Specifically, Sky Castle revolves around four different households who are faced with this very question. Well written, hard hitting and thought provoking, Sky Castle is a fantastic Korean drama and a sobering look at a system that hurts people just as much as it helps. The story here introduces us to four women who live a life of perfection within the walls of Sky Castle, a neighborhood reserved for elite families. On the surface, each of these live the idyllic life but under this glossy façade is a far more damning and shocking truth. The families themselves are all complex and feature many moving parts – each important to the story being told here. At the center of this is Seo-Jin, a woman striving for perfection, typified by her orthopedic husband Joon-Sang and trophy daughter Ye-Seo.
Younger daughter Ye-Bin is the tearaway of the family though, struggling with her studies and ultimately the odd one out. Next up we have Seung-Hye whose family is ruled with an iron fist by Professor Min-Hyuk Cha. Their model daughter Se-Ri is overseas in Harvard, leaving a large shadow hanging over despairing students Seo-Joon and Ki-Joon. These two families make up the bulk of the drama here, with Seo-Jin’s best friend Jin-Hee “Jin Jin” and her husband Yang-Woo essentially the odd ones out in the series, not given too much to do beyond a sub-plot halfway through.Īll these families are rattled by the introduction of a new family on the block.
Free-spirited and easy going Woo-Joo is one of the top students at school, something he’s achieved thanks to Mum Soo-Im and Dad Chi-Young’s easy-going nature.
This is a far cry from the other families, who push their kids to breaking point. The drama itself is given an extra dose of tension through the mysterious Coach Kim. Boasting a 100% success rate in exchange for a steep entry fee, Seo-Jin buys her way to success, recruiting this woman to help Ye-Seo with her studies. Unfortunately this brings a whole world of trouble, as Seo-Jin plunges her family head-first into a nightmarish scenario. The first half of the drama essentially works to set all these characters up and begin fleshing out their complicated dynamics. There’s a lot of drama here, including fights, fall-outs and bad blood between the families that are explored through the lens of class, hierarchy and status. These are obviously all very important symbols in Korean culture and Sky Castle does an excellent job taking each of these and examining their impact on families, distorting and challenging what we knew about these characters across a number of different scenarios. The second half of the show takes a deep dive into the realm of melodrama. With the characters already set-up, a death in the neighbourhood along with startling truths rock everyone and sets up a chain of events that see our characters forced to choose between what’s right and what’s easy.