The Glory ( Deep Dive): Dark Truths Behind Korea’s Most Haunting Revenge K-Drama

Table of Contents

1. Entering The World Of The Glory: Why This Drama Still Hurts

When Koreans talk about The Glory, we don’t describe it as “just a revenge K-drama.” Inside Korea, The Glory is remembered as the drama that ripped the bandage off some of our ugliest social wounds: school violence, class privilege, and the way victims are told to “just move on.” Released in two parts in December 2022 and March 2023, The Glory immediately became more than entertainment. It turned into a social conversation, a kind of collective therapy session, and for many victims, a rare moment of validation.

What makes The Glory different is how personal it feels to Korean viewers. The writer, Kim Eun-sook, is famous for glossy, romantic hits like Descendants of the Sun and Goblin. But with The Glory, she stepped into a much darker, more realistic space, inspired by real school violence incidents that Koreans remember all too well from the mid-2000s and 2010s. When we watched Moon Dong-eun’s scars, we weren’t thinking, “What a dramatic character.” We were thinking of actual news photos, real victims, and cases that were never properly resolved.

For global viewers, The Glory may look like a highly stylized revenge fantasy with powerful performances by Song Hye-kyo and Lim Ji-yeon. For Koreans, it feels uncomfortably close to real life. The hierarchy in the classroom, the teacher’s indifference, the way wealthy parents “take care of” problems with money, the silent classmates pretending not to see—it is painfully familiar. Many Koreans who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s can name at least one student who was bullied so severely that they left school, and another who got away with everything because of their parents’ status.

Even in late 2024, more than a year after Part 2 ended, The Glory still trends regularly on Korean forums and social media whenever a new school violence case hits the news. Memes, quotes, and clips are recycled in discussions about bullying, political scandals, and even workplace abuse. The Glory has become a reference point: when someone says, “This is like The Glory,” Koreans immediately understand the dynamic—an abused victim, powerful perpetrators, and a system that quietly protects the wrong side.

That is why The Glory matters. It isn’t only the story of Moon Dong-eun. It is the story of a system that produced countless Dong-euns—and the fantasy of what might happen if even one of them decided to dedicate their entire life to carefully planned, merciless revenge.

2. The Glory At A Glance: Key Things You Need To Know

Before diving deeper, here are the core elements that define The Glory from a Korean perspective:

School violence based on real cases
The Glory’s torture scenes with curling irons and brutal group bullying are drawn from infamous Korean school violence incidents. Korean viewers immediately recognized specific references and debated them online.
A radical shift for writer Kim Eun-sook
Known for romantic, witty dramas, she shocked the industry by writing a grim revenge story with almost no romance. Inside Korea, this career pivot became a big talking point.
Song Hye-kyo’s image transformation
The Glory marked a turning point for Song Hye-kyo, who had long been associated with melodramas and “pure” heroines. Koreans praised her for finally breaking that typecast with a cold, haunted, and controlled performance.
Social commentary on class and power
The bully group is not just evil; they represent different layers of Korean privilege: chaebol money, social status, looks, and media influence. Each character embodies a particular form of power Koreans recognize.
Huge streaming and cultural impact
The Glory ranked near the top of Netflix’s global non-English TV charts for weeks, but inside Korea, its real impact was offline: people openly sharing their school violence experiences and criticizing the education system.
A revenge story with no clean catharsis
Unlike many dramas, The Glory doesn’t fully “heal” its characters. Koreans appreciated how the ending acknowledged that scars remain, even when justice is served.
Ongoing relevance in 2024
Whenever a celebrity school bullying scandal emerges, The Glory is cited in comments, think pieces, and even political debates, showing how deeply it has entered Korean public consciousness.

3. The Glory And Korea’s Dark Mirror: Cultural Context And Recent Conversations

To understand The Glory properly, you need to see it against the backdrop of Korea’s long, uncomfortable history with school violence and social hierarchy. For Koreans, the drama doesn’t feel “extreme”; it feels like a concentrated version of real stories we’ve seen in the news over the last 20 years.

The infamous “Incheon curling iron case” and other mid-2000s incidents involved teenagers using heated hair irons to burn classmates, forcing them to drink alcohol, and extorting money—details that echo directly in The Glory. When the drama first aired, Korean internet users on communities like DC Inside and the portal sites flooded comment sections with messages like, “This is literally my middle school,” or “I remember this exact method of bullying.”

