Spoilers for Netflix’s The Scandal and the 2003 film Untold Scandal.
Why are reactions to Netflix’s The Scandal so difficult to summarize?
It would be easy to say that Korean viewers are more critical while international viewers are more positive.
But that explanation may be too simple.
Because there is another possibility:
They may not be comparing the same things.
For many Korean viewers, the obvious reference point is the 2003 film Untold Scandal.
For international viewers familiar with the story, Netflix’s series may instead sit inside a much larger family of Dangerous Liaisons adaptations.
That difference sounds small.
It isn’t.
Because the moment you change the work you are comparing The Scandal against, you also change the question you ask while watching it.
Korean Viewers Have a Ghost Sitting Beside Them
For many Korean viewers, Netflix’s The Scandal does not begin with a blank screen.
The 2003 film is already there.
Untold Scandal, starring Lee Mi-sook, Bae Yong-joon and Jeon Do-yeon, took the basic structure of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses and moved it into Joseon Korea.
More than two decades later, Netflix has returned to essentially the same territory.
That makes comparison almost unavoidable.
True Taste Korea’s earlier article on Korean reactions found exactly this pattern: viewers repeatedly compared the eight-episode series with the 2003 film, particularly its pacing, sensuality, performances and character development. 트루테이스트코리아
So when a Korean viewer watches Son Ye-jin as Lady Cho, the question may not simply be:
“Is Lady Cho an interesting character?”
It can become:
“How does Son Ye-jin’s Lady Cho compare with Lee Mi-sook’s version?”
When NANA appears as Hui-yeon:
“Does this Hui-yeon work?”
can quickly become:
“How does she compare with Jeon Do-yeon?”
And when an eight-episode drama unfolds slowly:
“Is this pacing effective?”
can become:
“Why does this feel less concentrated than the movie?”
The 2003 film becomes an invisible measuring stick.
But The Scandal Has Another Family Tree
International viewers can approach the series from a completely different direction.
The story did not begin with the 2003 Korean movie.
Both Untold Scandal and Netflix’s The Scandal belong to the much larger adaptation history of Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 French novel commonly known in English as Dangerous Liaisons. 트루테이스트코리아
That story has been reinvented repeatedly.
Different periods.
Different countries.
Different social classes.
Different attitudes toward sex.
Different relationships between the central characters.
Even Cruel Intentions transplanted the same basic DNA into wealthy modern American youth culture. 트루테이스트코리아
Once you see The Scandal as part of that tradition, the question changes.
Instead of asking:
“Is Netflix as good as the 2003 Korean movie?”
you can ask:
“What does this version do with Dangerous Liaisons that another adaptation could not?”
That is a very different test.
One Comparison Rewards Fidelity. The Other Rewards Reinvention.
This may be the key.
When a beloved previous adaptation is your main reference point, differences can easily feel like losses.
The movie had concentrated tension.
The series is longer.
The movie’s characters felt mysterious.
The series explains them.
The movie created sensuality through compression and suggestion.
The series spends much more time exploring motivation and backstory.
None of those changes is automatically good or bad.
But if Untold Scandal is your benchmark, every alteration naturally raises the question:
Was this change worth making?
Now change the benchmark.
Imagine approaching Netflix’s series primarily as another reinterpretation of Dangerous Liaisons.
Suddenly, changing the characters is not necessarily a deviation.
Changing them is the point.
Adaptation becomes less about reproducing an earlier Korean movie and more about asking what this centuries-old story looks like when interpreted again through Joseon society for a global streaming audience.
This Is Where Joseon Becomes More Than Decoration
This difference becomes especially important when looking at the women.
Dangerous Liaisons is fundamentally interested in sex, power, reputation and manipulation among privileged people.
But moving that structure into Joseon changes what those things mean.
Lady Cho can be wealthy, intelligent and socially powerful while still living inside restrictions imposed on women.
Hui-yeon’s chastity is not merely a personal preference.
Her status as a widow places desire inside a larger system of reputation, family and social expectation.
An earlier True Taste Korea article looked at precisely this historical contradiction: elite Joseon women could possess status while facing sexual and social rules dramatically different from those governing men. 트루테이스트코리아
That means The Scandal can be watched in two ways.
One viewer sees:
a less concentrated version of Untold Scandal.
Another sees:
a new experiment using the Dangerous Liaisons structure to explore gender and agency in Joseon.
They are watching the same scenes.
