The story is set in Korea during the 1930s, when the country was in the middle of the Japanese Occupation era. The opening scene introduces to us Ok-ja (Kim Tae-ri), and we see this poor urban girl leaving a Dickensian place where she has lived with others since she was very young. She is about to be sent to a big manor located somewhere outside the city, where she will work as the new handmaiden for Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee).
As a car carrying Ok-ja enters the manor, we cannot help but be impressed by not only its vastness but also the boldly eclectic style of the mansion. With its baroque juxtaposition of British and Japanese architectures, this big, imposing mansion grips our attention right from its first appearance on the screen, and so does the library outside the mansion, whose interior design also shows the similar parallel of the Western and Eastern styles.
The owner of the manor is known well for his enormous personal collection of books and artworks, and we learn later that he often has Lady Hideko recite some of those books in front of a group of invited guests. His official name is Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), but this wealthy middle-aged guy is in fact a Korean man who got naturalized as a Japanese citizen via his marriage to some Japanese noble woman, who killed herself not long after her young orphaned niece was brought to Kouzuki’s manor. That young girl was Lady Hideko, and now Kouzuki is going to marry her mainly for further solidifying his social/financial status. After all, he wants to collect more for his library, and he will definitely need more than his current wealth.
Right after Ok-ja arrives at the mansion, the stern female butler of the mansion, who is as forbidding as Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca” (1940), tells her about how she should behave and serve Lady Hideko’s personal handmaiden, but, and this is not much of a spoiler, Ok-ja already knows what kind of job she is going to do there. In contrast to her seemingly mousy appearance on the outside, she is actually a street-smart crook who has worked for a small criminal organization in the city. Her real name is Sook-hee, and her real purpose is helping the nasty scheme of her partner-in-crime, who already presents himself as a Japanese count to Kouzuki and Lady Hideko in advance.
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