Mainstream Korean outlets such as The Korea Times and The Korea Herald ran analysis pieces connecting The Glory to real school violence cases and the persistent criticism that Korean schools prioritize reputation and university admission rates over student safety. That is exactly what we see in the drama: teachers and the principal siding with wealthy parents, the police minimizing reports, and parents telling victims to endure it “for the sake of harmony.”

Another important cultural layer is how The Glory reflects Korea’s obsession with academic competition. Moon Dong-eun’s choice to become a teacher at her bully’s child’s school is not just poetic revenge; it is a direct attack on the one thing upper-class Korean parents value most: their child’s educational environment. In Korea, sabotaging someone’s child’s schooling is often seen as more devastating than attacking their career. That is why Park Yeon-jin’s panic intensifies when she realizes her daughter is at the center of Dong-eun’s plan.

In the last 30–90 days, The Glory continues to be invoked in several ways inside Korea:

New school violence policies and debates
The Ministry of Education has been revising procedures for handling school violence. Whenever a controversial case surfaces, Korean media still references The Glory as a cultural touchstone, like in commentary pieces from outlets such as JoongAng Daily and The Chosun Ilbo, even if indirectly through opinion columns.
Celebrity bullying scandals
When idols or actors face school bullying accusations, Korean netizens frequently use The Glory screenshots and quotes in reaction posts. The phrase “Don’t create another Dong-eun” appears in comments urging agencies to take allegations seriously.
Streaming and rewatch culture
On Korean Netflix, The Glory still spikes in the “Top 10 in Korea Today” list whenever a new revenge or school-violence-themed drama is released. Viewers rewatch The Glory to compare realism, writing, and social commentary.
International awards and recognition
The Glory’s cast and crew continue to receive mentions in award circuits and international lists. Coverage from sites like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter reinforces its image as one of Korea’s defining Netflix exports.
Academic and social research
Korean scholars in education and media studies cite The Glory in papers and public lectures about bullying and trauma representation. University seminars occasionally use episodes as case studies, which is quite rare for a mainstream K-drama.

From a Korean viewpoint, The Glory belongs to a lineage of school-violence narratives like the film Silenced (Dogani) and earlier dramas such as Angry Mom. But The Glory is unique because it doesn’t focus on institutional reform; it focuses on one woman’s meticulous revenge over decades. That personal, almost obsessive focus taps into a deep feeling many Korean victims share: “No one helped me, so I must help myself, even if it takes my whole life.”

The timing of The Glory’s release was also significant. Post-COVID, Korea saw rising frustration over inequality, corruption, and elite privilege. The drama’s depiction of chaebol children, corrupt police, and media manipulation matched the public mood, making its social critique hit even harder.

4. Inside The Glory: Story Structure, Characters, And The Mechanics Of Revenge

At its core, The Glory is a story about time. The drama follows Moon Dong-eun, a girl brutally bullied in high school who drops out and spends the next 18 years building a revenge plan centered around her tormentors—especially the ringleader, weathercaster Park Yeon-jin. The long timeline is crucial: in Korea, many victims feel that time only helps the perpetrators, who grow up, get married, and become “respectable adults,” while the victims remain frozen in trauma. The Glory flips that narrative by having Dong-eun use time as her weapon.

The plot is structured like a Go game, which the drama repeatedly references. Dong-eun’s friendship with Joo Yeo-jeong, a doctor and Go enthusiast, is not only romantic tension; it’s a metaphor for her entire strategy. In Go, you don’t win by one big move; you win by surrounding and suffocating the opponent slowly. Koreans familiar with Go culture immediately recognized how Dong-eun’s plan mirrors this: she targets each bully’s weak point, isolates them from their allies, and uses their own secrets against them.

Each member of the bully group represents a specific type of Korean privilege and moral decay:

Park Yeon-jin: Media power and upper-middle-class arrogance. As a popular weathercaster, she symbolizes the “clean” public image that hides private cruelty.
Jeon Jae-joon: Chaebol heir with money and impunity. His color blindness becomes a symbolic weakness in a society obsessed with appearance and detail.
Choi Hye-jeong: Social climber with no real power, reflecting how some bystanders enable violence to feel included.
Lee Sa-ra: Religious artist and drug addict, exposing hypocrisy in Korea’s Christian elite circles.
Son Myeong-o: The lowest in the group’s hierarchy, a reminder that even perpetrators can be victims of class.

