People say “time flies” when they’re having fun. Which is why the past two months were not great for The Glory fans like me ‒ the wait between the first and second part of the Netflix series was borderline excruciating. Now that the K-drama has come to a satisfying conclusion, it made me look back and ponder just how f-ed up some of the characters were.
Below is a ranking of The Glory’s worst characters, and why they deserved to be in that spot.
Warning: Spoilers for The Glory ahead, proceed at your own risk if you’ve yet to watch the series.
Throughout the entire series, Youngae only showed a selfish side and never once expressed love or any affection toward her daughter Yeonjin. She chose to save herself by betraying Yeonjin, and even ignored her cold-heartedly when the two bumped into each other in prison.
In the earlier episodes, she also bribed high-ranking officers to bury the dirty deeds she did by offering money.
There’s no denying that Moon Dongeun is the protagonist of The Glory ‒ after all, she suffered from the cruel acts of Yeonjin and the other bullies. However, if you look at it objectively, Dongeun does have some sinister characteristics to her.
She caused family members to go against each other, and made Yeonjin and her gang fall out. Indirectly, Dongeun was the reason behind Myeongoh’s death. Not to mention, Yesol also had to grow up without a mother in a foreign land because of her revenge plan.
Joo Yeojeong had many romantic lines that would have you swooning over him, but sorry to be a party pooper — he isn’t exactly the most innocent character in the drama. He agreed to help Dongeun even when he knew that he would be breaking the law.
Although it is also understandable that he wanted to take revenge on the murderer of his father, it doesn’t sit well with me that he “abused” his authority as a doctor to get closer to the latter.
Addicted to alcohol and gambling, Lee Seokjae is the kind of father you wish you’d never have. Not only was he abusive, but he also thought that his wife Hyeonnam was making money by sending their daughter Seonah to work in a bar. FYI, Seonah is a 14-year-old character in the show.
His repulsive obsession with money was the reason behind his downfall, and TBH, I’m glad that he eventually died in a car accident.
Among the bullies, Choi Hyejeong is probably the least awful character. In a way, she was led astray by the rest ‒ they mentioned she would have been the “next” Dongeun if the latter didn’t quit school. With no other options, she listened to their instructions and participated in bullying the innocent.
However, her obsession with climbing the social ladder and love for luxury goods was no doubt a turn-off. She was willing to marry a richer, older guy to level up her status, but she immediately broke off the engagement when Jaejun offered her a chance to be together.
Yet, when Jaejun abandoned her later, Hyejeong decided to take up Dongeun’s offer of seeking revenge by replacing Jaejun’s eye drops with a harmful chemical.
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Son Myeongoh might have died tragically, but if you were to look at it from a bigger picture, he deserved it after all the horrible things he did ‒ he sexually assaulted Dongeun back in high school, and Gyeongran in Jaejun’s shop in the later episodes.
After learning that he had an edge over Jaejun and Yeonjin, Myeongoh also blackmailed them by demanding money. This showed that he never once considered them as real friends, but rather, as an avenue to gain instant wealth.
For someone with a shitty personality like Jaejun, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t change for the better when he found out Yesol was his biological daughter. Not only did he beat up a teacher right in front of Yesol by accident, he also tried to break up Yeonjin and her husband in order to gain Yesol’s custody.
What’s more revolting is also the fact that Jaejun might have sexually assaulted Sohee, causing her to be pregnant with his child. His violent behaviour and the way he mistreated women also showed that he saw them as nothing but playthings.
Despite growing up in a family of churchgoers, Lee Sara was far from being an obedient and innocent girl. She became addicted to drugs and even participated in orgies. Similar to Yeonjin, she never once felt guilty for what she had done to Dongeun and continued to live as if nothing happened.
But when she realised that her BFF Yeonjin backstabbed her by exposing her tax evasion secret to the public, she uploaded past videos of Yeonjin online as a payback. She even stabbed Hyejeong in her neck with a pencil, which caused the latter to lose her voice.
Yeonjin ah, you have so many negative traits that I don’t even know where to begin. From feeling no guilt in bullying her peers to cheating on her husband, Yeonjin is a character that most viewers would agree is pretty messed up.
As a recap, she scarred Dongeun with a burning hair curler, forced her to leave school, and 18 years later, she even manipulated others to have Dongeun fired from her job. Of course, that’s not all she did ‒ she killed Sohee, assaulted Myeongoh, and even when all these happened, she did not understand why her behaviour was wrong.
Admit it ‒ we all hate Dongeun’s mother Jung Mihee. All she did in the show was ask Dongeun for money, and she never once played her part as a mother. We saw how she succumbed to money easily when Youngae and Yeonjin offered her on separate occasions, and the fact that she even sided with Dongeun’s perpetrators for extra cash was disgusting.
When things didn’t go her way, she began to behave crazily and even accused Dongeun of trying to “steal” her man. The worst? She even set Dongeun’s flat on fire without thinking of any consequences.
As the saying goes: “what goes around comes around.” Even the smallest injustice that the victims suffered in The Glory didn’t go unpunished. There’s nothing more satisfying to see that Dongeun managed to complete her revenge plan and lead the life she had always wanted.
While there is a chance that The Glory would return to feature Yeojeong’s revenge, who knows what Netflix has in plan for us in the future.
All images courtesy of Netflix.
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