Queenmaker is a 2023 South Korean television series, produced by Netflix. It was released in April 2023, and ran for 11 episodes.
Hwang Do-hee is a publicist for Eunsung Group, an enormously powerful chaebol
conglomerate. Do-hee has spent a couple of decades managing publicity for the Eun family, managing their scandals, protecting the family's reputation. As the story opens, Oh Kyung-sook, a human rights lawyer, is staging a protest on the roof of the Eunsung building, demanding that the company re-hire some 500 female workers that they just laid off. Do-hee tries to get Kyung-sook to end her protest, offering all sorts of carrots (a future political career) and sticks (lawsuits), but Kyung-sook refuses. She calls Do-hee a "toilet" who just flushes all of Eunsung's waste away.
Meanwhile, Eunsung matriarch Son Young-sim, who hired Do-hee many years ago, is not content with the anti-Eunsung publicity in South Korea. She hits upon the idea of running Baek Jae-min, her son-in-law and husband of Eunsung heir Eun Chae-ryeong, for mayor of Seoul. A terrible tragedy causes Do-hee to reassess her life. She winds up defecting from Eunsung Group and supporting Kyung-sook against Jae-min for mayor of Seoul.
Tropes:
- Age Cut: A brief flashback in episode 6 shows Chairwoman Son and her two daughters in a hearse, tears rolling down little Chae-ryeong's face as they head to her father's funeral. Cut to a shot of adult Chae-ryeong in the present day, looking melancholy as she rides in a limo with her husband.
- And the Adventure Continues: Do-hee accepts going to prison herself, for accepting illegal campaign donations, as the price of taking down Chairwoman Son. She is still in jail when she's visited by an ambitious politician who says he wants her help with a campaign, and on that the series ends.
- Blind Seer: In episode 8 Chairwoman Son brings in a blind mystic to a meeting with some business executives. When the blind man says he sees "the mother of a king", implying that Jae-min will eventually become president, Son bursts into derisive laughter.
- Call-Back: In episode 1 Do-hee notices that Jae-min is missing a cuff link. At the end of that episode Yi-seul jumps from an upper floor of Eunsung Group to her death...and Jae-min's cuff link falls out of her hand. Do-hee realizes that she was telling the truth all along about the sexual harassment and Jae-min lied to her.
- Car Cushion: The first episode ends with Yi-seul, the young woman that Do-hee just bullied and forced into resigning, leaping from an upper floor and landing on the car that Do-hee was about to get into. This is Do-hee's moment of truth.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: In episode 7, at the low point when it appears that Kyung-sook's mayoral campaign will be destroyed by the embezzlement accusations, Do-hee comes into campaign HQ to find Kyung-sook sucking on a cigarette. Kyung-sook ruefully says that she used to smoke "like a chimney" and she "went through hell" to quit. Then she takes another drag on the cigarette.
- Crusading Lawyer: Oh Kyung-sook, a labor and human rights lawyer who is leading a protest against Eunsung Group. When Do-hee confronts her, Kyung-sook says that Do-hee is just a stooge. Do-hee eventually switches her allegiance to Kyung-sook.
- Dark Mistress: Ji-yeon, initially Do-hee's assistant who eventually takes her job because she doesn't have a drop of conscience. She also becomes Jae-min's mistress and partner in evil. In episode 7 she finds out she's pregnant.
- Egging: In episode 1 Chae-ryeong is pelted by eggs as she attempts to enter the Eunsung Group building. It turns out that this was orchestrated by Do-hee, who paid the egg-throwers, to build sympathy for Chae-ryeong.
- Election Day Episode: The last episode seems Kyung-sook win a landslide victory after the recording of Jae-min murdering Yi-seul is leaked.
- Evil Matriarch: Chairwoman Son, head of the Eun family and boss of Eunsung Group, a ruthless corporate shark who will let nothing stop her in her pursuit of money and power.
- False Flag Operation: Episode 7 ends with a lunatic attacking Jae-min at a speech, slicing his head with a box cutter. Episode 8 reveals that the whole thing was arranged by Carl Yoon, who not only got sympathy for his candidate but made Kyung-sook look bad by pretending that the guy with the box cutter is a Kyung-sook supporter.
- Feet-First Introduction: The first shot of the series is Do-hee's high heels clacking along the floors of Eunsung Group, as she is rushing to manage Chae-ryeong's latest ugly publicity blunder.
- Fictional Political Party: The political parties mentioned on the show aren't real. Kyung-sook is running for the Seoul mayoralty as a candidate of the Reform Party. Baek Jae-min is the candidate of the Korean Republican Party which seems to be the conservative faction. Carl Yoon bribes the candidate of the Christian party, People's Hope, to throw his support to Jae-min.
- Flashback:
- An episode 1 flashback shows how Do-hee got her break with Eunsung Group. She was one of a whole crowd of recruits greeting Chairwoman Son, when a gust of wind caught Son's scarf and flung it into a river. Do-hee waded into the river, retrieved the scarf, and gave it back to Son.
- An episode 8 flashback reveals that Carl Yoon, who was once an advisor to Baek Jae-min's father, was somehow responsible for the disaster that ruined Mr. Baek and drove him to suicide. Jae-min is out for revenge.
- Flat "What": Eun Seo-jin's response to Jae-min's surprising proposal in episode 2—give the protesters what they want, re-hire the part-time workers they fired—is made even better by her using the English word "What."
- Glasses Pull: Assemblywoman Seo, another candidate for the mayoralty, does this in episode 5 when she is confronted during a live TV debate by her young ex-boyfriend. It's a trick pulled by Do-hee.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Do-hee confesses to receiving illegal campaign donations from Eunsung Group, and goes to prison, to make sure that the investigation will take down Eunsung Group too.
