Dear Hongrang Ending Explained: Is Hongrang Dead?

Netflix’s ‘Dear Hongrang’ (aka ‘Tangeum’) is a Korean period drama that begins with the disappearance of the titular Hongrang. He is the son of Chief Merchant Sim Yeol-guk and Min Yeon-ui and the heir to the wealthy and influential Min family guild. One night, he goes missing, never to be seen again. His family spends a fortune on spreading the word about him for years, in the hopes that someday, he might return home. Over the course of twelve years, several impostors come forward to claim that they are the long-lost Hongrang, but all of them are proven wrong and punished for their lies. That is, until a young man shows up, who himself doesn’t claim to be Hongrang, but is accepted to be so after he passes a series of tests, including a blood test.

While everyone rejoices at the return of the long-lost boy, now a highly proficient swordsman and a fighter, Jae-yi is not convinced. She is Hongrang’s half-sister, hated by Yeon-ui and neglected by Yeol-guk. The only person who cares about her is Mu-jin, who was adopted by Yeol-guk, against his wife’s wishes, to succeed him and lead the guild when the time comes. Because Hongrang was deeply dear to Jae-yi, she has also spent years trying to find him. So, when the man calling himself Hongrang shows up, she quickly rejects him. However, this does not deter him from trying to prove that he is, in fact, her brother. Hongrang’s arrival disrupts Min-ju’s plans of succession, which is why he, too, is adamant about proving that Hongrang is just another impostor.

Meanwhile, another boy’s disappearance causes a stir in town. People report seeing a pale monster-like figure known as the Snow Man. Both Jae-yi and Hongrang seek the monster. She believes that it will lead her to her real brother, while he knows that the Snow Man will lead him to the Painter, the real villain who has been kidnapping young boys and torturing them. In between, complicated romantic feelings develop between Hongrang and Jae-yi, while Min-ju is also in love with her and competes for her affection and attention. The end, however, does not bode well for any of them. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Are the Snow Man and the Painter Dead?

A major mystery of ‘Dear Hongrang’ is the identity and intentions of the Painter, who has young children kidnapped by a monster-like figure known as the Snow Man. It turns out that the Painter is none other than the Crown Prince Han-pyeong, whose obsession with art and painting has crossed all boundaries. At the beginning of the show, we find him demanding nothing less than a perfect canvas for his paintings. But later, we discover that he has found a different kind of canvas on the bodies of young boys as he carves paintings on their backs. The more the kids are tortured in the process, the more pleasure the prince feels, but that is not the extent of his plans. It turns out that the paintings are actually talismans, which he requires to fulfill a ritual through which he intends to ascend human nature and become a god.

Whether or not the ritual actually works is never revealed, but the process itself is so villainous that it makes one’s skin crawl thinking about all the ways that he has inflicted pain on young children all these years. Hongrang (not the real one) was also tortured like this until he ran away and was adopted by Kkot-nim, Yeol-guk’s mistress, whom Yeon-ui tried to have killed after she got pregnant. The main purpose of Hongrang’s return was to find the Painter and make him pay for his actions, and by the end of the show, he gets his revenge. When his identity as the impostor is revealed, he willingly surrenders, knowing that he will be taken to the Painter eventually. This is how he discovers that the prince had been the culprit all along.

When the prince tries to do the ritual, Hongrang’s friends, who also work for Kkot-nim and are highly trained assassins, attack the venue and disrupt the whole thing. When Hongrang tries to go after the prince, he is stopped in his tracks by the Snow Man, who is no monster but just another man. His pale white skin, hair, and eyes could most likely be because he is albino, and while he is a great fighter, he is still mortal. Hongrang, however, is a better fighter and is fed by his revenge, which eventually allows him to kill the Snow Man, landing a major blow to the prince. But the story doesn’t end there.

Despite the disruption, the prince is still adamant about going forward with the ritual, even if it means kidnapping and torturing more children. Still, he wants to teach Hongrang a lesson, so he has Jae-yi kidnapped. He wants to have her killed, but Min-ju saves her. The news of her kidnapping also brings Hongrang to the prince, and this time, he decides to end things once and for all. After killing all his men one by one, Hongrang finally finds the prince, where the villain reveals that the torture and the ritual are meant to turn him into a god, which is also how his people will find serenity. Hongrang, however, is done with him, so he cuts off his hands, so that he can never paint again, and then ends the job by killing him for good and finally getting the justice he had dreamt about all these years.

