Netflix’s The Scandal takes viewers into a Joseon society where an elite woman can possess wealth, intelligence and influence — but still live inside strict boundaries simply because she is a woman.
For modern viewers, the conclusion seems obvious:
Women in Joseon Korea must have always lived like this.
But Korean history contains a surprising twist.
Go back several centuries, and women in Korea could inherit family property alongside their brothers, maintain strong connections to their birth families and exercise economic rights that would later become much more restricted.
In other words:
For some Joseon women, history actually moved backward.
And that makes The Scandal much more interesting.
Joseon Daughters Once Inherited Property With Their Brothers
One of the biggest surprises involves inheritance.
During the earlier Joseon period, family property was often divided relatively equally among sons and daughters.
Marriage did not automatically remove a daughter from her birth family’s inheritance.
Women could own inherited property, and that property did not simply become their husband’s because they married.
This matters because property means more than money.
Property can mean bargaining power inside a family.
It can mean security after a husband dies.
And it can mean that a daughter remains an economically important member of her own family even after marriage.
That is very different from the stereotypical image many people have of Joseon women.
Even Marriage Looked Different
Early Joseon marriage customs could also surprise modern viewers.
The familiar image is of a bride leaving her family and becoming absorbed into her husband’s household.
But historically, Korea retained older marriage traditions in which husbands could spend substantial periods living with or near their wives’ families.
That meant married women often maintained stronger relationships with their parents and relatives than the later Confucian family system would encourage.
So what happened?
The Strange Part: Women Lost Ground as Joseon Developed
From roughly the 17th century onward, Neo-Confucian family principles became increasingly embedded in everyday social life.
Families became more strongly organized around the male line.
Ancestor rites increasingly centered on sons.
Patrilocal residence became more important.
Genealogies increasingly emphasized male descendants.
And inheritance practices gradually shifted away from relatively equal division toward preferential treatment for sons — particularly eldest sons.
By the 18th century, the world of elite Joseon women looked considerably different from that of women several centuries earlier.
That is the world that helps us understand The Scandal.
Lady Cho’s Power Suddenly Makes More Sense
Son Ye-jin’s Lady Cho is not powerless.
That is precisely what makes her interesting.
She has status.
She has intelligence.
She understands people.
She knows how to manipulate the rules around her.
But there are freedoms available to elite men that are not equally available to her.
Ji Chang-wook’s Jo Won can openly build a reputation as a notorious playboy.
For a woman of Lady Cho’s position, sexual desire carries very different consequences.
So she exercises power indirectly.
Through information.
Through relationships.
Through temptation.
Through other people.
That makes her more than simply a “dangerous woman.”
She is a powerful woman operating inside a society that places boundaries around how female power can be expressed.
But Was Europe Really So Different?
Here is where the story gets even more interesting.
The Scandal is adapted from Dangerous Liaisons, the famous French novel published in 1782.
And 18th-century European women were hardly living in a modern feminist paradise.
In England, the legal doctrine known as coverture meant that a married woman’s independent legal identity was severely constrained by marriage. Her husband gained extensive control over property and legal affairs.
France was different in important ways, and women’s experiences varied enormously according to region, class and marital status.
But European women also faced major restrictions involving marriage, property, political participation and sexual behavior.
And just like in Joseon, there was a glaring double standard.
A sexually adventurous aristocratic man could gain a reputation as a libertine.
A woman behaving similarly risked social destruction.
Suddenly, adapting Dangerous Liaisons to Joseon does not seem so strange.
Two Different Societies, One Familiar Problem
18th-century France and Joseon Korea were obviously not the same society.
Their laws, religions, family systems and cultures were very different.
But Dangerous Liaisons depends on something both worlds understood very well:
Sex, marriage and reputation can become forms of power when men and women are not allowed to play by the same rules.
That may be why The Scandal works so naturally in a Korean historical setting.
The costumes changed.
The language changed.
The social rules changed.
But the dangerous game underneath remained recognizable.
And there is one final historical irony.
When we look at Lady Cho and think,
“Joseon women had so few freedoms,”
we should remember that women living in Korea several centuries before her could, in some respects, possess stronger property and family rights.
So perhaps the most surprising question raised by The Scandal isn’t how restricted Joseon women were.
It is this:
How did some Korean women lose rights their own ancestors had already possessed?