- I Was Young and Needed the Money: When Han Yi-seul threatens to go public with how Baek Jae-min harassed her, Do-hee responds by showing how she's found out that Yi-seul worked as a bar hostess. This is a quasi-prostitute situation, but Yi-seul pleads that she was only doing it to pay off her college tuition and anyway, she only smiled at the men in the bar. Do-hee does not care.
- Karma Houdini: Carl Yoon, the evil campaign manager who was responsible for the death of Do-hee's father and tried to murder Ji-hyeon, faces no consequences.
- Match Cut: In episode 3, Do-hee, in a church, is swearing vengeance on the Eun family. She walks out and the camera focuses on a stained-glass-window picture of an angel. Cut to Jae-min, in the same pose, on a podium as he's announcing his run for mayor of Seoul.
- The Mole: Episode 8 reveals that Carl Yoon has a mole inside the Oh campaign. Seon-young is spying for him, and in return he's promised her a plum job with Eunsung after the election.
- Of Corset Hurts: Kyung-sook complains mightily of the corset that Do-hee makes her wear for a televised debate in episode 5, saying that she can't breathe. This soon becomes a whole thing when Kyung-sook dramatically whips the corset off live on the air.
- Parking Garage: Ji-yeon is just trying to get to her car in episode 10, but she's swarmed by a horde of reporters in the parking garage, and attacked by a crazed Jae-min supporter, before Jae-min's security team can whisk her away. (Do-hee has leaked the story of Jae-min's pregnancy.)
- Power Hair: Chairwoman Son has the short, upswept, carefully sprayed hair befitting an Evil Matriarch and chairwoman of Evil, Inc..
- Power Walk: Do-hee and Kyung-sook do a slow-motion power walk out of Jae-min's event, after Kyung-sook has announced, right in front of both Jae-min and all the reporters, that she is going to run against him for mayor.
- Produce Pelting: In episode 5 Kyung-sook goes to the Sangah open-air market and tries to explain to them that Eunsung and Baek Jae-min are lying to them, that Jae-min's promises of redevelopment are just going to wind up with the merchants kicked out. They don't believe her, and they pelt her with the produce they have in their stands.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Do-hee meets with one of her old loyalists at Eunsung Group; he has been sent off by Ji-yeon to some remote factory. He reports that Ji-yeon wiped all the CCTV footage but suggests that Do-hee check the security footage of neighboring buildings.
- Rooftop Confrontation:
- In episode 1, because Kyung-sook is staging a protest on the roof of the Eunsung building. Do-hee goes to the roof and tries to bribe/bully Kyung-sook down, only for Kyung-sook to blow her off, calling her Eunsung Group's "toilet" for processing their waste.
- Flashbacks reveal that Yi-seul's fatal fall off the Eunsung building in episode 1 only came after an angry confrontation between her and Jae-min on the roof. The last flashback confirms that she didn't jump, but in fact was thrown off the roof by Jae-min.
- Smart People Play Chess: Carl Yoon, campaign manager for Baek Jae-min, is shown working problems on a chess board in episode 6 while his grand scheme plays out—fabricate an embezzlement scandal to smear Kyung-sook, and kidnap Do-hee's father to stop Do-hee from responding.
- Stealing from the Till: It turns out that one of Kyung-sook's underlings in the political action group for the laid-off workers was skimming off the charitable donations that were supposed to go to the out-of-work women. Assemblywoman Son finds out about this and blackmails the underling into blaming Kyung-sook and claiming that she handed over all the cash to Kyung-sook.
- Surprise Car Crash: In episode 6 Carl Yoon kidnaps Do-hee's dementia-addled father from the hospital, and dumps him by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. The idea is that Do-hee will be panicked into searching for her missing dad and thus won't be available to respond when Yoon springs his big dirty trick, the fake embezzlement scandal meant to ruin Kyung-sook. Cut to a scene where Do-hee's father is sort of aimlessly shuffling down the road. Then a big truck comes speeding into the picture frame from stage left, hitting the old man. He dies in the hospital.
- This Is What the Building Will Look Like: Much of the plot revolves around Eunsung Group wanting to buy the land where the Sangah open-air market is, so they can build an enormous skyscraper. Chairwoman Son has a model of what the "Heaven of Asia" duty-free shop will look like in her office, and is often looking at it while she's concocting evil schemes.
- Traumatic Haircut: Seo hacks off a hunk of her own daughter's hair with scissors in episode 6, because she wants the girl looking as sweet and innocent as possible to defend her mother against corruption charges.
- Villain with Good Publicity: While the Eun sisters wear their sociopathy on their sleeves, and their mother Chairwoman Son is an ice-cold corporate shark, Baek Jae-min poses as a man with a social conscience, helping orphans and the environment. He gets Eunsung Group to re-hire the 500 laid-off workers, further cementing his reputation as a do-gooder. Yet he is actually an evil sociopath himself, who raped Yi-seul and isn't the tiniest bit troubled about her suicide. He also campaigns for women with the promise that women will be "happy and respected", while he's actually a rapist with a string of mistresses.
- Voiceover Letter: In episode 2, Do-hee reads the Dead Man Writing email that Yi-seul left just before she jumped, saying that while she did work as a bar hostess for a while Do-hee was wrong about her, she never prostituted herself, and that she only did it to pay off her tuition.
- We Can Rule Together: Jae-min makes an offer to Do-hee in the last episode, suggesting that if she'll switch teams and help make him mayor, he'll make it worth her while. She laughs in his face.
