Decided to watch this because of the male lead, Jang Hyuk. No other reason! Well it was a struggle to get to the final 41 episodes.
About the merchants and the peddlers who carried the goods from town to ports to towns LITERALLY on their backs in "people wagons", in well organised Guilds (a precursor to Unions).
The series seemed promising at the start. Surely from a disastrous episode in childhood the three key children would become successful adults later? No. This was 41 episodes of death (rarely natural), murders, drownings, beatings, humiliations, scams, evil plotting, cheating in business and relationships along with horrendous abuse of women. Cannot recollect if there was one moment of fun and joy. Even the one couple's eventual love, was so momentary that it became a brief memory that could be forgotten in the mire of these 41 plodding episodes.
Also the one supposedly joyous moment of a wedding was full of angst as a protagonist was breathing venom next to the bride. Again the usual joyous moment of the birth of the child was so traumatic with the former husband waiting to kidnap it.
This drama was so full of misery, so many people including the fairly significant leads dying needlessly You just couldn't catch a break from this bleak, black, spiral of hell. No not once in the 41 episodes, and believe me when I say I hung in there thinking, "its got to get better at some point." But no the writer and Director were determinedly stuck on a road black tar and miserable hell with this drama. They stayed on that bleak road throughout.
The key women in this series initially had significant roles but the promising ones were killed off as soon as feasible, with the odd loyal female servant left with little to contribute. The one female who survived to the end was of course designated by the writer to be punished by a slow miserable life of unrequited love, leading to her becoming bitter, sly, malicious and unpleasant. And she was a FL. Cannot understand why the character of the older sister was killed off and so early too. Unnecessary imo.
This drama was supposedly set at the end of the 19th c, in Korea but I felt it could have been set 100 years before that, as the Korea depicted looked so very backwards. Not even horses for the peddlers, when Europe and North America was certainly quite industrialised with pack horses, wagons and of course trains. So that was bothering me. Surely the peddlers would have advanced at the very least to pack horses by the end of the 19c? It seemed to want to emphasise that Korea was backward in comparison
If you have the time and energy then watch it but it did not leave me with any joy or feeling of reconciliation at the end. I was just left wondering why I wasted my time on this dreadful Kdrama knowing that I will never get back.
Only plus was the brilliant acting of Jang Hyuk.
