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Post by TheBo on Mar 27, 2004 23:28:54 GMT -5
My idiot boyfriend did not turn off the VCR until halfway through JG Saturday morning, and then he shut off the receiver, so the part I did get had terrible reception. Nonetheless, the last half was a tearjerker if somewhat confusing.
The last thing I saw (end of last weekend), JG and Lady H were being called out of the jail. The first thing I saw this weekend was that they both were in the cell, considerably more beat up. The "adjutant colonal" had "died during the interrogation", and Lady Han and the duckseller had apparently confessed to treason. Lady Han was exhorting JG to stay at the palace, and JG was saying she was tired of the whole thing and was going to leave with Lady Han.
How did this happen? Did they just confess because the torture was too horrible? I thought they'd been cleared! Why is JG's soldier-man tied up in a shed, but supposedly dead? Why is Lady Choi walking around looking haunted and miserable? How did Choi Pan-sul engineer this? How was he going to get JG beheaded when she actually seemed perfectly free to stay at the palace, if Lady Han was making any sense? They talked about poison. Was there a reveal about who was actually doing the poisoning?
Help a gal.
Bo
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Post by HumbleStudent on Mar 28, 2004 1:21:46 GMT -5
Oh, TB, it was terrible The head of the royal guards had arranged a test which was supposed to demonstrate Lady Han's and JG's innocence. In the presence of Sir Oh, the evil physicians, and so on, he brought them out of the cell and into the kitchen and had them make the same duck dish with the same ingredients and a new sulfur-containing duck. Well, when they get it made, they have to find a "guinea pig" to give it to. There is some sparring between Sir Oh and the head of the guards (do we know his name btw?) over this because they wanted to find someone neutral and nobody there was neutral. At one point they pick out that weak-chinned official guy who is Young-Ro's uncle. Yeun-seng screams out that they should pick out someone else. Then they pick out the servant girl, Hong, whom Young-Ro had sent into the kitchen to give a message to Lady Choi. She eats the duck... and.. And Hong comes down with a fever!! Just like the king!! So it "proves" that it was the sulfur duck after all!! The civilian physician who said that the duck was OK is now in deep disgrace and has to apologize! The head of the royal guards, Col. Min's boss, has to back off and give Sir Oh a free hand. But actually the reason Hong got feverish was that Young-Ro had fed her drugged (by Keum-Young) abalone before sending her in with the message!! My God, what a turn of events. Bolstered by this, Sir Oh goes on the offensive and begins trying to tie Lady Han, JG, and the innocent duck-seller to some scholar whose name I forget but who was supposed to be conspiring to take the throne, although Col. Min says at one point that he's innocent as well. Because of Keum-Young's insistence, they don't drag in Col. Min directly, but they arrest his adjutant who went with the royal party to the hot springs and protected the ladies from Choi Pan-Sul's goons. The adjutant works well as a scapegoat because he was supposedly a student of this scholar guy that Sir Oh is trying to frame. JG, Lady Han, the adjutant, and the duck-seller are all interrogated and tortured. Finally the duck-seller breaks and starts wildly confessing and implicating everyone. Realizing she is doomed, Lady Han now tries to sacrifice herself for JG: "JG didn't know anything!" she cries repeatedly. But it doesn't help. Around this time Col. Min is summoned to the home of the head of the royal guards and, to his surprise, is taken into custody and bound and gagged. This is for his own protection though. The head of the guards wants to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid to try to free the ladies or his adjutant.. Keum-Young asks Lady Choi what is going to happen to JG and Lady Han. They have to be put to death, she says. She claims she doesn't like this, but it's because they didn't take care of Myoung properly at the beginning; if they had killed her properly, they wouldn't have to kill two more people now, and if they don't take care of this now, they might have to kill three or four people later on.... Lady Choi then goes to visit Lady Han and, in a truly chilling performance, tells her, "You brought this on yourself. You threw away your chances at life when you didn't bow to our power." To sum up the last couple questions: Although Lady Choi complains that she is being made miserable by foolish people forcing her to kill them, at the end she is mainly miserable because Lady Han and JG aren't to be safely beheaded. If I recall the jail-cell conversation correctly, JG is not saying that she doesn't want to stay at the palace, she is saying that she doesn't want to stay alive if Lady Han is going to die. As for what caused the king's illness in the first place, we still don't know; there's no good evidence that it was poison from any source, and certainly Choi Pan-sul has given no sign of having had anything to do with it.