From a Korean lens, the scenes of school violence are loaded with specific cultural cues. The bullies wearing indoor slippers, the teacher casually ignoring bruises, the homeroom atmosphere where everyone pretends not to see—these are accurate to Korean school life. The infamous curling iron scene is shot in a way that evokes old Korean news coverage, with lingering close-ups on burns and terrified eyes, echoing real victims’ testimonies.

The adult portion of the story shows how Korean society often rewards bullies. Yeon-jin has a successful career and a rich husband; Jae-joon runs a luxury golf and fashion business; Sa-ra is a celebrated artist from a rich family. This mirrors real cases where perpetrators later appear on TV or social media as “influencers” or “professionals,” leading to public outrage when their past is exposed.

One detail many international viewers miss is the significance of Dong-eun’s job as a homeroom teacher for Yeon-jin’s daughter. In Korea, homeroom teachers are deeply involved in a student’s academic path, recommendation letters, and daily life. By becoming this figure in Ye-sol’s life, Dong-eun is not just “near the enemy’s child”—she is in a position of enormous influence over the child’s future, which terrifies Yeon-jin more than anything.

The relationship between Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong is another uniquely Korean layer. Their dynamic is less about romance and more about shared trauma and complicity. Yeo-jeong’s father is murdered, and he becomes a “executioner” for Dong-eun’s plan. In Korea, this sparked debates: is he a hero, or just another person corrupted by revenge? The drama deliberately leaves this ambiguous, aligning with a Korean cultural discomfort about private justice versus legal justice.

The ending of The Glory refuses a neat resolution. Some characters die, some are imprisoned, some live on in misery. Dong-eun herself doesn’t ride into the sunset; she remains a deeply damaged person whose entire identity has been built around revenge. For many Korean viewers, this felt more honest than a typical healing arc. It acknowledges a reality we know too well: sometimes, there is no full recovery, only survival and the choice of what to do with the pain.

5. What Koreans See In The Glory That Global Fans Often Miss

Watching The Glory as a Korean is a very different experience from watching it with English subtitles. There are layers of language, social nuance, and industry context that don’t fully translate, even with good subs.

First, the way characters speak reveals their class and personality. Park Yeon-jin’s speech is a perfect example. She uses polite, “broadcast-standard” Korean on TV, but with her friends and victims, her tone becomes harsh, filled with banmal (informal speech) and subtle insults. When she says to Dong-eun, “너 같은 애는 원래 맞으라고 있는 애야” (“Kids like you exist to be beaten”), the phrasing is chillingly casual in Korean. It sounds like something a bully would say in a real classroom—unpoetic, cruel, and everyday.

Choi Hye-jeong’s speech patterns also reveal her insecurity. She constantly code-switches, trying to speak more refined Korean around the rich bullies but slipping back into a more colloquial, lower-class style when emotional. Koreans immediately read her as someone desperate to “upgrade” her social level, which makes her betrayal arcs more understandable.

Another insider detail is the way adults handle the bullying. The homeroom teacher’s reaction—minimizing the abuse, blaming the victim, and accepting bribes—is not just a villain trope. Koreans have seen multiple real cases where teachers encouraged bullied students to transfer schools “for their own good” while protecting the school’s image. The line “선생님도 먹고 살아야지” (“The teacher has to make a living too”) reflects a cynical awareness of how job security can override morality in a hyper-competitive system.

From a Korean viewer’s angle, the casting of Song Hye-kyo was itself a meta-commentary. She has long been seen as the face of classic Korean beauty and melodrama. Seeing her as a vengeful, emotionally frozen survivor felt like watching a national image crack. Many Korean women in their 30s and 40s, who grew up with her earlier dramas, felt a personal connection to her transformation in The Glory. It was like saying, “Even the ‘perfect’ heroine has scars.”

Lim Ji-yeon’s casting as Yeon-jin also carried shock value. Before The Glory, she was not widely known as a top-tier villain actress. After the drama, her “psychotic laugh” and lines became viral memes in Korea. People imitated her pronunciation of “문동은” and her cold, clipped tone. She instantly jumped into a new category of recognition—proof that The Glory can completely reshape an actor’s public image.

Behind the scenes, Koreans followed industry reports about how Netflix gave Kim Eun-sook unusual freedom in writing darker content, compared to terrestrial broadcasters that still have stricter standards. This is why The Glory could include more graphic psychological and physical abuse than typical K-dramas. Korean entertainment news programs discussed how this signaled a shift: top writers moving to streaming platforms to tackle harsher social issues.

