Channel A‘s ‘The Witch’ Noh Jeong-ui’s lonely past has been garnering favorable reviews as it has touched the hearts of viewers. The viewership ratings on this day rose from the previous episode, recording 3% nationwide and 2.8% in the metropolitan area, and peaked at 3.5%. (Provided by Nielsen Korea, based on paid households)

In the second episode of Channel A‘s Saturday-Sunday drama ‘The Witch’, which aired on the 16th, the story of Mi-jeong (Noh Jeong-ui), who became the seed of tragedy and cut herself off from the world, was conveyed in an appealing way. Since she was young, there were many people around Mi-jeong who got hurt or died. Even her mother passed away after giving birth to her, and Mi-jeong’s birthday was the anniversary of her mother‘s death. As she grew up, strange things happened more frequently, and most of the people who got hurt were boys. A boy who was playing with young Mi-jeong while she was playing with a rubber band fell into a manhole and got seriously injured, and a boy who gave her candy on White Day got hit by a car while riding his bike. The church brother, Ik-jong (Joo Jong-hyuk), who was talking to Mi-jeong, was stung by a wasp out of nowhere in the middle of winter.

At school, accidents, big and small, continued to occur. The male students who were involved in the accidents avoided Mi-jeong for some reason and avoided her. As a result, gossip about Mi-jeong spread like an epidemic at school. To make matters worse, Jung-hwan (Bae Yoon-gyu), who had confessed to Mi-jeong on a rainy day, was struck by lightning and died, and rumors spread that she was a ‘witch’. From that day on, Mi-jeong suffered from guilt, thinking, “If Jung-hwan hadn’t met me, wouldn‘t he have died?”, and she became afraid of meeting people. So she went to school quietly, as if in hiding.

Despite this, accidents continued. When the year changed and she became a third-year student, her classmate Sang-ho (Park Sang-hoon) confessed his feelings to Mi-jeong and then died from electrocution. The students’ cold stares and words toward Mi-jung stabbed her like a knife when another male student died while she was with him. All of this made Mi-jung extremely sad and heartbroken, but she couldn‘t even mourn. She had already been branded a ’witch‘ and had no place to go in the school. That was why she left the school and disappeared.

Mi-jung’s father, Jong-soo (Ahn Nae-sang), also found out about the rumors surrounding his daughter, and only then understood why she had never said a word about her friends or school. However, when all the students called Mi-jung a ‘witch’, only Dong-jin (Park Jin-young) said, “That child is absolutely not a witch.” While erasing the graffiti that said ‘Park Mi-jung the Witch’ on a bench in the school, his eyes sparkled as he said that he would somehow find a way to prove it. Dong-jin simply said no without any method or plan, but Jong-su somehow liked that answer.

After cutting herself off from the world, Mi-jeong never left the house. She hid in her room, hoping that people would forget about her. She thought that if she kept living like that, they would forget, but instead, the rumor spread like mold to every corner of the village. Even the parents blamed Mi-jeong for their son‘s injury, and rumors spread around the village that Mi-jeong was seducing the boys. Jong-su’s heart was broken when his pretty and upright daughter‘s name was talked about in a bad light.

So, he decided to leave Taebaek, where he had lived his entire life, and move to Seoul. He also planned to make money by growing potatoes. However, the ‘Law of Death’ would not leave Mi-jeong alone. When Jong-su fought with the villagers who kept nagging about his daughter every day and there was a shortage of workers to help with the farming, Mi-jeong went out to the fields to help her father. However, Mi-jeong had no idea that she would be bitten by a poisonous snake there. Jong-su, who ran to his collapsed daughter, struggled to remove the poison with his own mouth despite suffering from severe rhinorrhea.

When Mi-jeong regained consciousness and opened her eyes, her father was already dying from the poison. However, his heartbreaking fatherly love, telling him to go home so that the villagers must never know about this, moved the hearts of viewers. Mi-jeong, who had been worried about her daughter until the end, hugged her father who passed away and cried loudly.

Mi-jeong was now completely alone and had become a ‘witch’ who had killed her father. All she could do was run away from the village. Even in her own world, where she escaped 10 years later, Mi-jeong was enduring terrible loneliness. Expectations exploded for the next story, which will find the answer to whether data miner Dong-jin can break this terrible curse.

Channel A’s Saturday-Sunday drama ‘The Witch’ airs every Saturday and Sunday at 9:10 p.m.

Photo = ‘The Witch’ video capture

Reporter Lee Seul-bi, Donga.com misty82@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.