18世紀、朝鮮の義州。イム・サンオクは清国の漢語を学びながら、父の果たせなかった夢である訳官を志していた。ある日、父とともに清国への商団に加わった際、松商の大房パク・チュミョンにより密輸入の濡れ衣を着せられてしまう。父は打ち首となり、サンオクは命は助かったものの奴隷となってしまう。奴隷として過酷な労働をする苦しい日々を送っていたサンオクだが、赦免令により故郷の義州に戻る。そして、亡き父の無念を晴らすために、父の友人である湾商の都房ホン・ドゥクチュのもとを訪ね、商人として生きる道を選ぶ。
AIが作品の魅力を深く読み解いています
脚本: Choi Wan-gyu
制作会社: MBC
Turned out to be a decent story. I really appreciated how it focuses on the individuals with a reasonable scoop while taking into consideration their surrounding rather than throwing in mindless connections to make the story more grand without relevant purpose such as wars/nations/kingdoms/factions. Although it started to lean a little bit into the other side towards the end, unfortunately, this is the fault of its runtime. Which brings me to my next point, the drama is definitely too long for its content and it would benefit greatly if it were to be condensed down to ~25 episodes, it would make a much more compelling package. Because of this, the drama had a serious issue with flashbacks. There was a one piece of dialogue that was repeated almost every other episode for its entire runtime, a bit too much! I liked the first 2/3 more than the last 1/3, things were changing at an unreasonable pace as we were approaching the end, you may say it was rushed. The last ~10 episodes were full of rapid changes where the drama felt like it lost it direction and didn't know how to stir it towards the end. The production seems to be passable despite its flaws even when taking into consideration that this was made in the early 2000s. Some scenes you will notice some great attention to details while other scenes you can see the tape of their fake facial hair.
