One thing you should always have on your mind when you meet a person: Never judge a book by its cover.
We all know Soo-won is much more formidable than he makes himself out to be. He’s also a lot smarter, and he actually had bigger plans than just “sightseeing” when coming to the Earth capital and we don’t actually find out until the very end of the episode.
So what happens? Well, the entire episode contains the war games. The rules are pretty simple: There are two armies, the red (Geun-tea) and the white (Soo-won) led by a king with an army of nobles and commoners. They all have plates on their heads which the others are supposed to break to get points. Each person has a different amount of points based on their rank. Some aren’t allowed to hit others. The army with the most points win. Well, the entire tribe is going crazy about this event, especially since they didn’t know Soo-won would actually be in the games. The match starts, and at first it looked like Geun-tea’s army is doing better. Which he was, and again he was questioning Soo-won because he was running around getting chased and tripping and looking like a fool, while not doing much. Geun-tea compared Soo-won to a rabbit, then to a squirrel.
But when paying close attention, Soo-won was actually doing much more than just tripping and looking like an idiot. He knew how to lead his army, he made brilliant strategies, and gained the trust of his men. And his true nature was coming out. He knew when that gust of wind was going to appear, and he used it to his advantage. The rest of the red army was taken out, and Geun-tea was the only one from his army left standing. Which brought out an exciting, but very short, match.
If Soo-won hadn’t done what he did, he could have easily won. But right when he was going to swing the finishing blow, Soo-won tripped on his robes and fell back, Geun-tea striking and breaking the plate on Soo-won’s head. Soo-won went back to being “Haha that was great” and surprising Geun-tea. Later, he struck out the white army’s nobles and gained enough points for himself and won.
The next day, the men sit around and drink tea. Geun-tea asks Soo-won the real reason why he came to the capital until Geun-tea’s extremely adorable wife runs in, telling them that the Kai Empire loves her fragrant flower tea and would love to buy some.
And then the old man that runs the mine also comes in, saying that people want to buy the jewels from their mine, which strikes Geun-tea as odd because their jewels were never worth anything. They always looked drab and ugly, but when polished by the artisans, they look beautiful. And what’s the reason for all of this happening? When the old man is explaining this to Geun-tea, Soo-won makes his leave. Geun-tea praises his wife because he thought she had made some negotiations with the Kai Empire, when in truth, she explains that Soo-won introduced her to someone, and she gave them her special tea. Obviously, it must have been an extremely important person from the Kai Empire, and now they want to make business with them.
The jewels? The men wore flashy clothes during the war games, along with some jewels around their necks that Geun-tea thought was a nuisance. But in fact, those jewels were the very same ones from their mine. Seeing Geun-tea wearing such gorgeous jewels in his victory made people want to purchase them. And now the mines are busier than ever.
Chishin is definitely going to become rich now, and it was all because of Soo-won. Soo-won purposely lost the match because of this reason. We’ve seen that he can stand his ground with Hak, Soo-won probably could have beat Geun-tea, but he didn’t, because he knows just how much he influences his people, even though Geun-tea himself does not. Soo-won built great relations with the Earth empire, and he’s aided them in flourishing their businesses. Also, if they were to ever go at war, Soo-won knows that he’ll have the Earth Tribe’s side with strong people, so his whole plan helped him too.
So all in all…Soo-won actually…did…really good? He did fantastically really. He pretends to be weak, but he’s a lot more brilliant than he seems. So far, he’s done really great things. And right now, along with MANY other people giving their opinions of this show, we all have mixed feelings about Soo-won. We don’t want to forgive him for killing Yona’s father, and almost killing Yona and Hak. I mean I definitely don’t. But we also have to admit that he just did a very smart and great thing for the Earth Tribe. They’re going to flourish with their new businesses, and it was all with Soo-won’s help. So…fuck. Next week we’ll finally meet the Green Dragon, so we’ll take a break from Soo-won and continue with Yona’s journey next week.
This episode changed nothing from my perspective. This is exactly the sort of thing I expected him to be doing already, and exactly the sort of behavior I expected him to be using. All this really did was retread the “Soo-won pretends to be an idiot but is actually quite clever and capable and dangerous” and the “despite his evil actions he actually is likely to be good for the kingdom” details that we already knew. My opinion, which says you don’t get excuses for trying to murder your closest friends (or for standing there silently while your allies give the orders to do so), hasn’t changed