Title : 탐나는도다/ Tamnaneun Doda
Also known as :
Tamna, The Island/ Tempted Again/ Shipwrecked
Genre : Romance,
Comedy-drama, Period
Episodes : 20
Directed by : Yoon Sang-ho, Hong Jong-chan
Broadcast Network : MBC
The Main Character :
§
Seo Woo as
Jang Beo-jin
§
Im Joo-hwan
as Park Gyu
§
Pierre
Deporte as William Spencer
§
Lee
Seung-min as Seo-rin
§
Lees sun-ho
as Yan Kawamura
It is a historical drama set in the 17th century
during the European colonial expansion into the Far East. William J.
Spencer (Pierre Deporte) is a young British aristocrat in the year 1640 with a fascination for East Asian art, languages, and culture. He counts as his closest
friend the young somewhat mercenary Japanese merchantman
Yan. In the opening scene, William is in the midst of being swindled by a shady
merchant into believing that a plain porcelain chamber pot is a mystical
artifact (which plays a later role in the plot as William’s “treasure.”)
William sails off to Nagasaki in order to open the “aquatic silk road” between
Japan and England – but mostly to escape his creepy and overbearing mother and
an arranged marriage. Yan is promised a handsome reward if he can drag her son
back in time for the wedding and hightails it after his "friend."
Meanwhile,
halfway around the world, the Joseon Empire is
operating under a foreign policy that strictly prohibits trade with Westerners,
garnering the nickname “the hermit kingdom.” Just south of the Korean mainland
lies the island of Jeju, which at this
point in history is known as Tamra (sometimes Tamna). The people who live on the island derive their
livelihoods by diving for abalone, cultivating a large area of persimmon orchards, and basic subsistence farming; much of what
they produce is tithed to the King through a corrupt local government.
Park Gyu (Im Joo-hwan), the other side of the love triangle, arrives from
Hanyang (the historical name for Seoul) on a secret
mission from the King to uncover corruption, embezzlement, and whatever else he
may find on Tamra. However, his cover story leads to a tangle of complications
for the poor man – used to being doted on as an aristocratic scholar and high
government official, he is sent to Tamra on the pretense of having been at the
center of a sexual harassment scandal for which he has been permanently
banished to the island. (He’s also not used to manual labor, and the local
family that takes him in has a very practical “No work, no food” policy that
creates a great number of comedic moments as well).
Our heroine is
Jang Beo-jin (Seo Woo), an abalone diver; her mother is the leader of all
the village divers (haenyo lit.
"sea women"). Unfortunately for Beo-jin, she didn’t inherit her
mother’s gifts or prowess for diving. She is the lowest of the apprentice
divers after eight years and she is constantly being berated by her mother and
all the other divers; she manages to mess up every chance she is given.
Her first
meeting with Park Gyu comes when she is sent on a fairly innocuous errand to
deliver some abalone to the village elders for a religious ceremony but ends up
knocking down the altar and Park Gyu, and losing the medallion that entitles
her family to a lower tithe to the King (she adamantly believes it to be in
Park Gyu's possession, leading to another hilarious set of antics as she tries
to get it back from the upright and uptight noble).
Park Gyu is
sent to live with Beo-jin’s family (in a storage shed, no less) on the same day
that William is shipwrecked off the coast; Beo-jin hides him (and later Yan as
well) in a cave outside the village.
