Hong Yeong-Ae aids and enables her spoilt brat of a daughter in her acts of monstrosity and inhumane bullying of the less privileged, while also lacking some essential motherly instincts.
Park Yeon-Jin is the primary antagonist that Moon Dong-Eun wishes to destroy with all her might in The Glory. Even though there were many others who subjected Dong-Eun to unimaginable suffering and misery, it was Yeon-Jin who was at the center of it, while serving as the perfect representation of the predatory default settings that the wealthy operate with.
Park Yeon-Jin comes from money, a lot of it. This money brings with it the power to get away with almost anything in the world. Park Yeon-Jin is helped to escape all guilt, much less criminal charges, for the murders she commits. And the one making all that possible for her is her mother, Hong Yeong-Ae.
A wealthy enabler
Park Yeon-Jin is a menace to humanity with the kind of inhumane bullying she subjects to the underprivileged students at her school. Treating them as nothing more than her playthings, she channels all her insecurities and shortcomings into torturing her victims.
She bullies her victims with her group of friends, one which consists of privileged classmates and not-so-privileged ones who are ready to do any bidding of their rich friends as long as it offers them the perks of having rich company.
Yeon-Jin goes leaps and bounds in her bullying, burning the victims with iron and hair straighteners. However, when the victim would dare to resist, they’ll either get killed by her or get no justice.
In both cases, Yeon-Jin’s mother, Hong Yeong-Ae, always comes in clutch and throws her money and resources to save her daughter. Even at her most egregious acts, Yeong-Ae is only disappointed that her daughter can’t handle the poor victims on her own and that she hangs out with some friends of hers who are not as privileged as her.
A superstitious murderer
Hong Yeong-Ae is terribly superstitious and frequently visits her regular shaman, who she gets all her pious foretellings from. Yeong-Ae is also a murderer.
When Hyeon-Nam’s husband, Lee Seok-Jae starts blackmailing her, she visits the shaman who she has spent so much money on for so many years and asks for the forecast regarding the man threatening to reveal the truth about her daughter’s murders.
She then devises a plan and enlists her shaman’s help to get rid of Lee Seok-Jae, giving her 1 billion won for it. Baiting Seok-Jae to a relatively isolated highway, she runs him over, killing him. She then tries to make it look like manslaughter, and ropes Shin Yeong-Jun into her plan, since a witness only helps prove the manslaughter.
Most unmotherly
Hong Yeong-Ae always used her connections to get Yeon-Jin out of trouble, but it’s at the end of The Glory that it becomes clear that a large part of Yeong-Ae’s help for her daughter is just a necessity so that the eventual inconveniences doesn’t hurt her.
However, when consequences are far too great and stand to affect her, she can’t just follow her motherly instincts and put everything on the line for her daughter. When Dong-Eun asks her to hand over her daughter’s name tag, something she makes her believe is a major piece of evidence against Yeon-Jin.
She asks her to return this evidence and she won’t be pursuing her regarding her murder of Lee Seok-Jae. And Yeong-Ae does give her the nametag, only for Dong-Eun to reveal that it’s not necessary evidence at all, as Yeon-Jin witnesses her mother selling her out — all according to Dong-Eun’s design.
At the end of The Glory, Dong-Eun’s tip helps the police figure out that Hong Yeonh-Ae’s manslaughter is actually a murder, and she’s eventually arrested and sent to prison for it.
Also Read: The Glory part 2 ending explained: Does Dong-Eun get her revenge?