In everyday Korean life, The Glory also changed how people talk about bullying. Teachers reported students referencing the drama in discussions about school violence. Parents used it as a starting point to ask their kids, “Is anything like this happening at your school?” On Naver blogs and KakaoTalk open chats, anonymous users shared their own “Glory stories,” sometimes naming schools and bullies. That outpouring of testimony is something you can’t fully sense just by watching the drama with subtitles.

Finally, Koreans picked up on the small, mundane details that scream realism: the cheap neighborhood sauna, the plastic slippers, the way mothers gossip at the apartment playground, the constant talk about “specs” (qualifications) and “background.” The Glory isn’t just a revenge story; it’s a very Korean map of how class, education, and reputation shape every interaction.

6. The Glory’s Place In The K-Drama Landscape: Comparisons And Global Shockwaves

To understand The Glory’s impact, it helps to compare it with other major Korean works dealing with violence, class, and revenge. From a Korean critic’s perspective, The Glory sits at an intersection between socially conscious films like Silenced and globally popular thrillers like Squid Game, while still maintaining a very K-drama-style emotional core.

Here’s a simplified comparison:

Work	Main Theme	How It Compares To The Glory
The Glory	Long-term revenge for school violence	Focuses on one victim’s 18-year plan, deeply rooted in Korean school culture and class hierarchy
Squid Game	Economic desperation and class inequality	More allegorical and game-based; The Glory is grounded in everyday institutions like schools, media, and family
Sky Castle	Education obsession and elite families	Shares critique of education and class, but The Glory adds graphic violence and a revenge thriller structure
Silenced (Dogani)	Sexual abuse in a deaf school and institutional cover-up	Both led to social debates; Silenced changed laws, while The Glory changed public conversation about school bullying
Itaewon Class	Revenge against a chaebol family through business success	Both are revenge, but Itaewon focuses on entrepreneurship, The Glory on psychological and personal destruction
My Name / Vincenzo	Crime and stylish revenge	The Glory is less stylized, more emotionally raw and directly tied to real bullying cases

In Korea, The Glory’s global success on Netflix was not entirely surprising. By early 2023, K-dramas had already proven international appeal. But what did surprise many Koreans was how strongly international viewers connected with the specific pain of school bullying and systemic indifference. On Korean SNS, people commented things like, “I thought this kind of school violence was only this bad in Korea, but apparently people relate everywhere.”

Netflix reported that The Glory spent multiple weeks in the Top 10 Non-English TV list globally, reaching tens of millions of viewing hours. Korean media highlighted how, at one point in early 2023, it ranked number 1 in at least 10 countries and remained in the global Top 10 for over a month. For a drama with almost no comic relief and very little romance, this was remarkable.

Culturally, The Glory also influenced how revenge dramas are marketed. After its success, new Korean series with revenge themes were often promoted using phrases like “The next The Glory” or “For fans of The Glory,” even when their plots were quite different. Streaming platforms recognized that there is a large international audience for darker, more realistic Korean stories—not just rom-coms and fantasy.

Inside Korea, the drama triggered a wave of think pieces. Columnists debated whether The Glory glamorizes revenge or offers necessary catharsis. Some education experts worried that it might make students fantasize about revenge instead of seeking help. Others argued that the real problem is a system that leaves victims feeling they have no other option.

The long-term impact is visible in language. Phrases like “real-life Dong-eun” or “Yeon-jin style bully” appear in Korean headlines about severe bullying or power abuse. This is similar to how “Squid Game” became shorthand for extreme competition and inequality. Once a drama’s title becomes an adjective in public discourse, you know it has deeply penetrated the culture.

From a global perspective, The Glory helped broaden the image of K-dramas. International viewers who only knew Korean content through romance-heavy hits discovered a new side: socially grounded, rage-filled, and morally complex. That shift is important for the industry, because it proves Korean storytellers can compete in serious, adult drama spaces—not just in “feel-good” genres.

7. Why The Glory Matters So Deeply In Korean Society

For Koreans, The Glory is more than a well-made thriller; it is a symbolic reckoning with issues we’ve been avoiding or treating superficially for years. School violence has long been recognized as a serious problem, but many victims felt their stories were either sensationalized or quickly forgotten. The Glory, with its unflinching focus on one victim’s lifelong trauma, forced viewers to sit with that pain instead of turning away after a news cycle.

