The King: Eternal Monarch premiered on SBS and Netflix on April 17, 2020, and closed its 16-episode run on June 12. Lee Min-ho plays Lee Gon, a modern-day Emperor of the Kingdom of Corea. Kim Go-eun plays Jeong Tae-eul, a detective in the Republic of Korea. Between them sits a door that should not exist.
Trailer, via Netflix K-Content.
Two Worlds, One Door
The premise is the show’s best asset. Lee Gon crosses into an alternate reality where the Republic of Korea stands in the Kingdom’s stead, a place he recognizes from an identity card he has carried since his father’s assassination. His half-uncle, Lee Rim, killed that father and now moves between both worlds assembling armies. The mechanic is clean: one door, two countries, a stolen half of the Manpasikjeok that works as the portal.
Lee Min-ho and Kim Go-eun Carry the Load
Kim Eun-sook wrote the series, and she reunites here with both leads from earlier hits. Lee Min-ho worked with her on The Heirs (2013); Kim Go-eun worked with her on Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016). Woo Do-hwan takes dual roles as Jo Eun-sup and Jo Yeong, and the rest of the ensemble — Kim Kyung-nam, Jung Eun-chae, Lee Jung-jin — fills out both versions of the same lives.
The dual casting is not a stunt. It is the whole thesis of the show.
Corea Against the Republic
The series asks a simple question in two settings, and the table below is the cleanest way to see what separates them.
| Element | Kingdom of Corea | Republic of Korea |
|---|---|---|
| Ruler | Emperor Lee Gon | No emperor |
| Lee Gon’s role | Sitting monarch | Outsider |
| Jeong Tae-eul’s role | Detective | Detective |
| Lee Rim’s position | Fugitive half-uncle | Fugitive half-uncle |
Lee Rim is the constant. He belongs to neither place and threatens both, which is why the show’s stakes hold even when the romance stalls.
Where the Season Actually Stands
Here is what the record shows, in order of what matters.
- Premiere ratings: a record for SBS’s 2020 Friday-Saturday drama slot.
- Wavve drama chart: No. 1 for eight consecutive weeks.
- Netflix: the most popular Korean drama in India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, and one of the top two in the U.S.
- Domestic viewership: lower than expected on later episodes, with news media pointing to streaming competition and criticism of the screenplay, production and various controversies.
That split is the story. A show can top a streaming chart in four countries and still see its home ratings fall short of expectations, and by the numbers reported here, The King: Eternal Monarch did.
The TMDB Score and the Mixed Reviews
The 8.2 out of 10 that circulates for this series is a TMDB audience score drawn from 918 votes, not a verdict from this paper. It measures how the people who sought the show out felt about it. That is worth separating from the domestic ratings picture, because the two numbers are answering different questions.
Sixteen episodes is the right length for this story. In our view, the show handles the parallel-world device with unusual discipline, and the mixed reviews are fair on the screenplay — Kim Eun-sook’s script leans on coincidence where it could lean on character. The production criticism is a matter of taste; the source notes it as a criticism, not a measured shortfall, and we will not pretend otherwise. The controversies and the ratings dip matter less than the central fact: this series built a world worth returning to, and it did so with a cast that understood the assignment.
Lee Min-ho and Kim Go-eun sell a romance across two realities without losing the thread of either. Woo Do-hwan’s doubled performance is the season’s sharpest turn.
The show’s weakness is pacing in its back half, not its premise.
The King: Eternal Monarch is not the flawless epic its premiere ratings promised. It is an ambitious, uneven, genuinely moving series that found a large global audience while its domestic ratings cooled late in the run. That trade is worth watching, and worth the time.
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