The Glory follows Moon Dong-Eun’s revenge on her high school bullies, an intricate and dangerous mission that is aided tremendously by Joo Yeo-Jeong, her eventual lover and one who is consumed by his own quest for revenge.
Moon Dong-Eun was bullied incessantly during her high school days by her wealthy classmates who pursued their tastes for torment with an inhuman-like vigor. Years after she tries and fails to retaliate and kill herself, Dong-Eun makes something of herself, all on her own, and returns to exact her revenge upon all those monsters.
However, going up against the wealthy and powerful is no easy feat, and to help her in her perilous endeavor, she gets help from truly kind people most of whom have been or are victims of other people’s torment as well. Dr. Joo Yeo-Jeong slowly becomes Dong-Eun’s biggest support in her mission, her executioner, as well as her lover.
However, the jovial and incredibly caring Yeo-Jeong harbors inside him, a hellscape of his own, created by a serial murderer who took away his beloved father from him. Now he burns asunder, within his psyche, struggling to cope with the absurdity of what transpired and why it did, as a sense of vengeance gnaws at his conscience at all times.
The doctor’s dark past
Joo Yeo-Jeong is a young doctor and the son of the late director of Seoul Joo General Hospital. His widowed mother, who’s also a doctor, now runs the hospital while Yeo-Jeong strives to become a doctor as well.
He was working as a medical intern when he first meets Dong-Eun. They then meet while playing Go, and Yeo-Jeong teaches her the basics and then some. They bond, and even though Dong-Eun remains wary of him at first, only using him for her own ends, she eventually finds herself loving him and caring for him.
She eventually cares enough to learn the psychological turmoil he’s been going through for years and ultimately helps him through it. This turmoil in question was borne out of a surreally violent incident that deprived Yeo-Jeong of his father.
The source of his hell
The former director of Seoul Joo General Hospital, and Yeo-Jeong’s father, Joo Sung-Hak was a man of exemplary kindness and heart, and when the cold-blooded killer Kang Yeong-Cheon was brought into the hospital, with his left arm obliterated and bleeding incessantly, he stepped up and decided to operate him.
When no one would accept the job to save a virulent monster like Yeong-Cheon, Joo Sung-Hak still stuck to his oath and principles. However, Yeong-Cheon took note of Sung-Hak’s concern for his son, who he was talking to someone about prior to operating on the criminal.
After his treatment, Yeong-Cheon went on to kill Joo Sung-Hak, stabbing and slashing away at him repeatedly as the doctor died in the pool of his own blood. Meanwhile, the killer screamed his ramblings, devoid of guilt or remorse.
His revenge
Over the years following the bone-chilling murder, Yeong-Cheon would be sent to prison where he’d start writing letters to Joo Yeo-Jeong, describing in morbid detail, his murder of the young doctor’s father, and the specificity of all that he felt as he slashed away at the late doctor.
These letters would go on to mess Yeo-Jeong’s brain, while a question would spread like an infection in his mind — why did Yeong-Cheon kill his father? He eventually confronts the killer at the prison and asks him that, to which the killer reveals an answer that further torments Yeo-Jeong.
Yeong-Cheon tells Joo Yeo-Jeong that his father was killed because of him. However, exhausted and enraged Yeo-Jeong would finally resolve to torment Yeong-Cheon endlessly. He tells the killer that his Hippocratic oath won’t deter him from seeking his revenge, since Yeong-Cheon is entirely inhuman, and the oath applies to humans.
Yeo-Jeong, with the help of his lover, Moon Dong-Eun, finally gets around to exacting his revenge; first, they get the killer transferred to the prison that would be convenient for their revenge plan; and they find their way into the prison, Yeo-Jeong as the prison doctor and Dong-Eun as the teacher.
From thereon, they use the connections that they make with the prisoners, to make Yeong-Cheon’s life hell, as he gets the living daylights beaten out of him by inmates every now and then, and as long as Yeo-Jeong remains the doctor there, the killer’s life remains the same — a constant hell.
Also Read: The Glory part 2 ending explained: Does Dong-Eun get her revenge?