One key cultural impact is how the drama reframed the conversation about forgiveness. In Korean society, victims are often encouraged to “let it go” for the sake of harmony, especially if the perpetrators apologize or their families offer compensation. The Glory refuses that narrative. Moon Dong-eun explicitly states that she has no interest in forgiveness or healing; she wants her tormentors to experience ruin. This was controversial but also liberating for many viewers who had been told they were “too bitter” or “too obsessed” with past wrongs.

The drama also highlighted how class and connections distort justice. Koreans are painfully aware that wealthy families can influence police investigations, media coverage, and school decisions. By showing Yeon-jin’s mother bribing teachers and leveraging connections, The Glory simply dramatized what many suspect happens behind closed doors. This contributed to growing public support for stronger, more transparent procedures in handling school violence cases.

Another significant aspect is how The Glory portrayed intergenerational trauma. Dong-eun’s life is destroyed as a teenager, but her revenge targets the next generation—Yeon-jin’s daughter. This is a disturbing but honest reflection of how unresolved trauma can spill over into children’s lives in Korea, where family reputation and parental sacrifice are central cultural values. It raised difficult questions: Is it fair to involve an innocent child? Is that not another form of violence? Korean viewers debated this intensely on forums and YouTube analysis channels.

The Glory also resonated with Korean women in particular. Many saw in Dong-eun a symbol of the silent endurance expected of women facing abuse, harassment, or discrimination. Her meticulous, emotionless approach to revenge contrasted sharply with the stereotype of the “hysterical” female victim. She is calm, organized, and terrifyingly rational. This image appealed to women who are tired of being told to be “understanding” or “forgiving.”

In schools, some teachers used The Glory as a starting point for discussions about bystander responsibility. The character of Ha Do-yeong, Yeon-jin’s husband, and other “witnesses” in the drama represent those who are not direct perpetrators but benefit from or ignore wrongdoing. In Korean culture, where group harmony is often valued over individual confrontation, this question—“What does it mean to be a bystander?”—is especially important.

Ultimately, The Glory matters in Korean culture because it validates rage. It says: Your pain is real. The system failed you. Wanting justice, even very late, is not pathetic. Whether or not we agree with Dong-eun’s methods, we understand why she cannot simply move on. That emotional truth is what keeps The Glory alive in Korean conversations long after the final episode.

8. Questions Global Fans Ask About The Glory: Korean Answers

Q1. Was The Glory based on a true story?

The Glory is not a direct adaptation of one specific case, but for Koreans, it feels almost documentary-like because it draws from multiple real school violence incidents. The most frequently mentioned is the “Incheon middle school curling iron case” from the mid-2000s, where a group of students burned a classmate with a heated curling iron, extorted money, and inflicted repeated physical and psychological abuse. Korean viewers immediately connected that case to the curling iron torture shown in The Glory.

Writer Kim Eun-sook has said in interviews that she researched many real-life bullying stories, reading court documents and victim testimonies. The details—forcing a student to stand naked in a classroom, making them a “slave,” teachers ignoring obvious injuries—are sadly familiar to Koreans who followed these cases in the news. However, the long-term revenge plot and specific characters are fictional.

In Korea, calling The Glory “based on a true story” can be sensitive, because it might imply that Dong-eun’s revenge is also realistic. Most Koreans understand it as a heightened, dramatized fantasy built on a foundation of very real pain. The emotional truth is real, even if the exact events are not. That’s why many victims of school violence said the drama felt like watching their own memories, even if they never plotted such elaborate revenge.

Q2. How realistic is the school bullying in The Glory from a Korean perspective?

For many Korean viewers, the school bullying in The Glory is disturbingly realistic, not in the sense that every school is like that, but in the sense that the methods, dynamics, and adult reactions closely match real cases. The extreme physical violence, such as burning with curling irons or beating in secluded spaces, has appeared in actual Korean court records. The psychological tactics—isolating the victim, forcing humiliating acts, extorting money—are also commonly reported.

What especially hit Koreans was the institutional response. The homeroom teacher dismisses Dong-eun’s suffering, the principal worries about the school’s reputation, and the bullies’ wealthy parents use influence and money to minimize consequences. This aligns with many news stories where schools pressured victims to transfer or accept “settlements” instead of pursuing formal punishment.

