Tamra, The Island

William J. Spencer (Pierre Deporte) is a young British aristocrat in the year 1640 with a fascination for East Asian art, languages, and culture. He counts as his closest friend the young somewhat mercenary Japanese merchantman Yan. William is swindled by a shady merchant into believing that a plain porcelain chamber pot is a mystical artifact; he then sails off to Nagasaki in order to open the "aquatic silk road" between Japan and England, but mostly to escape his creepy and overbearing mother and an arranged marriage. Yan is promised a handsome reward if he can drag her son back in time for the wedding and hightails it after his "friend."

Meanwhile, the Joseon Kingdom is operating under a foreign policy that strictly prohibits trade with Westerners, garnering the nickname "the hermit kingdom." Just south of the Korean mainland lies the island of Jeju, which at this point in history is known as Tamra. The people who live on the island derive their livelihoods by diving for abalone, cultivating a large area of persimmon orchards, and basic subsistence farming; much of what they produce is tithed to the King through a corrupt local government.

Park Gyu (Im Joo-hwan) arrives from Hanyang (the historical name for Seoul) on a secret mission from the King to uncover corruption, embezzlement, and whatever else he may find on Tamra. However, his cover story leads to a tangle of complications for him: used to being doted on as an aristocratic scholar and high government official, he is sent to Tamra on the pretense of having been at the center of a sexual harassment scandal for which he has been permanently banished to the island, where he will have to work for a local family despite not being used to manual labor.

Tamna native Jang Beo-jin (Seo Woo) is an abalone diver whose mother is the leader of all the village divers (haenyo lit. "sea women"). Unfortunately for Beo-jin, she didn't inherit her mother's gifts or prowess for diving. She is the lowest of the apprentice divers after eight years and she is constantly being berated by her mother and all the other divers; she manages to mess up every chance she is given.

Her first meeting with Park Gyu comes when she is sent to deliver some abalone to the village elders for a religious ceremony but ends up knocking down the altar and Park Gyu, and losing the medallion that entitles her family to a lower tithe to the King. Believing it to be in Park Gyu's possession, she tries to get it back from the upright and uptight noble, who is later sent to live with Beo-jin's family on the same day that William is shipwrecked off the coast; Beo-jin hides him, and later Yan as well, in a cave outside the village.

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