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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
2/5 stars
There are a few things you can be reasonably sure to expect in a Korean soap opera, including plot twists where sudden amnesia, the revelation of hitherto unknown twin siblings and the like change the course of a series.
At first glance, Pandora: Beneath the Paradise, the latest primetime soap opera from The Penthouse creator Kim Soon-ok, seems like a novel means of combining the in-vogue tropes of sci-fi and genre programmes with tried-and-true elements of Korean melodrama.


In a narrative that advances at breakneck speed, shady organisations conduct experiments on the mind and hide operatives with no memory of who they really are in plain sight. Yet for all its breathless drama, Pandora: Beneath the Paradise has a lot less fun with these genre variables than it ought to.
The Penthouse actress Lee Ji-ah stars as Hong Tae-ra, the beautiful wife of Pyo Jae-hyun (Lee Sang-yoon), CEO of tech start-up Hatch. Soon, however, she discovers that she’s actually #50, a Nikita-like sleeper assassin trained as a child by the Hanwool Mental Hospital, which puts a real damper on her seemingly perfect existence.
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise midseason recap – dizzying Disney+ K-drama
This reveal happens very early in the series, before we even get a feel for Tae-ra or her life, which includes her cute little daughter Pyo Ji-woo (Kim Si-woo), a character who remains little more than an afterthought throughout the series. This is a puzzling choice, given the compelling matriarchal instincts that made The Penthouse a ratings bonanza.
As Tae-ra discovers her real identity, we also learn that the powers-that-be behind Hatch, a trio of friends – Jae-hyun, Jang Do-jin (Park Ki-woong) and Gu Sung-chan (Bong Tae-gyu) – are all corrupt in one way or another.
After these quick reveals, the show doesn’t slow down. Hatch and the Geumjo Group, run by Do-jin’s father, Jang Geun-mo (Ann Nae-sang), engage in whiplash-inducing but dreary power games between themselves.

A similar back-and-forth happens between Jae-hyun and Han Gyul-rok (Jung Jae-sung), his opponent in the presidential election he decides to run in.
The possibilities presented by Hatch’s technological experiments remain only that, as the show leaves their promise in the background while a familiar but frenetic and featureless narrative unfolds in the foreground.
There are a few scenes of Sung-chan the mad scientist using his brain patch on disabled patients to make them walk again and pushing them too far, and Jae-hyun eventually attempts to silence Tae-ra by wiping her memories with Hatch’s technology – though he hasn’t succeeded as, in her own act of subterfuge, she is only pretending to lost them.

It’s only at the very end of the show that the writers start to have some fun with the sci-fi ideas they introduced at its outset.
Jae-hyun is elected president, emerging victorious at the end of a flat election day that is accorded hardly any importance despite it being the culmination of a season-long arc.
But Jae-hyun’s moment in the sun is a short one as the noose quickly starts to tighten around his neck, with a range of forces now aligned against him. These include Tae-ra, her friend Go Hae-soo (Jang Hee-jin), Hae-soo’s husband, Do-jin – after he grows a conscience – and Do-jin’s brother Jang Gyo-jin (Hong Woo-jin), who woke up from a coma a few episodes earlier.
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After a confrontation, Jae-hyun tears off in his car with Tae-ra and she grabs the wheel mid-drive, running them off a cliff into the sea. The pair wash up on the shore, Tae-ra seemingly dead by Jae-hyun’s side.
A mysterious shadow walks up to him, barely visible in woozy Jae-hyun’s blinking eyesight. He wakes up chained to a hospital bed. In custody and a whole lot of trouble, the ruined president-elect discovers that his life and empire have fallen apart.
The world acts as though his wife and child never existed. Authorities ignore his pleas right up until the moment he’s marched to his execution.

He wakes up again on the beach and lives through another nightmare, which once again ends with his head being shoved into a noose. And then it starts again, and again.
Tae-ra and her allies are the ones repeatedly putting the noose around Jae-hyun’s neck, using the serums and technological innovations of his own company against him.
It’s a neat bit of gaslighting and easily the most fun part of the show. It’s a shame that it comes so late in the game. The damage is done and, while the exit is an easy one, the journey there was often arduous and exhausting.

Away from the genre conventions, the typical soapy elements of the show seldom hit the delicious extravagance of The Penthouse or similar hit prime time soaps.
Among the few bright spots are more modest elements, such as the lifelong enmity between brothers Do-jin and Gyo-jin that may have been a result of their mother, Min Young-hwee (Kyeon Mi-ri), smashing Do-jin’s bike when he was a child.
Had there been more petty acts of rage like that beneath the paradise, perhaps we might have cared about this Pandora.
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise is streaming on Disney+.


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A Korean sci-fi melodrama about memory stealing sounds full of possibilities, yet this series with Lee Sang-yoon as a shady tech CEO fails to deliver
An exhausting but drab narrative takes centre stage, while the promise of wacky brain experiments is left mostly unexplored until the end, when it’s too late


This Disney+ Korean sci-fi soap reunites the writer of The Penthouse and its star Lee Ji-ah, but fails to excite, with an exhausting narrative that leaves tantalising themes of brain experimentation mostly unexplored.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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Review | Disney+ K-drama review Pandora: Beneath the Paradise – manic sci-fi soap reuniting The Penthouse writer and its star Lee Ji-ah never comes together