Royal Nemesis is the latest K-drama ruined by the chaebol villain trope

The premise of My Royal Nemesis earned every hour it asked for. Kang Dan-shim, a scheming Joseon concubine forced to drink poison, wakes up in 2026 in the body of Shin Seo-ri, a bit-part actress in historical dramas — a 500-year-old villainess navigating smartphones and casting calls with nothing but court-intrigue instincts. Lim Ji-yeon plays both women, and for six episodes the SBS drama, streaming on Netflix, was appointment viewing.

Then the show remembered it had a chaebol. Cha Se-gye (Heo Nam-jun), third-generation heir to the Chail Group and the series' designated "monster of capitalism," moves to the center of the plot, and the boardroom intrigue swallows the fish-out-of-water story whole. Months after the June 20 finale, r/kdramas is still running the autopsy — the current thread is titled "baffled at how Royal Nemesis tanked after ep 9," and the diagnosis repeats across hundreds of comments:

"The main draw of the first few episodes was Seori using her unique skills and resourcefulness to navigate the modern world. When she stopped using those, the show fell off."

The trope's real cost is what it does to the characters' brains:

"It's like the leads automatically have lower IQ when the villain is there. the endless throwing tantrum and threats in front of the villain yet not doing anything at the end of each episode was exhausting to watch."

An old disease with a fresh case

None of this is unique to My Royal Nemesis, and that's the point. The chaebol villain is K-drama's default antagonist — the corporate heir whose scenes demand that clever protagonists stand still, fume, and lose — and shows keep trading their actual premise for him. A heroine whose entire appeal was out-thinking the modern world ends up spending episodes being out-lawyered by a man in a lobby.

The bitter joke is that the collapse never showed up in the Korean ratings. Nielsen numbers climbed all season, from 4.1% at the premiere to a series-best 11.8% for the finale, and the show opened at No. 1 on Netflix's global non-English chart.

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People kept watching. The threads explain how: as a chore, in pieces — one viewer confessing to finishing episodes in 15-minute bursts.

Nielsen says the finale was the show's best-rated episode. The fans doing the autopsy say they got through it 15 minutes at a time.

Whether to start it anyway

Yes — with an exit plan. The first six episodes are the best version of this premise anyone has filmed in years, and Lim Ji-yeon's double performance holds even after the writing stops deserving it. Watch until the boardroom takes over, somewhere between episode 6 and 9 depending on your tolerance, and know that quitting there means leaving with the show the fans fell for. The one that airs after that point belongs to the chaebol, like so many K-dramas before it.

Previously we wrote: Is Letterboxd about to go behind a paywall? The New York Times has done it before