How does Hongrang Die?

While Hongrang gets his revenge on the Painter, it comes with a cost. There are several factors working against him, and all of them converge in the end, such that the story ends with him losing his life. The final fight with the Painter’s soldiers leads him to sustain some serious injuries, particularly one strike on his back, which seems pretty bad on its own. However, he could still have made it out alive, even though it meant being bedridden for a while, but there is another thing already killing him from the inside. When he was a child and tortured by the Painter, poisonous substances like alum and arsenic were used on his body to etch the paintings that turned him into a talisman. Over the years, these things seeped into his blood, and because nobody really knew about this stuff, Hongrang never received any treatment.

Had he been treated earlier, he might have had the chance to survive, but by the time his symptoms start to show, it is already too late. He starts to have random rashes on his body, he feels disoriented, and starts to lose his vision, among other things. These symptoms start to show when he and Jae-yi express their love for each other and run away together. Not knowing what was happening to him, he never even thought about getting treated or that it would all end in death for him. However, he was prepared to die even before he came to the Min family guild and claimed to be the real Hongrang. His real purpose was to find and kill the Painter and exact his lifelong revenge, but years of abuse had also made him feel shame and disgust towards himself.

The painting etched on his back was a constant reminder of the abuse inflicted on him, so he had decided to end his own life after the Painter was dead. But then, he met Jae-yi, and life felt worth living again. Tragically, even as Hongrang found his life’s purpose in Jae-yi, it did not change the fact that his blood was poisoned and he was slowly inching towards his death. In the end, the poison in his body and the wounds from the final fight work together to weaken him to the point that he barely makes his way back to Jae-yi and collapses in her arms. By this time, he has completely lost his vision, and even Jae-yi knows that he is going to die soon. She tries to give him comfort by talking to him for as long as she can, but eventually, he runs out of breath and dies.

Is Mu-jin Dead?

Over the course of eleven episodes, almost all characters in ‘Dear Hongrang’ reveal their true colours as they go through complex character arcs. However, none of them go through as much upheaval as Mu-jin. He starts out as the good guy who is loyal to his father and in love with Jae-yi, even though he knows that, being her adoptive sibling, he cannot be with her. With Hongrang’s arrival, things got complicated for him on both fronts, but he still remained steadfast in his honesty and loyalty. However, everything changes when Jae-yi chooses Hongrang over him. The fact that this stranger just waltzed into the house and took away his inheritance, as well as the woman he loves, feels incredibly unfair to him. What bothers him even more is that Jae-yi refuses to acknowledge his love while readily accepting Hongrang’s, even though he has done nothing but deceive them since the beginning.

This anger turns Mu-jin into a person who is ready to go to any lengths to get what he wants. First, to get the guild back in his hands, he goes over his father’s head and makes a deal with the prince to curry his favour, even if it means kidnapping children and bringing them to the Painter, despite knowing what will be done to them. He doesn’t seem bothered by the horrific ritual that the prince wants to perform, even as he sees that Hongrang and other men will be slowly lowered into a pit of fire. In fact, he doesn’t think twice about all the bad things he is ready to do and has already done for the prince until he is asked to kill Jae-yi, whom he had decided to marry, even if it meant forcing the marriage on her. When she is put in danger, he gets a reality check and focuses on nothing but getting her out of the prince’s house and to safety.

For this, he has to fight the legion of soldiers. In the end, he succeeds in getting Jae-yi out, but he also sustains severe injuries. Knowing that he won’t be able to hold off the soldiers for much longer, he tries to fix things with Jae-yi by apologizing to her about all the trouble he caused and confessing that perhaps he should have been happy just being her brother and should not have thought about being something more. He is also glad to see that she still has love and concern for her, and the fact that she is escorted away to safety allows him to accept death. He is still alive when the fight ends, but his injuries are too much to bear. His trusted soldier gets him away from the prince’s place, where the fight ensues as Hongrang kills everyone, but the injuries are too much for Mu-jin to recover from, and he dies on the way.

