In Queenmaker, Eun Chae-ryoung is Ms. Son’s youngest daughter and Jae-min’s wife. She spends her life trying to win her mother’s approval and still ends up losing to her elder sister. Kim Sae-byuk plays the role of Chae-ryoung.
Eun Chae-ryoung, the managing director of the Eunsung Group, is infamous for her temper. She fires her children’s nannies for something as trivial as speaking to babies in Korean.
When she gets caught on camera harassing and assaulting her employees, Do-hee is sent to do damage control. Chae-ryoung has no choice but to listen to Do-hee because her mother, Ms. Son, trusts her.
Do-hee manages to garner public sympathy for Chae-ryoung and protect her image by portraying her as a new mother who has been suffering from postpartum depression and trying to manage her workload. However, this is just one of Chae-ryoung’s scandals.
Chae-ryoung’s relationship with Jae-min
Chae-ryoung has been married to Baek Jae-min for seven years now and has two children with him. They look like a rich and happy couple to the public, but behind closed doors, their relationship is anything but happy.
Jae-min cheats on her with several women, and Chae-ryoung abuses him; she does not think twice before hurling abuses at him or hitting him.
They still put with each other because Chae-ryoung wants to earn her mother’s approval and Jae-min needs her money and connections to get where he wants to be in his life.
When Jae-min runs for mayor, Ms. Son makes Chae-ryoung give up her work to support him, much to Chae-ryoung’s dismay. At Jae-min’s Greenpeople Foundation’s anniversary, Chae-ryoung is forced to play the part of a happy wife.
Carl Yoon wants Jae-min’s image to be that of a good husband, so Chae-ryoung is asked to act. She exceeds expectations and puts on a marvelous show for the media. She starts crying and claims that she has been suffering from uterus cancer.
She got the surgery done and is safe now, but she cannot have children again. Jae-min catches on right away and joins her. She talks about being sensitive to stress and how Jae-min did not want to run because of her condition.
She tells the media that she made him run because she wants other women who are suffering in a similar fashion to get the resources that they need. She makes Jae-min look like a good husband who loves and supports his wife and aims to help women in need.
With her help, Jae-min wins women’s support, but Chae-ryoung warns him that this is the last time she is going to be a part of one of his clown shows.
However, her relationship with Jae-min is more complicated than this. When Jae-min recounts his father’s death, she goes to comfort him. When he gets attacked, she gets worried about him.
Even when there seems to be hope for their relationship, it still does not improve because she knows that Ms. Guk is pregnant with Jae-min’s child. Jae-min then makes Chae-ryoung escort Ms. Guk from the hospital to put an end to their affair rumors.
Chae-ryoung does not have much of a choice because she needs him to be the mayor in order to inherit Eunsung and also because Jae-min is very convincing. However, she does not show Ms. Guk any sympathy; she wins her trust and coldly discards her when she is no longer of use to them.
The feud between the sisters
Chae-ryoung and her older sister, Seo-jin, do not get along, as they see each other as competition. Only one of them will inherit the Eunsung Group, and Chae-ryoung has spent her whole life trying to please her mother.
As Seo-jin is the older daughter, she was set to be the next owner of Eunsung, but she chose not to be her mother’s puppet. Chae-ryoung, on the other hand, did whatever their mother demanded and became the managing director.
When Ms. Son takes the Eunsung Department Store away from Chae-ryoung and makes Seo-jin run it because she wants Chae-ryoung to focus on helping her husband, it hurts Chae-ryoung, who has worked hard to earn her position; she even gave up her share of the duty-free shop to build it.
Ms. Son refuses to listen to her or take her feelings into consideration, as she believes Chae-ryoung did not achieve anything on her own; it was Do-hee who paved the way for her.
It then becomes absolutely essential that Jae-min become the next mayor of Seoul because if he does not, Ms. Son might disown Chae-ryoung. It is then revealed that Chae-ryoung was her father’s illegitimate child.
Ms. Son decided to raise her as her own daughter, but she was never given the same love and attention that Seo-jin got. Chae-ryoung tried to become Ms. Son’s daughter in every way possible. Despite that, she gets sidelined, so she decides to take matters into her own hands.
She barges into a meeting to which she was not invited and threatens her mother in front of everyone. She reminds her that they need her husband to cover up the illegal deals; the duty-free shop cannot open without his power and influence.
When Ms. Son finally listens to her, Chae-ryoung tells her that she is capable of making Jae-min lose the election. She will make him the mayor only if Ms. Son gives her a fair chance, which was given to Seo-jin, to become the next owner. Ms. Son accepts her as her daughter and decides to make her the CEO.
Chae-ryoung fights and threatens to get what was unfairly denied to her, but in the end, she still does not get it, as Jae-min loses and is killed by Ms. Son. It is Seo-jin who becomes the owner of Eunsung after their mother.
However, Seo-jin offers to make Chae-ryoung the CEO of their logistics company because even she knows that Chae-ryoung has more management training than her. Furthermore, she acknowledges that Chae-ryoung is her younger sister and has suffered a lot already.
Eventually, Chae-ryoung is seen crying and asking Seo-jin whether their mother killed Jae-min. They both know the answer to that question, so Seo-jin does not bother replying. Chae-ryoung neither gets her family’s affection nor the ownership of Eunsung.
Also Read: Jae-min Baek’s father’s death in Queenmaker explained