Different notes are struck in Korean revenge dramas. Retribution as a genre, its intricacies, and the utter cruelty of the perpetrators are depicted in a no holds barred manner that few other countries’ content has able to achieve. The audience’s expectations are always high when it comes to any content from Korea. The study of the thirst for vengeance and the drive to risk all for that fleeting fulfillment is best shown on the Korean screen, whether it be in The Glory, My Name or the much older The Innocent Man. Another such offering is Pandora: Beneath the Paradise, and despite its voluminous twists and turns, we couldn’t put it down. The revenge saga was characterised by scandals and betrayals, but these three events dominated the story. Let’s look at them now.
Why Was President Go Tae Sun Assassinated?
This scandal is, in a sense, where it all began. His pal Go Tae Sun had learned of Jang Geun Mo’s corruption. Geun Mo was surrounded, and if he wanted to hide his misdeeds, he had to get rid of him. Geun Mo had a lot of trouble making up his mind because Min Young Hwi, his wife, had come up with the notion in the first place. She had always had high hopes for her son and wanted him to take over the Kumjo industries, but that was only feasible if those enterprises had ever existed in the first place. Geun Mo already killed the father of Jae Hyun, one of his pals, since he would stop at nothing to satisfy his hunger. He was prepared to kill his other friend, Go Tae Sun, after being prodded by his wife, but he suddenly changed his mind. He was unable to continue, but it was too late to reverse the course of events he had started.
When Hong Tae Ra’s former life’s brother was assigned to the job, he fled with them. While doing so, Mun Ha Gyeong fell into the sea, was retrieved by Jae Hyun, and began a new life as Hong Tae Ra. As fate would have it, Go Hae Soo, the daughter of the former president, who is still seeking for her father’s killer and thinks Tae Ra is the murderer, became one of her closest friends in her new life. Since everything is connected to Kumjo Industries, which Jae Hyun has his eye on for his own ambitions, the truth doesn’t do much to alleviate the situation. She would have fled the instant she realized her background if Hae Soo wasn’t Tae Ra’s pal. But as Jae Hyun and Geun Mo’s relationship continued to endanger Tae Ra’s family, her current friendship created a duty of care that only grew stronger. It was truly sad. The pasts of each and every character in Korean dramas are often connected, and Pandora: Beneath the Paradise handles this expertly. These connections deepen Tae Ra’s retaliation.
How Was Hong Tae Ra Born?
I believe that occasionally falling in love at first sight might turn into someone’s worst nightmare. Even though you can never be sure if you will end up being friends or more, the moment you saw someone, you felt something. It doesn’t help that you experience it with a force that other people require weeks or even months to develop. One of these waves of emotions gave rise to Hong Tae Ra. Jae Hyun made it apparent that she was the only woman he had ever loved, and when he first laid eyes on her, he fell in love. The same accident that killed Jae Hyun’s mother also killed Mun Ha Gyeong’s parents. Jae Hyun has already seen her. She arrived to Hanwool Hospital, however, before he could reach her. When Jae Hyun saved her after she fell off the cliff, that was the next time he saw her. To give her a new life, he made her stand in for the deceased Hong Tae Ra. It was his way of giving her a respectable social background that he could later marry into to further his own goals. It was a brilliant move that accomplished two goals at once. He obtained the woman he cherished in addition to a familial history that raised his social standing. Mun Ha Gyeong became Hong Tae Ra in this manner.
In Jae Hyun’s mind, love was fundamentally about possession. He just changed her memory despite Tae Ra’s apparent indication that she did not approve of his authority over her life. The fact that it failed, though, only serves to emphasize how significant her identity as Hong Tae Ra was to him. He could have killed her if he had only considered her a bother, but he still had feelings for her. She might have decided to stay with him if he showed just a little more respect for her right to choose.
How Was HATCH Conducting The Human Trials?
Red, a chimpanzee with a chip in her brain who has been enhanced in intelligence, was first introduced to me when I started watching Pandora: Beneath the Paradise. But soon enough, the audience learns that Red was negatively affected by the chip, proving that their experiment was a failure. Despite the fact that they were working with a subpar mechanism, the group still wanted to conduct human trials.
They had done something similar years before. For their human experiment, they turned to Se Jeong, one of the researchers working with Kyo Jin. Jae Hyun had been in charge of concealing the body when the trial went awry, and Kyo Jin was ignorant of this. The trio needed Kyo Jin out of the way because he was a far more moral person than they were. When they left for their trip, Sung Chan cut his ropes in an attempt to kill him. After Kyo Jin fell unconscious, Sung Chan continued his research. Although he never achieved the desired results with it, the illusion was essential for HATCH to continue operating as it had been and for Jae Hyun to have the necessary leverage to run for president. They are not discouraged by their failure, and I have never understood what they planned to accomplish with the human trials given that their technology was obviously flawed. Because they were unable to obtain the desired outcomes until the very end, they were forced to pull off a complex ruse that involved bringing an unconscious Kyo Jin onto the stage and acting as though they were bringing him out of a coma when, in reality, he had only been knocked down. With the smart patch, they never have any success, but their harsh, careless, and, in fact, potentially unethical trials only cause harm to others and stoke their desire for vengeance. So many tragedies could have been avoided if only one person had made the proper choice.
In Pandora: Beneath the Paradise, everyone repeatedly takes advantage of one another. While some people are motivated by moral reasons, others are only driven by excessive greed. Even one right choice could have changed the outcome given the numerous errors made. However, it was not to be. In actuality, the series is less of a science fiction, revenge-driven epic and more of a tragedy when considering the number of lives lost.
