Yoon Seo-ha’s life takes a dangerous turn when she inherits a burial ground from an unknown uncle. In The Bequeathed, Kim Hyun-joo plays Seo-ha.
Yoon Seo-ha, an instructor aspiring to become a professor, has never lived an easy or happy life. Her life has been marked by constant disappointments.
Things take a darker turn when people around her start dying after she inherits her family’s burial ground.
She lives in fear of being the next target, so she resorts to desperate measures to protect herself.
A life full of disappointments
Seo-ha hopes to become a professor soon. For the promotion, she tirelessly works for Professor Kim, a senior professor who keeps giving her false hope.
Seo-ha goes as far as ghostwriting his book and making a promise not to tell anyone about it, all in the hope that he will put in a good word for her.
Despite her efforts, Professor Kim chooses to recommend someone else, and that person becomes a professor, while Seo-ha remains an instructor.
Additionally, Seo-ha suspects that her husband, who only married her because he thought she was rich, is cheating on her.
She hires a private investigator, Kang Hong-sik, to tail her husband, and her suspicions are confirmed.
When Seo-ha finds it impossible to have a normal married life, she reaches a breaking point and decides to divorce her husband.
Around the same time, Seo-ha comes to know that her father had a brother who was recently murdered, and since Seo-ha is the only family he had, she will be inheriting the family burial ground.
Even this inheritance comes at a cost. Now that Seo-ha owns a piece of land, her husband refuses to divorce her.
Seo-ha does not want to give him a share of the land, and the two of them get into an argument. Seo-ha leaves him in the middle of the road and returns home.
The next day, she is informed that her husband has also been murdered. Seo-ha believes that her half-brother, Kim Young-ho, killed her husband, but she has no evidence to prove it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures
When Seo-ha was seven years old, her father abandoned her and her mother for another woman, with whom he had a son, Young-ho.
Seo-ha lived an unhappy life with her mother, who decided to marry a man Seo-ha did not like. When Seo-ha went to visit her father, he asked her not to meet him again.
While Seo-ha did not receive their father’s love, Young-ho did. Seo-ha did not keep in touch with her father or her half-brother.
After her uncle’s death, Young-ho enters Seo-ha’s life. He asserts that he has an equal claim to the family burial ground, but Seo-ha is not willing to share it with him.
Seo-ha maintains her distance from Young-ho. Seo-ha fears that Young-ho killed her husband and then Kang, whom Seo-ha asked to collect evidence against Young-ho.
Now, she fears for her own safety, suspecting that she might be his next target. The police are unable to help, as they lack enough evidence to arrest Young-ho.
If that is not enough, Professor Kim attempts to take advantage of Seo-ha, leading her to sever all ties with him and quit her job.
In a desperate move, Seo-ha employs a shady man, Choi Tae-seong, to get Young-ho to withdraw his claim over the family land through force.
Choi Tae-seong decides to kill Young-ho, and when Seo-ha goes to stop him, she gets kidnapped by her aunt, Myung-hee, who also happens to be Young-ho’s mother.
Letting go of past grievances
Seo-ha realizes that Young-ho never harmed anyone; it was his mother who was killing people. In fact, Young-ho had been trying to keep Seo-ha safe.
Myung-hee forces Seo-ha at gunpoint to save Young-ho, which leads to Choi Tae-seong resolving to kill Seo-ha as well.
Even when the two siblings find themselves trapped inside a kiln by Choi Tae-seong, Young-ho continues his efforts to save Seo-ha.
Seo-ha manages to escape alive, and in that moment, she decides to help Myung-hee recuse Young-ho, the brother she has despised all her life.
After the entire ordeal, Seo-ha starts a studio and gives art lessons. She decides against selling the family burial land, as it has been with her family for generations.
Seo-ha is not charged with kidnapping because Young-ho denies getting kidnapped. Seo-ha does not talk to him, but, unlike before, she does not actively avoid him either.
She also comes to terms with the fact that her father left her and her mother for Myung-hee. She now understands why her father kept her at arm’s length.
Seo-ha lets go of the anger that she held against her father and chooses to bury Myung-hee alongside him.
Also Read: The Bequeathed summary and ending explained
