Synopsis
The film is entirely set in the cloistered world of the Joseon court, with its rigid social strata and ossified rituals. Though the King is ostensibly in charge, it's the women who are shown to wield the real power, starting with the fearsome Queen Mother.

We see this world from the bottom up, through the eyes of Chun-ryung, a senior nurse in the infirmary of the Queen's quarters – a whole city within the larger metropolis of the court. In this claustrophobic class system, the maids are at the bottom of the pecking order, and when one is found hanging from the neck it seems an obvious case of suicide.

But during the autopsy, Chun-ryung discovers that Wol-ryung has been murdered. She begins an investigation, calling witnesses from among the other maids. The maids are virtual slaves of the king's concubines – to the extent that, when a concubine steps out of line, it is the maid who is punished in her stead.

Though it seems unlikely that a lowly nurse would be given such unfettered access to the quarters of her court superiors, a small suspension of disbelief is repaid by a rich portrait of this secretive, highly ritualised and often extremely cruel society of women, where even a suspected theft merits some excruciating fingernail torture (shot in unforgiving detail) and the penalty for losing one's chastity is beheading. (Women's bodies are the battlefield here – but in an entirely believable, undogmatic way).

Chun-ryung is soon caught up in the power struggle between the King's favourite concubine Hee-bin – the only one to have borne him a son – and the Queen Mother, who is keen to adopt the infant prince as her own. There is little tenderness or solidarity here, even in the maids' quarters, where the weak are picked on and humiliated.

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Shadows in the Palace (1/4) :	Part1
Shadows in the Palace (2/4) :	Part1
Shadows in the Palace (3/4) :	Part1
Shadows in the Palace (4/4) :	Part1