Is Chief Merchant Sim Yeol-guk Dead? What Happens to the Min Family Guild?

A lot of drama in ‘Dear Hongrang’ is generated around the control of the Min family guild. At the beginning of the show, it is in the hands of Sim Yeol-guk, but over time, his wife, Yeon-ui, starts to wrest it away from him. When she goes out of the picture, Mu-jin decides to get what he had worked for his entire life and collaborates with the prince to subvert Yeol-guk’s power and influence. Still, the patriarch tries to find ways to get his position back, but all of that is ruined by his daughter, Jae-yi, who is fed up with all the lies and the fighting and decides to end it, once and for all. Because Yeon-ui was convinced that her son had returned, she told Hongrang where she had been hiding the guild’s inheritance papers as well as its books, which show how much corruption had happened there over the years. Basically, all the incriminating evidence against the company is in her safe, and Hongrang hands it over to Jae-yi.

The inheritance papers are given to Kkot-nim, who had been vying for them all along as part of her revenge plan against Yeol-guk and his wife. The rest of the stuff goes to Jae-yi, who promptly hands it over to the authorities, which leads them to act quickly and basically shut down the whole operation as they seize everything. With this, the Min family guild’s name, reputation, and influence are completely destroyed. When Yeol-guk finds out about his daughter’s betrayal, he decides to find her and teach her a lesson, but he never gets to do that as he is confronted by Kkot-nim and her men. By now, he had tried to kill her twice: first, when she was pregnant, and the second time when he saw her again for the first time, only to discover that she was the one working against him with Hongrang all along.

The first time, he didn’t know what had happened to his pregnant mistress, though he had actively abandoned her. The second time, however, he doesn’t show any remorse for how he treated her the last time, and tries to kill her himself. In their third meeting, she comes with the intention of having her revenge. At this point, she already has the papers she needs to claim the guild for herself. Her men kill Yeon-ui’s guards, but when it comes to killing him, she holds the pistol herself. He tries to worm his way out of the situation by telling her that he has only ever loved her, but she has no intention of giving him any more chances. So, she shoots him straight in the head and ends his story, once and for all.

What Happens to Jae-yi and Min Yeon-ui?

With all the death and destruction that happens in the final episode of ‘Dear Hongrang,’ only a few characters are lucky enough to survive the bloodshed. Jae-Yi comes close to dying several times, but Mu-jin and Hongrang’s love for her saves her. In the end, she is heartbroken to say goodbye to both of them, but the only consolation is that she is alive and can now live her life the way she wants. Her father, who had never really paid any attention to her but kept her around because she was his blood and that could come in handy in the future, is gone now. The Min family guild is gone as well, so there is no danger of someone starting another fight to claim that fortune. As for the biggest villain in her life, her stepmother Yeon-ui is too deep in her grief to see anything clearly.

She had found a second lease at life when Hongrang returned, but then, he is found to be an impostor, and it is revealed that the real Hongrang died years ago because of his mother’s actions. She performed black magic to kill Jae-yi, but it turned around and hit her son, instead. The tragedy of losing her son all over again throws her so deep into her own mind that she never comes out of it. In the end, we see her stuck in a loop where she keeps asking when her son will come back home. This is the life she will live, and she will die still waiting for her son to return.   Meanwhile, Jae-yi has found the peace she had been looking for her entire life. With the truth about the real Hongrang’s fate revealed, that part of her story finds closure. Now that she is the only one of her family left alive and of sane mind, she decides to change things by turning her house into an orphanage.

With this, she not only helps the kids who were rescued from the prince’s dungeon, but she also opens her heart and home to any child who has no one else in the world. This way, she ensures that no other child has to go through the torture that children like Hongrang had to suffer. Helping the kids brings her peace of mind and helps soothe her heartbreak, though the pain of losing Hongrang does not completely disappear. At the end of the day, she goes up to the roof, where she sits, still waiting for Hongrang. While they did not get to be together in life, they are not entirely separated. She reunites with him in her mind and dream, where the lines between life and death blur, and she can see her beloved again until they are eventually reunited.