he Sandglass (The Hourglass) is a portrayal of two young men who are best friends and grow up during one of Korea’s politically tumultuous periods, the 1970′s up to the 1980′s. Tae-soo (Choi Min Soo), tough and loyal, grows up to become a gangster and Woo-suk (Park Sang Won), smart with firm moral values, grows up to become a prosecutor. Hye-rin (Ko Hyun Jung), a beautiful and spirited daughter of a very wealthy casino owner, is a classmate of Woo-suk in college. Hye-rin is introduced to Tae-soo via Woo-suk and they subsequently fall in love.

One unforgettable subject that’s dealt in the drama is the 1980 Kwangju rebellion when the head of the military junta that took over Korea after the assasination of President Park Chung-hee, General Chun Doo-hwan, sent paratroopers into Kwangju to put down the rebellion. What happened was the subsequent massacre of hundreds of innocent people. The horrific scenes based on true accounts, of those people being murdered, touched off a deep sense of shock and grief for the Koreans at that time (the mid 90′s Korea still had not come to terms with what happened after governments muzzled the free speech). After this drama went on air, there were more films that were made dealing with this very subject, such as The Petal (1996) and Peppermint Candy (2000). It also put ex-President Chun Doo-hwan who was responsible for the massacre, in jail. You can probably say that Moreshigae was the turning point for the young budding democracy in Korea.