Jewel in the Palace / Dae Jang Geum (Complete Series, All Zone, Good English Sub, Korean Drama)

Makes mt wife very happy and entertained.

this is a brilliant series about a young girl who enters the palace as a kitchen maid and ends up something else entirely.when i received this boxset i quailed at the sight of 14 dvds,but as i started to watch it, i was immediately hooked.the first episode looks a bit ropey and it's a little slow but it picks up as soon as jang geum get into the palace.the politics and backstabbing,as the cui family try to keep their monopoly of trade to the palace and the way jang defeats them by sticking to her principles no matter what happens to her makes this show addictive viewing.even my 10 yr old nephew liked it! the one fault i have is the bad subtitles.mostly they were ok,but every now and then they turned into gibberish or the wrong words were used.mind you they were quite funny.all in all, a good watch!

About 500 years ago during the time of Chosun Dynasty, Korea boasted a rigidly hierarchical and male dominated social structure. Set in this period, "Jewel in the Palace" is based on a true story about a legendary girl named Jang-Geum who became the first woman to be the supreme royal physician of her times. Despite her poor condition as a low class girl in the male dominated society, Jang-Geum overcame a series of social discrimination and landed herself as a royal cook, later becoming the royal physician, then ultimately the physician in charge of the king. She was even given by the king the title "The Great Jang-Geum". A great mini-series, English sub-titles, Korean language.

I cannot say enough good things about this mini-series from Korea. I found the English subtitles to be more complete than the disks I viewed from my snail mail video service. I am into historical mini-series. Empress Ki is the best Korean series I have seen so far. The King and I is another pretty good one. Other series I like: Hornblower, Elizabeth I (2005), Noble House, The Tudors and North and South.

The series itself was very good, but the English translation was marginal. If you're not the type who can infer meaning or get a general gist when reading an ill-translated text, then you're going to have a problem with this. Also, I heard the original drama from Korea had only 56 episodes. This set has 70, no doubt because the episodes are cut short, which makes for some weird endings to some of them.