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Post by greatcait on Mar 28, 2004 13:44:21 GMT -5
TheBo- I was wondering about teh poison too. I think that there is something with the ing's DRs. Remember how they couldn't figure it out and talked about some medicine? They "never" make mistakes but it seems that they just may have, They ran to the Chois & Sir Oh who figured out how to fix it. Keum-Young said she put medicine in the officicals food and the servant girls just in case. So it sounds to me like they all knew that the drs made a mistake with the medicine. Now I'm confused if the DRs made an honest mistake OR are they trying to do something on purpose and didn't want to be found out yet. Remember the scene where the king was getting better & sir Oh gave his report, when they mentioned the exiled guy, I thought I saw the drs squirm a bit. Who is this exiled guy anyway AND does he have any connection with JG's father. Remember the captain said he never found a record of her father's execution. Hmmmmmmmmmm
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Post by Walter on Mar 28, 2004 13:45:14 GMT -5
As for what caused the king's illness in the first place, we still don't know; there's no good evidence that it was poison from any source, and certainly Choi Pan-sul has given no sign of having had anything to do with it. We know that Keum Young arranged for Young-Ro to feed some Kings Abalone Stew to Hong before sending Hong into to where the food test was taking place, and that Keum Young had put a poison in that stew to make Hong get the fever. We don't know whether they slipped the same poison in the kings food at the hot springs, but they probably did.
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Post by TheBo on Mar 28, 2004 13:51:49 GMT -5
We know that Keum Young arranged for Young-Ro to feed some Kings Abalone Stew to Hong before sending Hong into to where the food test was taking place, and that Keum Young had put a poison in that stew to make Hong get the fever. We don't know whether they slipped the same poison in the kings food at the hot springs, but they probably did. Oooh, excellent theory, Walter. And thanks, everyone for helping me out. It makes sense now. Bo PS - That darned Young-ro! Always in the middle of trouble. I'll bet she wasn't even grateful that Yeun-seng brought her water from the hot springs. And poor Hong. First, she's only got a one-syllable name, and she's everyone's carry-servant, and now she's poisoned in the cause of the Chois. Bet she wishes SHE'D stayed down on the farm LOL.
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Post by greatcait on Mar 28, 2004 13:57:30 GMT -5
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO remember when Keum-Young had that little pouch in her hands in the kitchen and was trying to dump some stuff in the food-it was very hard to do behind her back- but someone called her name and she couldn't do it? ? I think she said somethng in her head like )madam do I have to do this?) I don't understand why the chois want to poison everyone. They don't have anyone close enought o sit on the throne do they? Wan't there something about killing the previous Queen mother, then they tried something with that amulet to get the queen to have a girl. So just what is there story? I mean, we all know that are powerful but what's up with killing the royal family?
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Post by kemamusa on Mar 28, 2004 14:59:30 GMT -5
I liked the fact that lady Choi was not raged. She seemed almost remorseful of what she has done over the years. I thought this line was especially chilling when lady Choi says this line to lady Han:
"Please go away quietly... Please help me not to do this again." "If Myong was sorrow in your heart, she was fear in mine"
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Post by HumbleStudent on Mar 28, 2004 17:29:10 GMT -5
There is no real evidence yet, so I lean toward saying it was was "natural" - either an illness they don't know about, or some kind of unsuspected drug interaction. I don't think it was poison. It didn't have anything to do with the sulfur, because it didn't respond to the anti-sulfur drugs that the physicians gave him. Certainly the physicians were really baffled, and were trying to cover up their ignorance, but as far as I know the real cause is still unknown. Nobody in the Choi family has given any indication that they know any more about it than anyone else. Greatcait: the poison that KY was going to put in the food was for the purpose of framing Lady Han, before the "sulfur ducks" theory started going.
