The King of Tears, Lee Bang-won

I don't think this show deserves to see the light of day. It wasn't worth the animal abuse that they condoned for a short shot in the show. Not only did they tie a real horse up and force it to land on its head, but the horse unfortunately died shortly after. If you're considering watching this show... don't. No show is worth the torture and death of an animal, especially not this one. There are many dramas that follow this unoriginal plot like this one that don't partake in cruelty like this.

I hope this show gets cancelled, and they people behind this suffer the consequences.

All participants in this drama, both actors and directors, understood that in making such a decision, there is a huge risk of injury and death of the animal. Apologies are easy to say, it is impossible to restore life to a living being. Drama cancellation and litigation is the perfect solution for all of them. Cruel, but deserved.

For such a company, using computer graphics is not a problem at all, but it is clear that someone is especially greedy and continues to exploit animals for their stupid purposes. The question is, how many such projects were there before this drama and how many animals were harmed on their set for the sake of a few "spectacular" minutes? An animal died, footage of animal abuse was included in the episode, and the film crew just apologized .. do you think this is normal??

Firstly, the low ratings are due to the death of a horse on set. Focusing only on the show, it is one of my all-time favourite non-romance historical k-drama. The show is paced wonderfully, not too slow and not too fast. It also makes the various titles and ceremonies involved easy to understand and remember. Unlike most other historical k-dramas, the acting is not too over-the-top that it feels unreal. The actors do a very good job of making the scenes real, engrossing and believable. All events depicted in the series are also almost completely accurate (the places, people and decisions shown are accurate, while the dialogues are obviously fictional). As a bonus, the series also shows the buildings depicted in the series which have survived to this day in the end-credits.

The tv series itself is great. It's like a Korean Game of Thrones - many characters and parties fighting for the throne, each has bad side and good side. Complex characters, great writing and storyline. It's like the dark truth of history, not a fairytale-like story like many other historical kdramas. This is definitely the best Korean tv show I have seen!

All the complaints and bad ratings are because of the animal abuse scandal. One horse died during filming, sadly. While this is very unfortunate and I hope the responsible ones were fired and the necessary actions were taken to avoid such abuse in the future, I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the series itself. There were probably a few production workers who work with the horses, they made this terrible mistake. But there are hundreds of others, innocent people, who work on this production! The great actors, the script writers, the costume designers, the set designers, the cameramen, etc! Don't degrade their work too just because a few others made that terrible mistake! It's as if you canceled the great movie The Pianist because of the director Polanski's scandals. You can't cancel or degrade a whole production, which is the great work of hunderds of good people, because of the scandal of a few people.

I totally agree with rkpmthk's observation. I really wanted to see this and I started watching it at a Korean friend's place - couldn't continue. Animal cruelty is the most abhorrent thing to me and this just turned my stomach; then again, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.