Man, SBS is really on top of the promo game for this drama, isn’t it? There’s a new teaser out for their sageuk offering Nokdu Flower, and while the first teaser focused on Jo Jung-seok (Two Cops), this one puts Yoon Shi-yoon (Your Honor) at the forefront. The two leads will play half-brothers in the sageuk, who tragically end up on opposite trajectories when faced with a major upheaval in the form of the Donghak Rebellion.
I’ve always seen Yoon Shi-yoon as such a straightforward good guy, mostly due to his variety persona and the shows I’ve watched him in, so it’ll be all the more compelling to see his character go on a downward moral spiral, as the teaser suggests. The clip starts out with soldiers ruthlessly slaughtering peasants as Yoon Shi-yoon announces that he will “enter the rotten pond” in order to reform it. He holds some very lofty ideals, saying that “culture” is the key to joining the rest of the “enlightened world.” Those ideals are a long ways away from the reality in the streets, however, and the teaser calls 1894’s Joseon the “land of despair.”
Something changes for Yoon Shi-yoon, though, and we see him armed with a gun, looking soulless as he marches down the street. He demands to know what his father, played by Park Hyuk-kwon (Fox Bride Star), will do next. His father’s answer (“Don’t you know me, son?”) isn’t a comforting one, seeing as how he’s notorious for his greed and cruelty in their village, borne out of his inferiority complex due to his lowly origins. The captions read, “The relentless despair swallows the blood-hued anger,” just as we see a change in Yoon Shi-yoon’s character, who guns down peasants alongside the soldiers. Even while he contends that ambition cannot be the key to a new world, the teaser shows him as the “boy who is reborn as a beast.” The trailer ends as he desperately asks someone for a “reason not to kill.”
Nokdu Flower will take over SBS’s Friday-Saturday slot following The Fiery Priest, premiering on April 26.