That said, Koreans also recognize that The Glory concentrates the worst elements into one narrative. Not every bullying case is this extreme or long-lasting. But the drama captures the emotional reality: the feeling that everyone around you sees what’s happening and chooses silence. Many Korean viewers shared their own stories online, saying things like, “My school wasn’t as violent as The Glory, but the atmosphere of fear and indifference was exactly the same.” So while it is dramatized, it is not seen as exaggerated beyond recognition.

Q3. Why did The Glory resonate so strongly with Korean women?

The Glory struck a particular chord with Korean women for several reasons. First, Moon Dong-eun’s experience reflects not only school violence but also the broader pattern of women being told to endure injustice quietly. In Korea, women often face harassment at school, work, and even within family structures, yet are pressured to maintain harmony and not “cause trouble.” Dong-eun’s refusal to forgive or move on felt like a radical rejection of that expectation.

Second, the female characters are complex and morally layered. Park Yeon-jin is not a one-dimensional villain; she is a mother, a career woman, and a product of her own upbringing, yet she remains terrifyingly cruel. Choi Hye-jeong represents women who cling to powerful circles for survival, even at the cost of their conscience. Lee Sa-ra exposes hypocrisy within religious and artistic elites. Korean women recognized these archetypes from their own social environments.

Song Hye-kyo’s casting also mattered. Many Korean women grew up watching her in romantic melodramas where her characters suffered but remained gentle and forgiving. Seeing her as a cold, calculating survivor with no interest in traditional romance was almost cathartic. It felt like watching a beloved “nation’s first love” refuse to play nice anymore.

Finally, the drama shows how women’s bodies are sites of violence and control. Dong-eun’s scars, Yeon-jin’s obsession with appearance, the pressure to marry well and maintain status—all of these are deeply gendered issues in Korea. The Glory allowed Korean women to see their own silent battles mirrored in an extreme but emotionally honest way.

Q4. Do Koreans think Moon Dong-eun’s revenge is justified?

Korean reactions to Dong-eun’s revenge are complex and often conflicted. Most viewers emotionally support her desire for justice, especially given the horrifying abuse and institutional betrayal she endured. On Korean forums, many comments expressed satisfaction at seeing the bullies’ lives crumble, with phrases like “사이다 전개” (a “cider-like,” refreshing plot) used to describe key revenge moments.

However, there is also significant debate about her methods, especially regarding innocent people caught in the crossfire, such as Yeon-jin’s daughter. Some Koreans argue that involving the child crosses a moral line and makes Dong-eun more like her tormentors. Others counter that Yeon-jin’s greatest vulnerability is her role as a mother, and that targeting this is the only way to make her truly feel fear and loss.

Many Korean viewers see Dong-eun not as a moral model but as a symbol of what happens when a system fails a victim completely. They might say, “I don’t think what she did is right, but I understand why she did it.” This distinction is important. The Glory is rarely interpreted in Korea as a guide to justice; it’s seen as an emotional fantasy that exposes real societal failures. The discomfort people feel about her more extreme actions is part of the drama’s impact, forcing viewers to question where justice ends and revenge begins.

Q5. How did The Glory change the careers of Song Hye-kyo and Lim Ji-yeon in Korea?

The Glory had a dramatic impact on both Song Hye-kyo and Lim Ji-yeon’s careers inside Korea. For Song Hye-kyo, it was a long-awaited reinvention. Before The Glory, some Korean viewers criticized her for choosing similar melodramatic roles and questioned her acting range. With Moon Dong-eun, she delivered a restrained, icy performance full of internalized rage, using minimal dialogue and subtle facial expressions. Korean critics and audiences widely praised this as one of her best roles, and she won major awards, including at the Baeksang Arts Awards.

Lim Ji-yeon experienced an even more striking transformation. Before The Glory, she was known but not a major star. Her portrayal of Park Yeon-jin—charming on the surface, monstrous underneath—instantly made her one of Korea’s most talked-about actresses. Her evil laugh, her cold tone, and specific scenes became viral memes. People started calling her “the nation’s villain,” in an affectionate, admiring way. She won multiple Best Supporting Actress awards and began receiving offers for diverse roles, from dark thrillers to comedies that play off her villain image.

In Korea, The Glory also raised expectations for both actresses’ future projects. Viewers now expect Song Hye-kyo to continue exploring more complex, darker roles, and Lim Ji-yeon to avoid being typecast while still leveraging the intensity she showed as Yeon-jin. Industry-wise, The Glory proved that giving established stars riskier, morally complex characters can pay off both domestically and internationally.