Netflix split The Glory into two parts, and that decision is the first thing worth understanding about it. Part 1 landed on December 30, 2022. Part 2 followed on March 10, 2023. Sixteen episodes, one season, created by writer Kim Eun-sook and director An Gil-ho, with Song Hye-kyo at the center of it as Moon Dong-eun — a woman who survived horrific abuse in high school and then spent years building a revenge scheme against the people who did it.
That gap between the two parts did not cool the show off. It made the wait part of the experience, and it made the second half land like a verdict.
Trailer, via Netflix K-Content.
Moon Dong-eun Takes a Job at the Elementary School
The premise is a machine, and it runs clean. Moon Dong-eun takes a job as a homeroom teacher at the elementary school attended by the child of the bully who led the abuse against her. That child is Ha Ye-sol. The revenge is not a burst of violence. It is an elaborate scheme, assembled patiently, aimed at making the perpetrators pay for their crimes.
Song Hye-kyo plays Dong-eun with a stillness that reads as pressure rather than calm. The show gives her the whole architecture of the plan and lets her work it. The rest of the cast fills out the scheme’s two sides: Lee Do-hyun plays Joo Yeo-jeong, Im Ji-yeon plays Park Yeon-jin, and Yeom Hye-ran plays Kang Hyeon-nam. Park Sung-hoon is Jeon Jae-jun, Jung Sung-il is Ha Do-yeong, Kim Hieora is Lee Sa-ra, Cha Joo-young is Choi Hye-jeong, and Kim Gun-woo is Son Myeong-o.
Production was confirmed in July 2022 with that ensemble in place. Netflix got a cast that could carry a psychological thriller without anyone in it playing for sympathy they had not earned.
A 2006 Case in Cheongju Sits Under the Fiction
Some scenes in The Glory are based on a true event in 2006, when a group of middle schoolers in Cheongju, South Korea, extorted money from a classmate for about a month, repeatedly beating her and burning her with objects in the process.
That detail is not decoration. It is the reason the show’s cruelty reads as documented rather than imagined, and it is the reason the revenge plot carries weight beyond genre exercise. The series is classified as drama and crime, but the psychological thriller label is the accurate one. The tension is not in whether Dong-eun will strike. It is in how long she has been willing to wait, and what the waiting has cost her.
Kim Eun-sook wrote it. An Gil-ho directed it. Both are working in a register that does not flatter anyone.
Release Schedule and Awards
| Part | Release Date | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 | December 30, 2022 | Netflix |
| Part 2 | March 10, 2023 | Netflix |
The show drew eight nominations at the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards and won three: Best Drama, Best Actress for Song Hye-kyo, and Best Supporting Actress for Im Ji-yeon.
Those wins are the right ones. Song Hye-kyo’s performance is the load-bearing wall of the series — she has to hold a character who is simultaneously a victim, a planner, and a teacher with authority over a child she is using. Im Ji-yeon’s Park Yeon-jin is the other half of that equation. A revenge story fails if the target is not worth the effort, and Yeon-jin is worth it.
What The Glory Gets Right, and What It Costs
The two-part release is the show’s smartest structural choice. Part 1 builds the plan and the audience’s patience. Part 2 spends it. The result is a series that never has to rush its own payoff, and the payoff is the reason the show holds up.
The weakness is pacing in the middle stretch. Sixteen episodes is a lot of room for a scheme that, by design, moves slowly. Some of the middle chapters repeat the same beats — Dong-eun watches, Dong-eun waits, Dong-eun places another piece. The show trusts the audience to stay, and mostly that trust is earned, but there are stretches where the tension thins out.
What keeps it from slipping is the true-crime foundation. Knowing that a version of this happened in Cheongju in 2006 makes the fictional cruelty harder to dismiss as genre excess. The Glory is not asking whether revenge is satisfying. It is asking what it takes to survive long enough to want it.
The Baeksang recognition confirms what the viewership already showed: this is one of the stronger Netflix imports of its cycle, and it earned its second part rather than being handed one.
The 8.5/10 score reflects a show that is confident, well-cast, and structurally sound, with a middle section that sags under its own length. It is not a flawless series. It is a series that knows exactly what it is doing and does it, and the parts that drag are the price of the parts that land.
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