But they are asking different questions.
Lady Cho Is Where the Difference Becomes Clearest
Consider Lady Cho.
If Lee Mi-sook’s 2003 performance is the benchmark, Son Ye-jin inevitably enters a competition she did not create.
Which Lady Cho is more sensual?
More dangerous?
More mysterious?
More commanding?
But if the benchmark becomes the broader Dangerous Liaisons tradition, another question appears:
What kind of power can a woman like Lady Cho actually possess in this particular society?
Netflix spends considerably more time answering that.
Her intelligence does not give her complete freedom.
Her social position does not erase the limitations of gender.
So manipulation becomes one of the few spaces in which she can exercise control.
That makes Lady Cho not merely a seductress or strategist, but a specifically Joseon reinterpretation of a much older archetype.
Whether viewers find that richer or less exciting is another question.
But the comparison itself has changed.
The Same Thing Happens to Cho Won
Cho Won can also look weaker if measured primarily against the concentrated confidence of the 2003 film.
Netflix gives us more of his wounds.
More of his attachment to Lady Cho.
More explanation for the man beneath the seducer.
As we discussed in Deep Dive #2, that can make him feel less like a completely formed libertine and more like an emotionally unfinished person.
But again, another reading is possible.
If this is not primarily an attempt to recreate Bae Yong-joon’s interpretation, then Netflix is free to ask:
What would make this particular Cho Won become a man who turns seduction into a way of life?
The series is not merely changing his behavior.
It is changing the question surrounding him.
And This Explains a Strange Thing About Remakes
Two viewers can agree completely about what changed and still disagree about whether the change works.
One says:
The movie was tighter.
Another says:
The series gave the characters more context.
Both can be right.
One says:
The original felt more sensual.
Another says:
The new version explores the women more deeply.
Again, both observations can coexist.
The disagreement begins when we ask what an adaptation is supposed to preserve.
Is its job to reproduce what worked before?
Or is its job to discover something the previous adaptation did not explore?
Netflix’s director Jung Ji-woo has explicitly described the new version as substantially different from the 2003 film rather than simply an expanded copy. 트루테이스트코리아
That makes the second question particularly important.
Maybe “Korean vs International Reaction” Is the Wrong Debate
This is why reducing the response to:
“Koreans disliked it, foreigners liked it”
does not tell us very much.
Korean reaction itself is divided. Some viewers appreciate the expanded characterization and performances; others think the longer format weakened the tension. 트루테이스트코리아
International reaction is not uniform either.
The more interesting divide may therefore have less to do with nationality than with adaptation memory.
What version lives in your head before Episode 1 begins?
If you know and love Untold Scandal, Netflix has to compete with a specific movie.
If you know Dangerous Liaisons, Cruel Intentions or another adaptation, Netflix becomes one more transformation of an endlessly adaptable story.
And if you know none of them?
Then something even stranger happens.
Netflix’s The Scandal becomes your original.
That Viewer May Have the Most Different Experience of All
A first-time viewer does not know what was changed.
They do not know which character used to be colder.
They do not know which scene was added.
They do not know whether the 2003 version moved faster.
They are not waiting for Jeon Do-yeon’s Hui-yeon.
They are not comparing Son Ye-jin with Lee Mi-sook.
For them, there is no adaptation problem.
There is only the drama in front of them.
And that may explain why discussions of The Scandal can sometimes sound as if people watched completely different shows.
In a sense, they did.
One watched a remake of a Korean classic.
Another watched the latest Dangerous Liaisons adaptation.
Another simply watched a new Netflix K-drama.
So What Is Netflix’s The Scandal Actually Competing With?
That depends on who is watching.
For one audience, it is competing with memory.
For another, it is competing with an adaptation tradition.
For another, it is competing only with the next show on Netflix.
And those three viewers are unlikely to judge the series in exactly the same way.
That may be the most useful way to understand the debate surrounding The Scandal.
The disagreement is not simply about whether the series is good.
It begins one step earlier.
Viewers cannot agree on what Netflix’s The Scandal should be compared to in the first place.
And if the starting point is different, the final judgment was probably never going to be the same.
The divide between Korean and international viewers may have as much to do with expectations as with the series itself. Audiences familiar with the 2003 Korean film may notice different changes from those who know the story through other adaptations. Explore how Netflix’s The Scandal differs from the 2003 film Untold Scandal to understand why the same adaptation can inspire such different reactions.