Sook-kyung is the vivacious sixth and youngest daughter of late king Hyojong (d. 1659). Her brother is now King Hyeonjong, while her five sisters have been married off to important but fairly dull court nobles, a fate she is determined to avoid. After she spots a handsome young scholar of the Confucian Academy, Sook-kyung sallies forth into the capital to track him down, with the connivance of some family members and to the fury of others. Outside the protective cocoon of the palace, she experiences the life of those less fortunate – but that doesn’t dim her refreshingly reckless nature.
Sook-kyung seems a polar opposite to the long-suffering Jeomsun of Choi’s first film. She is played by Nam Jeong-im, one of the wildly popular young stars displacing Choi and her generation at the box offices by the late-1960s. How popular? This is only one of some 53 films Nam appeared in that year.