Furthermore I don't think the Choi family had, or has, any motive for poisoning the king. Who would get the throne anyway? I suppose the child prince would get it, and then there would be a big power struggle over the regency, with the Queen (not a big fan of the Chois at the moment) having more of a role than she does now, and Sir Oh, the head of the guards, and every other noble in the court involved in a battle for influence. This sounds like a very risky thing to do, since it could throw all existing alliances and power arrangements into question. Sir Oh and Choi Pan-sul have power now in the existing system; why would they risk it? Their interest is in stabilizing what they have and warding off threats, not in upsetting the whole apple cart. If anyone is poisoning the King, I would expect it to be either (a) agents of Japan, or (b) reform fanatics, or (c) some other noble who has little power now and is willing to take some big risks. But I would guess that it is not poison, but disease. Particularly since it should be about time for JG to make a career move out of cooking and into medicine.
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Elaine
Senior Addict
Posts: 256
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Post by Elaine on Mar 29, 2004 17:48:03 GMT -5
Can someone clear something up? How did Young-Ro know to feed poisoned abalone to Hong. Hong was chosen to taste the food only as a last resort when they could not choose someone else. It seems to me that Hong was chosen on the 'spur of the moment', so, how could Young-Ro know to feed her the bad abalone?
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Post by greatcait on Apr 1, 2004 0:50:22 GMT -5
Humble-Thanks for clearing up the poison thing I forgot how those events fit together. I agree that I don't think the Chois would want to upset the apple cart-look how they reacted to Lady Han!!!! Do we know who the exiled guy is? Do we think he may be involved? Did they mention something about him being involved in a plot years ago? Anyone got an idea or theory? Elaine-I believe that it was a plan from the beginning. The court official in the feathered hat (love it! ) is her relation, he was given the medicine. Keum-Young told her family to follow her instructions. My understanding is that the family planned to send that guy in to eat & be sure that he got a fever & if that failed, they sent Hong. Hong seems to be one that they could manipulate and Young-Ro is M. Choi's left arm soooo, they all plotted the whole thing to frame Madam Han and JG. They sent Hong in with some bogus message and if the 2 judges hadn't picked them, someone would have suggested it. Remember, Sir Oh is in on things too. Sorry I'm new to this whole thing & don't know how to make those little boxes around someone else's text. Thanks all!
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Post by TheBo on Apr 1, 2004 10:22:38 GMT -5
Sorry I'm new to this whole thing & don't know how to make those little boxes around someone else's text. gc: At the upper right-hand corner of each message it says "quote"--click that, then the whole post shows up in the top of your new message. Just delete the part of the person's post to which you do not want to reply, being sure not to eliminate the text inside the '[' and ']' symbols (and the symbols themselves), because they give the program instructions. Bo
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Post by greatcait on Apr 1, 2004 23:39:09 GMT -5
gc: At the upper right-hand corner of each message it says "quote"--click that, then the whole post shows up in the top of your new message. Bo Like so? Bo? Thanks! gc
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Post by TheBo on Apr 2, 2004 10:18:53 GMT -5
Eck-sell-ant!
Bo
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Post by sandra on Apr 2, 2004 14:49:45 GMT -5
To make sure the king had not been posoned the officials decided to duplicate the duck dish. The result was tested on a kitchen maid and she got very sick. What the officials did not know is that she had eaten a fancy dish prepared by one of Lady Choi's helpers which may or may not have been poisoned. The blame fell on JG and Lady H along with the duck seller and a palace guard (who was beaten to death but would not confess). Lady H confessed even though she was innocent to save JG who she said knew nothing. They were both sent to exile on an island and slavery. However, because of the abuse she endured Lady H. died on the way.
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Catalpa
Junior Addict
Focus on what you can do, then do it with all your heart. ~Lois Wilson
Posts: 207
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Post by Catalpa on Apr 2, 2004 16:00:55 GMT -5
I'm sure the special royal seafood dish that Yong-ro gave to Hong was poisoned. Keum-young mentioned (I think to Lady Choi or at a meeting w/Sir Oh and Choi Pan-sul) that it had a special medicine in it to give her the fever. The question was how did they know she would be picked to try the duck dish? I guess they just gambled and got lucky. I don't think Yong-ro knew about the poison though.
Also, I stick by the theory that the king had/has some new or unknown disease. I base this on the private conversation that the doctors had about 4 episodes back. They were saying that maybe the king had some new or unknown disease and discussed the strange sores in or on his mouth. And they then decided it would be better to frame Lady Han that admit they didn't know what was going on.
Cheers,
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