The king of tears, Lee Bang-won

I totally agree with rkpmthk's observation. I really wanted to see this and I started watching it at a Korean friend's place - couldn't continue. Animal cruelty is the most abhorrent thing to me and this just turned my stomach; then again, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.

Firstly, the low ratings are due to the death of a horse on set. Focusing only on the show, it is one of my all-time favourite non-romance historical k-drama. The show is paced wonderfully, not too slow and not too fast. It also makes the various titles and ceremonies involved easy to understand and remember. Unlike most other historical k-dramas, the acting is not too over-the-top that it feels unreal. The actors do a very good job of making the scenes real, engrossing and believable. All events depicted in the series are also almost completely accurate (the places, people and decisions shown are accurate, while the dialogues are obviously fictional). As a bonus, the series also shows the buildings depicted in the series which have survived to this day in the end-credits.

All participants in this drama, both actors and directors, understood that in making such a decision, there is a huge risk of injury and death of the animal. Apologies are easy to say, it is impossible to restore life to a living being. Drama cancellation and litigation is the perfect solution for all of them. Cruel, but deserved.

For such a company, using computer graphics is not a problem at all, but it is clear that someone is especially greedy and continues to exploit animals for their stupid purposes. The question is, how many such projects were there before this drama and how many animals were harmed on their set for the sake of a few "spectacular" minutes? An animal died, footage of animal abuse was included in the episode, and the film crew just apologized .. do you think this is normal??

Watch behind the scenes. See how few of the set guys hold the rope and kill the horse in the set. Imagine, you have one job, its easy, to help the production, and you have brain as well. You know that what you are doing will kill the horse, and you are killing a horse with your own hands. I wonder the psychology of the authority who decided this. No movie set should have the courage to kill an animal.

All actors and crew know animals are killed to make this show. Just look at the poor video of them killing a horse for just one scene. Purposefully tripping it. It died a week later, but looks extremely injured so therefore it must have suffered for a long while. This show needs to be banned and and all participants jailed or fined. Disgusting.