[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Drama Festival - Swine Escape"

Ho-Yeon (played by Park Ki-woong) is a bit of a whiny jerk. He's constantly bullying people into following his biddng, mostly because Ho-Yeon has a high enough rank in Joseon Korea that there's relatively few people who can stop him. Ho-Yeon has his perspective forcibly altered when he's thrust into a situation where his peerage is nearly impossible to prove, and struggles to find his way out.

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The drama is at its strongest when it takes advantage of the setting. Josen-era Korea, as with most societies of antiquity, has no easy way for an aristocrat to prove who they are. Plenty of centuries-old societies specifically had laws against lower-class people dressing in aristocratic clothes simply because a skill con artist or actor could easily pretend to be someone they were not simply because there wasn't any easy to way verify the identity of a stranger and it was rude to automatically assume other aristocrats were liars.

Clothes make the man after all. And Ho-Yeon, stripped of this essential part of his identity, clearly has no idea how to function as a so-called normal member of society. Sure, he can pull off some great Chinese calligraphy, but this isn't a skill in high demand among poor laborers. Interestingly, Ho-Yeon could probably have asserted his identity just by demonstrating this particular skill. The problem is Ho-Yeon even lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to realize that yelling very loudly isn't going to convince anyone he's an aristocrat, possibly because that's all he really associates with his social identity.

"Drama Festival - Swine Escape" does well when it focuses on this clash between prince and pauper. The overall arc of the storyline is a bit more problematic though. As much as Ho-Yeon learns thoughout the drama, it's not completely clear how much he's actually going to be able to change the situation once the opportunity arises. The narrative invests most of its energy to having Ho-Yeon learn the reason why he was locked into this scheme and then tryies to get out of it. That leaves little room for reflection.

Additionally, it's to the drama's detriment that the focus is so much of Ho-Yeon, as the result is that the other characters don't really stand out that well in terms of having clear motivation. We get an idea of who they are as people and what they want to do, but not how the events of the drama change them as people. To be sure, "Drama Festival - Swine Escape" is a decent enough drama and accomplishes its bare minimum goals- it just doesn't really go that far beyond that.

Review by William Schwartz

"Drama Festival - Swine Escape" is directed by Oh Hyeon-jong and written by Ryoo Moon-sang and features Park Ki-woong, Seo Dong-won and Han Ji-wan.