The Scandal does not simply move Dangerous Liaisons into Joseon Korea. Netflix’s new series takes the novel’s central weapon, a wager built on seduction and control, and makes it answer to the social constraints of an elite Joseon setting.
The biggest change is therefore not the period clothing. It is the power structure around Lady Cho, Cho Won and Hui-yeon. The adaptation keeps the dangerous game but asks what it means when a woman whose intelligence exceeds the limits placed on her has to operate from inside those limits.
- Release date: September 18, 2026
- Source novel: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons
- Genre: Korean period romance drama
- Streaming on: Netflix
The wager remains, but the social stakes change
Netflix identifies Lady Cho, played by Son Ye-jin, as the figure who proposes a bet to Cho Won, Joseon’s celebrated playboy, played by Ji Chang-wook. The wager pulls Hui-yeon, played by NANA, into a game she does not design. That triangular structure is recognizably descended from Laclos, but its setting changes the costs of public scandal.
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In the official trailer setup, Lady Cho asks Cho Won to seduce So-ok, a young woman set to become a concubine in her household. Cho Won responds with a separate challenge involving Hui-yeon, a virtuous widow. The series therefore adapts the novel’s competitive cruelty through specific relationships and expectations in Joseon society, rather than copying its names or French aristocratic environment.
Lady Cho’s position reframes manipulation
Netflix describes Lady Cho as a woman too extraordinary to be confined to women’s quarters. That framing does not excuse what she does, but it gives her calculation a different context. In the source material, manipulation is a sport of privilege. In The Scandal, the same intelligence is presented as something exercised inside a system designed to restrict her choices.
That is why this version should be judged as an adaptation rather than a scene-by-scene remake. Its question is how desire, reputation and agency operate in a culture with its own hierarchy. The period setting is part of the argument, not merely decoration.
Hui-yeon changes the moral center
Hui-yeon is not a detached observer. Netflix’s material calls her an unsuspecting woman caught in a dangerous game, and the trailer presents her resistance as the wager intensifies. That makes the story’s suspense less about whether the bet can be won than about what the contest takes from the person placed at its center.
The adaptation’s strongest difference may be this shift in emphasis. A famous literary game becomes a period drama about who is allowed to make choices, who pays for them and who is expected to remain silent when those choices become public.
Which part of the Dangerous Liaisons premise feels most transformed by The Scandal’s Joseon setting? Share your take in the comments.
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