What the original Korean title of Dear Hongrang reveals about the series' themes

Dear Hongrang, Netflix’s latest period drama, is one of those stories that comes with an original title that tells a story before the story even begins on our screens. Its original Korean title, Tangeum, is a word wrapped in dual meanings, each as haunting as the other. One interpretation is visceral, a violent echo from the past; the other is lyrical, metaphorical, a sound that lingers in the air like a secret whispered but never fully heard.

Disclaimer: This exploration delves into the deeper meanings woven into the original Korean title of Dear Hongrang, tracing its cultural and symbolic threads. Rather than literal plot elements, these interpretations serve as narrative echoes, amplifying the series’ themes of silence and unspoken truths.

What does it mean to swallow molten gold? What does it mean to play the zither? And how do these two acts, seemingly worlds apart, weave themselves into a single thread that ties the threads of the narrative together?

The weight of silence: Tangeum (吞金) as in "swallowing gold"

In ancient China, Tangeum was the word for a punishment so brutal it bordered on the unthinkable: those condemned were forced to swallow molten gold. This death is about erasure as much as it is about suffering. The act was a final, searing silence, a way to choke the voice and bury the truth. It was not just a method of execution. It was a way to ensure that nothing remained—not the voice, not the words, not even the body.

In Dear Hongrang, the protagonist is a man whose life is marked by unspoken pain, the kind that settles deep in the bones, hot and heavy like molten gold. He carries secrets too dangerous to voice, traumas too deeply buried to touch. For him, swallowing gold is not a literal act but a daily ritual. Every day he swallows his words, his rage, his grief. Every day he lets them burn through him, a fire that cannot be seen but is felt in every glance, every clenched jaw, every smile too thin to be real.

But it’s not just him. Swallowing gold is what people do to survive in a world where speaking the truth could mean death. And in this story, survival is not about endurance but silence.

The sound of sorrow: playing the zither (彈琴)

Tangeum is also a homophone for playing the zither, a traditional Korean string instrument (often the geomungo) whose music is delicate and haunting, the kind that drifts through a room like a memory too painful to forget.

Unlike the molten gold that sears the throat, the zither’s notes are fragile, whispering, almost too soft to hear. And yet, they carry more weight than any spoken word. While not used literally as a plot device, this meaning should not be discarded as a potent metaphor for catharsis. Unlike the suffocating act of swallowing gold, playing the zither offers a fleeting escape. In Dear Hongrang, it symbolizes moments when pain finds an outlet, even if wordless.

What makes Tangeum such a powerful title is how it fuses two acts that seem worlds apart—swallowing gold and playing the zither—into a single metaphor. One is an act of suffocation, a way to keep the voice silent. The other is an act of release, a way to let the voice sing.

The haunting resonance of Tangeum

In Dear Hongrang, suffering is a constant, a fire that burns beneath every interaction, every word left unsaid. The act of swallowing gold is what people do to keep the truth buried, to keep the world from collapsing. But the zither (even if metaphorical) is what they turn to when the silence becomes too heavy to hold. The zither is the crack in the wall, the space where what has been swallowed can finally escape.

In the series, the death of the real Hongrang is the culmination of silence, the truth consumed and obliterated, while the death of the false Hongrang becomes the moment of release, the pain that finally sings, even if its song is a requiem.

And that is why the title Tangeum is not just a word. It is a question, a challenge, a reminder. What do we carry inside, burning silently like gold? And how do we let it out?

Final thoughts on the meanings of tangeum in Dear Hongrang

In the end, Dear Hongrang is a story about people who swallow their pain like molten gold, who carry their grief like a stone pressed against their chests. For some, the song was never finished, the catharsis never came, like the real Hongrang, whose voice was silenced before it could resonate.

How do we carry the things that burn inside us? The series suggests that the answer lies in the space between silence and song, where pain, though unspoken, still finds a way to echo.

Because in the world of Dear Hongrang, silence is not the absence of sound. It is the sound of pain swallowed. It is the sound of words unsaid. It is the sound of gold burning its way down the throat of a man who has lost everything but cannot bring himself to say so. And it is the sound of a zither string, even if only in one's mind, vibrating like a pulse, whispering, “You are not alone.”