"I need that scene. But it might make you uncomfortable, so I'm asking — are you all right with it?" When screenwriter Kim Eun-sook raised the subject of a nude scene for the character Moon Dong-eun with Song Hye-kyo, the actress neither accepted nor refused. "Unnie," she said, using the Korean term of address for an older woman, "give me two months." When Kim asked, "To work out?", Song replied: "No — I need to lose more weight first." That conversation preceded everything else about *The Glory*.
Two months of konjac rice
Kim Eun-sook recounted the episode in a behind-the-scenes commentary released by Netflix Korea in January 2023. Song's diet, she said, subsequently shifted to konjac rice — a low-calorie substitute made from a fibrous plant starch. Kim said she felt both grateful and guilty, and wept when she watched the finished scene. Song, speaking in the same video, said she did not want to look simply beautiful. She wanted viewers to focus on the character's suffering, not her body.
Four to five hours in make-up, three days of near-fasting
The scene in question comes in episode six, when Moon Dong-eun reveals her burn scars to Joo Yeo-jeong. At a fan event on 8th March 2023, held ahead of the release of Part 2, Song disclosed what the shoot had required: "I was in near-undress for four to five hours while they applied the burn-scar prosthetics. For the filming itself, I barely ate for three days beforehand, and from the day before I drank almost no water either." A moment that lasted seconds on screen had taken days to prepare.
"Without the director stepping in, Part 4 would have ended with a kiss"
Watching footage of Song and her co-star Lee Do-hyun during the same commentary, Kim Eun-sook remarked: "Every time Dong-eun smiles, it makes me sad." She then added a candid admission: "If the director hadn't talked me out of it, Part 4 would have ended with a kiss — that's just standard practice." Because he did intervene, she said, "I think this ended up being the finest couple I've ever written."
The casting of Lee Do-hyun as Joo Yeo-jeong had its own backstory. On the variety programme *You Quiz on the Block* (tvN), Lee said he had been anxious about whether he could carry the role — until Kim told him: "If it goes badly, it's better to go down with me." She also rang his mother to help persuade him; the call worked partly because Kim and his mother happen to be the same age.
Doubts persisted even after he was cast. Lee said he often felt as though he were filming a romance inside someone else's revenge drama, and frequently asked for direction. Kim's brief was not to be handsome or charming but to come across as *anseureoun* — a Korean word carrying something between pitiable and endearing. The two worked toward that quality throughout production.
One slap, no second take
At the production press conference on 20th December 2022, the story behind the gymnasium confrontation scene emerged. The director had asked for the slap to be hard and delivered in a single take. Im Ji-yeon hit Song with the intention of getting it right first time; Song's face swelled visibly. Song said that in many years of working she had never been properly slapped before, and that the instant it landed her mind went blank — she could not remember her next line. After the cut, both women could see the imprint of a hand on Song's face. Ice packs were applied before the next shot could be filmed.
A pencil and a fall
To write the scene in which Sara stabs Hyeon-jeong in the neck with a pencil, Kim Eun-sook consulted a doctor, who advised her on precisely which point needed to be struck for the wound to be fatal. Kim Hieora, who filmed the scene, said she felt unsettled for some time afterwards.
Jae-jun's death was designed as a mirror. Kim said she wanted him to die in exactly the same way as his victim So-hee — Dong-eun would get him to the rooftop; Do-yeong would carry out the fall. Writing darkness, Kim acknowledged, had taken a toll: "When I was writing happy things, I didn't notice. Writing something this bleak hollowed me out."
Yeon-jin never thought she was doing wrong
Im Ji-yeon, who played the chief antagonist Park Yeon-jin, said she interpreted the character as someone wholly unaware that her actions were wrong. She differentiated every smoking scene: one for when Yeon-jin is angry, another for a private phone call, another for when her husband is present. At the wrap party, talk turned to a possible Part 3; Kim Geon-woo, who played Myeong-oh, reportedly appealed for his character's resurrection, saying he could not bear to imagine a Part 3 without him.
A closing thought
The satisfaction *The Glory* delivers comes not from the sequence of its revenge but from the density of its preparation. Two months of weight loss. Four hours in a make-up chair. One unrepeated slap. A doctor consulted about where a pencil must go. Behind every brief moment on screen lay a far longer stretch of time that the camera never showed.