The Scandal Explained: Cast, Where to Watch & the Word Netflix Dropped From the 2003 Original Title

Netflix · Streaming Now (Sept 18)

The Scandal

스캔들 — the Joseon seduction game, explained

Netflix's new period drama The Scandal dropped all eight episodes yesterday, September 18 — and it's already climbing the Global Top 10. Son Ye-jin, Ji Chang-wook, and Nana lead a Joseon-era love game that's equal parts elegant and merciless.

Here's what's actually going on, who's who, and the one piece of history the Korean title used to carry that the English one dropped completely.

What is "The Scandal" about?

Lady Cho (Son Ye-jin) is a noblewoman whose sharp mind and sharper desires have no outlet in Joseon's rigid women's quarters. Cho-won (Ji Chang-wook) is the era's most notorious seducer, a man who treats romance as sport. When Lady Cho proposes a wager — seduce and ruin a specific target — she sets in motion a game neither of them can fully control. The target is Hee-yeon (Nana), a widow who has kept a spotless, guarded reputation for years. What starts as a cruel bet curdles into real jealousy, real desire, and real consequences none of them saw coming.

It's an 8-episode series, all released at once, based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) — transplanted to late Joseon Korea.

Wait — this isn't new. It's a remake

Here's the part a lot of English coverage buries: The Scandal is a new adaptation of the same source material as a beloved 2003 Korean film, Untold Scandal — and the two productions share more than a premise.

Role	2003 film	2026 Netflix series
Lady Cho	Lee Mi-sook	Son Ye-jin
Cho-won	Bae Yong-joon	Ji Chang-wook
The target (widow)	Jeon Do-yeon	Nana (as Hee-yeon)

The 2003 film was a genuine phenomenon — over 3.5 million tickets sold despite an adults-only rating. Director Jung Ji-woo has said the new series isn't a scene-by-scene remake of that film so much as a return to the original French novel, rebuilt from scratch with a much bigger, more entangled relationship between Lady Cho and Hee-yeon than the 2003 version ever had.

The word that vanished from the title

The Netflix series is titled, in Korean, simply 스캔들 — literally just the word "scandal," borrowed straight from English. On its own, that's not much of a story. But the 2003 film it's remaking wasn't called that. Its full title was 스캔들 - 조선남녀상열지사 — "Scandal: A Tale of Joseon 남녀상열지사."

That last phrase, 남녀상열지사 (男女相悅之詞), is centuries old, and it's doing a lot of work. Literally it means something like "words of men and women's mutual delight" — but historically, it's the exact phrase Joseon-era Confucian scholars used to dismiss and censor Goryeo-period folk songs as vulgar, indecent love ballads unfit for a proper court. It's a term of literary shame, invented specifically to shame desire.

So the 2003 title wasn't just "Scandal" — it was "Scandal: the kind of thing uptight Confucian scholars would have banned." That's a joke, a wink, and a thesis statement all in five syllables. The 2026 Netflix version keeps none of it. It's just 스캔들 now — a scandal with no historical footnote attached, dropped for a title that travels cleanly across markets but loses the specific, loaded irony that made the original so sharp.

🇰🇷 THE KOREAN SIDE / 🌍 THE GLOBAL SIDE

🇰🇷 In Korea, this is being covered as a legacy event — a beloved, slightly scandalous 2003 classic getting a prestige Netflix rebuild with three of the country's biggest stars. Interviews with the cast keep circling back to the 2003 film directly; Son Ye-jin has talked about finally being old enough, in her own words, to play a woman this openly ruled by desire.

🌍 Globally, most coverage treats it as a straightforward new "Dangerous Liaisons, but Joseon" period drama — which it is, but that framing skips the fact that Korean audiences are watching it as a remake with 23 years of baggage and nostalgia built in.

Why it matters

A remake title that quietly drops its own punchline is a small thing, but it's a very Korean-title thing — English localization tends to flatten a title down to its most exportable core word and let the rest evaporate. If you only know this as "The Scandal," you're missing that its own franchise used to be in on the joke about itself.

FAQ

Where can I watch The Scandal?
Netflix, worldwide — all 8 episodes released at once on September 18, 2026.

Is The Scandal based on a true story?
No — it's adapted from the 1782 French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), relocated to Joseon-era Korea.

Is this a remake of the 2003 movie?
It shares the same source novel and the same broad character setup as the 2003 film Untold Scandal, but the director has said it was rebuilt from the original novel rather than remade scene-for-scene.

What does 남녀상열지사 mean?
A historical Korean phrase used by Joseon scholars to dismiss love songs as indecent — "words of men and women's mutual delight." It was part of the 2003 film's full title and is dropped from the 2026 series' title.

🔑 Key details

Title: The Scandal (스캔들)
Released: September 18, 2026 · Netflix, all 8 episodes
Cast: Son Ye-jin, Ji Chang-wook, Nana
Director: Jung Ji-woo
Based on: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) via the 2003 film Untold Scandal
Genre: Period romance / erotic melodrama

💬 Jamie's Take

I watched the 2003 film years ago on a rainy afternoon in Seoul and it's stayed lodged in my head ever since — mostly because of that title. 남녀상열지사 isn't just flavor text, it's the whole movie's argument compressed into an insult repurposed as a badge of honor. Dropping it for the new series makes sense for a global platform, but it also quietly erases the wink. If you're going in for the sumptuous hanbok and the slow-burn manipulation, you're in for a good time either way. If you want the version with the extra layer of historical smirk, track down 2003 first.

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