One of the biggest questions left by Netflix’s The Scandal is surprisingly simple:
Did Lady Cho actually love Jo-won?
She says and does things that suggest deep attachment to him.
But she also manipulates him, tests him and refuses to give up the world that keeps them apart.
That is why some viewers see her as a woman who loved Jo-won, while others see someone who simply wanted to possess him.
The truth may be somewhere between the two.
Lady Cho Clearly Cannot Let Jo-won Go
Jo-won is not just another man to Lady Cho.
Their relationship is tied to their past and to feelings that society will never allow them to openly pursue.
But Lady Cho has another priority: her position.
She lives inside a social system built around family, reputation and status.
Leaving that world would require her to sacrifice almost everything that gives her power.
And she never truly does it.
That creates the central contradiction of her character.
She wants Jo-won, but she also wants the world that makes being with him impossible.
Then Why Does She Push Him Toward Hee-yeon?
This is where the story becomes much more complicated.
On the surface, the wager involving Hee-yeon looks cruel.
Lady Cho turns another woman’s emotions into a game and uses Jo-won as part of it.
But some Korean viewers have suggested a very different interpretation.
Hee-yeon may remind Lady Cho of her younger self: a woman trapped by social expectations and denied control over her own life.
Under this interpretation, Lady Cho’s wager is not simply about jealousy.
She may also be pushing Jo-won toward a woman who could give him the kind of relationship that she herself cannot.
That does not make her actions innocent.
But it makes them more tragic.
Love and Possession Become Almost Impossible to Separate
Lady Cho’s problem is that she does not know how to love Jo-won without controlling him.
She wants him to remain emotionally connected to her.
But she cannot offer him a life together.
When he moves toward another woman, she reacts.
When he tries to escape their old relationship, she pulls him back.
This is why viewers can interpret the same actions in completely different ways.
If love means wanting someone to be happy even without you, Lady Cho repeatedly fails.
But if love can exist alongside fear, jealousy, pride and selfishness, then her feelings for Jo-won become harder to dismiss.
She may genuinely love him.
She simply cannot love him in a way that sets him free.
Jo-won Seems to Understand This
That may also help explain Jo-won’s ending.
He eventually realizes that Lady Cho is unlikely to abandon her world for him.
But he also cannot completely remove her from his own life.
Their relationship has become a prison built from love, resentment and memory.
Hee-yeon briefly appears to offer another path.
But by the end, Jo-won seems to believe that simply leaving with someone else cannot erase the past.
Lady Cho still has power over him.
So Did Lady Cho Love Jo-won?
Probably—but The Scandal asks a more uncomfortable question:
What is love worth when you refuse to risk anything for it?
Lady Cho wants Jo-won.
She needs him.
She becomes jealous of losing him.
And she may even try, in her own twisted way, to give him another chance through Hee-yeon.
But when the moment comes to choose between Jo-won and the world she has built around herself, she cannot simply walk away from that world.
That is what makes their relationship tragic.
Lady Cho’s feelings may be real.
But love alone is not enough.
Because throughout The Scandal, the person Lady Cho is least willing to sacrifice for Jo-won may ultimately be herself.
Lady Cho’s feelings for Jo-won raise a question that goes beyond love and jealousy: how much control could a woman truly have over her own life in Joseon society? Her desire to control others may also reflect the restrictions surrounding her own choices. Explore the real history of women’s rights in Joseon Korea to understand the social world behind Lady Cho’s complicated behavior.