The Last Scandal of My Life

In high school, Hong Sun Hee (Choi Jin Shil) was the prettiest girl and had a string of admirers. Her first love was Jang Dong Chul (Jeon Joon Ho), cute, sweet and clumsy. Twenty years later, married to a man who always lands his family in debt, she is an ajumma in looks and in fact. Ajumma in Korean is the polite term for an older woman who is not family but has now come to mean a middle aged woman with bad hair and dress sense. That is what Sun Hee has become. Almost forty, with premature menopause and with a teenage daughter, she struggles to make ends meet and bail her useless husband constantly out of trouble.

Hong Sun Hee in high school:


Hong Sun Hee twenty years later:


Jang Dong Chul, on the other hand, has done very well for himself. Changing his name to Song Jae Bin and taking almost eight years off his age, he is now a glamorous actor.



After the nth con lands her husband Ahn Yoo Sik (Kim Byung Se) in jail:


Sun Hee is desperately looking for money to bail her husband out. A series of misunderstandings and accidents bring Sun Hee and Dong Chul together. He doesn’t recognize her at first and can’t understand how the most beautiful girl in the school and his first love could have become this bedraggled ajumma.



When her husband mysteriously leaves the country, abandoning wife and daughter without even a goodbye, Sun Hee is left homeless. Dong Chul hires her as his live-in housekeeper and starts ordering her around with a walkie talkie in perfect Full House style. There Sun Hee meets Dong Chul’s elder brother Dong Hwa (Jung Woong In) and his son Hoon (Lee In Sung).

Dong Chul’s hyung:


Soon, Sun Hee becomes an integral part of their lives. With her good food, common sense and maternal kindness, she wins everyone’s hearts. A well needed makeover ensures that Dong Chul is reminded why he was in love with Sun Hee when he was young and also brings her to the attention of Dong Hwa.

After the makeover:




As always, the course of true love never did run smooth and so cue the obstacles, in the form of Dong Hwa’s ex girlfriend (and apparently mother of his child), Lee Na Yoon (Byung Jung Soo), who seems to be eyeing the younger brother. Also, Sun Hee finds out that her husband never did leave the country. He tells her that he is being followed by moneylenders who will kill him and that he has to go into hiding. He convinces her that in order to protect her, the best thing for them to do is to get a divorce for the time being. However, once the divorce comes through, it’s obvious that Ahn Yoo Sik is a slime and had other plans with another woman.

Sun Hee, who for most of her life had been leading a peaceful if boring life, finds her world turned upside down. She wonders if this is to be the last scandal of her life, a second chance at happiness.



Last Scandal is a refreshing comedy with a healthy dose of drama. Choosing a forty year old ajumma as the leading lady was a smart move. As has been seen in dramas like My Lovely Kim Sam Soon, there is a huge audience who can relate to older women. It is sometimes a bit tiring to watch the same old high school/early twenty year olds going through the same motions over and over again. Of course, there were some drama staples such as the conniving ex but this was different in that Sun Hee had a husband (or so she thought) and was trying very hard to keep her family together. While there are some funny scenes, the drama never descends into slapstick nor does it drown in melodrama. There were plans for a second series but the untimely death of Choi Jin Shil means that that will probably not go through.

Actress Choi Jin Shil was perfect for the role. Unwittingly funny and endearingly sweet, she came across as a real person, with doubts and fears but also plenty of courage and wisdom. It would be hard to categorize Sun Hee because as most real people, she doesn’t fall into any single category. I found the part where she finds that she has premature menopause particularly sad, as she tries to convince herself, by calculating how much money she will save on tampons, that this is actually a good thing but ends up crying because she realizes that she really is over the hill now.

Jung Joon Ho also played the part of Dong Chul very well. There wasn’t the over-the-top brat about him (Full House). In fact, despite his constant teasing of Sun Hee, he is actually quite a mature person. It took great courage and strength of character to do some of the things he does in the end. Then again, while it was ok for the young actor in Full House to throw tantrums like a five year old, Dong Chul, at 39, had to have achieved at least some degree of maturity.

All in all, I would say this was like a breath of fresh air. In a way, I am happy that there won’t be a second season, as they inevitably lead to disappointment.







Video (SPOILER WARNING)