause, and look at the results of one’s actions. Jeong believes Yi has finally learned this. He decides that Yi may now be fit to rule.

But the change is announced in the final conversation. It has not grown through the earlier scenes. The moment therefore feels less like the end of Yi’s political growth and more like the approval he has wanted from his teacher all his life.

There is a tragic idea here. Yi receives that approval at the exact moment when he must kill the man who gives it to him. Yet the clash of political ideas ends as a melodrama about a student who is finally accepted by his teacher.

After killing Jeong, Yi walks to the throne. He sits with one leg raised on the chair. The pose is rough and almost disrespectful. He looks less like a lawful king than a victor who has taken the seat by force. The ending could have stopped there. It would have shown that the hunger for power feared by Jeong has become real.

Instead, the stage goes dark. Then the dead Jeong and Yi stand together again before the budgot flowers. The show does not stay with the discomfort of the throne. It adds a warm reunion after death.

If the flower had to return, Yi could have stood before it alone. He could have remembered the relationship and the ideals he lost when he gained the throne. The current ending makes the murder and political defeat feel like a brief break in a loving teacher-student relationship.

I left the theatre with fragments, not a complete story.

Kim Ki-Taeg’s singing was clear and open. His spoken lines were harder to follow. When the pace became fast, the first vowel of a word often blurred. “추운” (chuun) sounded like “츠운” (cheuun), while “싸움” (ssaum) sounded like “쓰움” (sseuum). He also linked syllables too smoothly, which blurred the word boundaries. This made the story hard to follow. Spoken lines carry most of the facts in a show with many political events and jumps in time. Here, that channel lost information first.

Both actors sang well. The songs were good. The choreography had force. The music began with drums, then added the Korean buk and piri. The mix sounded fresh. The lighting was clean. A dark throne at the back allowed the two actors to play King Taejo as well. It was an efficient choice.

A two-person show has no narrator or ensemble. Speech, song, and movement must divide the work. One should carry facts. Another can carry emotion. Another can set the pace and structure.

In Nanse, all three often repeat the emotions of the two men. No part fully carries the facts and causes. The shifts between past and present also fail to mark the point when the relationship truly breaks. They mainly repeat the contrast between warmth and coldness.

When I left the theatre, I remembered separate images: Yi’s slanted pose on the throne, the janggi pieces with no clear direction, voices in the dark, and hands passing a sword. Only after I put the scenes back in order for this review did the fragments form a story.

A good play should come together while the audience is still in the theatre. I could not make sense of Nanse while watching it. I saw the writer’s intent only after I returned home and joined the fragments. That was disappointing.


Historical Background

Nanse is set during the fall of Goryeo and the founding of Joseon in the late fourteenth century.

Goryeo was weakened by conflict at court, powerful landowners, and changes in the regional order. The Yuan dynasty was falling, while Ming was becoming the main power in China. Reformers in Goryeo agreed that the state needed major change. They did not agree on whether to reform Goryeo or replace it.

Yi Seong-gye was a leading general. In 1388, he was ordered to attack Ming territory in Liaodong. He turned his army back at Wihwa Island and took control of the government. This event is known as the Wihwado Retreat.

Jeong Do-jeon became one of Yi Seong-gye’s closest political partners. He helped plan the new state, its laws, and its system of rule. Jeong Mong-ju, once his political ally and friend, opposed the change of dynasty. He wanted to reform Goryeo without ending it.

Yi Bang-won was one of Yi Seong-gye’s adult sons. He passed the civil service exam and took part in the political struggle that led to the new dynasty. In 1392, men under his command killed Jeong Mong-ju. Joseon was founded later that year, and Yi Seong-gye became King Taejo.

The new dynasty soon faced a fight over succession. Taejo did not choose one of his adult sons as crown prince. He chose the young Yi Bang-seok, a son of Queen Sindeok and Yi Bang-won’s half-brother. Yi Bang-won had taken major risks during the founding of Joseon, but he was not named a founding merit subject and was left out of the line of succession.

Jeong Do-jeon supported the young crown prince. He also tried to reduce the private military power of the princes. This placed him in direct conflict with Yi Bang-won.

Their political views also differed. In simple terms, Jeong wanted a state led by laws, institutions, and strong ministers. He wanted royal relatives kept away from direct political and military power. Yi Bang-won wanted a strong king who could control the court and the army. The difference was not absolute, but it became central to their struggle.

Relations with Ming were another source of tension. Jeong supported a hard line and prepared for a possible campaign into Liaodong. Ming also objected to official Joseon documents and demanded action against the people involved. The musical compresses and changes parts of these events for its story.

In 1398, King Taejo became seriously ill. Yi Bang-won then led a coup known as the First Strife of Princes. Jeong Do-jeon, Yi Bang-seok, and other political rivals were killed. Yi Bang-won later became King Taejong in 1400.

As king, Taejong ended the private armies and placed military power under the state. He also removed officials and royal relatives who could form rival power bases. His rule was harsh, but it helped create the strong central government later inherited by his son, King Sejong.

Taejong also gave Jeong Mong-ju a high posthumous title. He had removed Jeong Mong-ju as a political obstacle, but later honored him as a model of loyalty. This was also a way to shape the moral and political order of the new dynasty.

The close teacher-student bond between Jeong Do-jeon and Yi Bang-won in Nanse is a dramatic choice. The historical record shows political cooperation and later conflict, but not the same intimate relationship presented in the musical.