3 Reasons To Watch Quirky And Romantic Historical K-Drama “To My Beloved Thief”

Hong Eun Jo (Nam Ji Hyun) is the town’s favorite physician. A gentle, compassionate young woman who understands the pulse of her people. What most don’t know, however, is that Eun Jo leads a double life. By night, she becomes the masked Gil Dong, a legendary thief who steals from the granaries of the rich and distributes food among the poor. The myth of Gil Dong has spread far and wide, but no one knows the identity of the person behind the mask.

Prince Yi Yeol (Moon Sang Min), known for his sharp intellect and love for investigations, spends most of his time working with the Palace Police force, assisting officials to solve cases. Fixated and frustrated by Gil Dong, he takes it upon himself to nab the thief.

But things get complicated when he meets Eun Jo and finds himself falling for her. And as an unexpected turn, their souls mysteriously swap, and they find themselves trapped in the each other’s bodies. As their vastly divergent worlds collide, they not only get a perspective on each other’s lives but also on their growing feelings.

“To My Beloved Thief” is a quirky spin on the period romance genre, blending humor, fantasy, as well as social commentary. Beneath its playful premise, the drama makes telling observations about power, identity, and how history continues to shape the present. Here are three reasons why this currently airing drama should be on your watch list.

Warning: spoilers from episodes 1-6 ahead!

Nam Ji Hyun as the feisty Hong Eun Jo

In a time and society where women had little control over their choices, Eun Jo stands out as an intriguing contradiction. Rooted in tradition yet quietly progressive, she navigates a world that limits women while constantly demanding their sacrifice.

Born to a nobleman and a woman of lower status, Eun Jo occupies an uneasy position in the Hong household. Her standing is worse than that of a servant despite being the family’s sole breadwinner. After her father, once an influential court official, is demoted, the family is left in poverty, surviving largely on Eun Jo’s earnings as a physician and her odd jobs around town.

Her lack of agency becomes painfully clear when she learns that she has been betrothed not as a wife but as a concubine to another family’s 70-year-old ailing patriarch, who lies in a comatose state. She is being brought into the household as little more than a caretaker, and Eun Jo is understandably shaken. Yet she chooses to keep the truth from her father, believing this sacrifice to be part of her filial duty.

But Eun Jo’s story does not end there. By sundown, she transforms into Gil Dong—a masked thief who steals from the wealthy and redistributes food to the poor. What adds a touch of humor to her rebellion is that she leaves behind a note specifying exactly how much has been taken. A skilled archer and swift on her feet, Gil Dong becomes a figure both feared and ridiculed by the elite, even as she earns the quiet gratitude of the common people.

This contrast lies at the heart of Eun Jo’s character. In a society that denies women the freedom to choose their own paths, she finds a way to balance duty and defiance, compassion and courage.

Much of this impact comes from Nam Ji Hyun’s performance. Rather than portraying Hong Eun Jo and Gil Dong as opposing identities, she allows them to feel like two expressions of the same moral center. As Eun Jo, she is calm, observant, and gently compassionate, drawing authority from her competence rather than her voice. As Gil Dong, that same compassion sharpens into decisive action. The transformation is subtle. It’s a change in posture, a steadier gaze, and a quicker resolve.

Moon Sang Min, the playful yet enigmatic Yi Yeol

Yi Yeol’s princely pursuits extend beyond the palace grounds. His keen powers of observation and shrewd insight often lead him to the Palace Police Office, where he investigates cases that require more than surface-level judgment. However, the myth of Gil Dong proves particularly frustrating. The thief appears selective—stealing only from certain households—and as townsfolk create their own versions of who and what Gil Dong represents and palace guards craft another narrative altogether, Yi Yeol emerges as one of the few who truly understands the thief.

When the two encounter each other, Yi Yeol grants Gil Dong a quiet reprieve, unaware that the thief is actually Eun Jo. He recognizes that Gil Dong is largely harmless, acting instead as a quiet force aiding those crushed by authority. Even so, Yi Yeol issues a warning—to remain within reach of the law and to not expect him to alter the very foundations of how the kingdom and its people function.

Yi Yeol’s personal life, however, is far more complicated. He shares a strained dynamic with his family. He’s brusque with his mother yet deeply admiring of his half-brother, the king, fully aware of the animosity that exists between the two people closest to him. From a young age, his brother cautioned him against displaying his intelligence too openly within the palace. As a result, Yi Yeol keeps his distance from court intrigue and power plays, unaware of how these machinations quietly endanger the very people he cherishes.

Yet there is another facet to Yi Yeol: he is, at heart, a romantic. He finds himself drawn to Eun Jo, disarmed by her honesty and compassion. His eventual confession takes both her and himself by surprise, suggesting that love may indeed transform the careful prince into a quiet rebel, one that’s driven not by ambition, but by conviction.

Moon Sang Min brings a quiet charm to Yi Yeol that resists the usual sageuk prince mold. Instead of leaning into authority or arrogance, he plays Yi Yeol as someone driven by curiosity about people, about systems, and eventually, about Eun Jo.

A soul-swapping romance

What begins as a playful case of mistaken identities gradually evolves into one of the drama’s most engaging romantic threads. Yi Yeol and Eun Jo’s first meeting is shaped by reversal and disguise: Eun Jo, dressed in fine silks during a rare outing to town, mistakenly identifies Yi Yeol, who is stripped of his drenched princely robes and forced into a commoner’s tunic. When a nobleman’s son harasses him, she boldly claims Yi Yeol as her attendant and pulls him away. As rain begins to fall, she frets over her new shoes, and Yi Yeol quietly offers her his straw sandals instead. The moment lingers even after Eun Jo disappears from his sight.

Their paths cross again under altered identities. Yi Yeol, increasingly intrigued by the elusive thief Gil Dong, encounters Eun Jo in her masked persona—only to be struck by the dissonance between the criminal the palace hunts and the person standing before him. When he chooses compassion over punishment and lets Gil Dong go free, Eun Jo is taken aback, unsettled by his kindness and moral clarity. They meet yet again when Eun Jo treats Yi Yeol as a physician after he injures his arm, further complicating the fragile distance between who they are and who they appear to be.

It is in this charged in-between space that Eun Jo kisses him. It’s a sudden, impulsive act born of resignation rather than romance. Knowing that her life as an ordinary woman, bound for concubinage, offers little possibility of happiness, she allows herself one reckless moment. For Yi Yeol, the kiss is quietly seismic. He is startled, deeply affected, and undeniably drawn in. What had been curiosity crystallizes into feeling.

When Yi Yeol later confesses his emotions, he is met with the blow that Eun Jo is soon to be married. Even then, he is prepared to be reckless, until the story takes its most unexpected turn. A pair of matching bracelets, gifted the day before by a mischievous young monk, triggers an impossible soul swap. The exchange occurs while Eun Jo is in her Gil Dong persona—now accused of murder—leaving both trapped in each other’s bodies at a moment of heightened danger.

The soul swap sharpens the drama’s emotional stakes. Forced to inhabit each other’s lives, Yi Yeol and Eun Jo gain an unfiltered understanding of the worlds they had only glimpsed from the outside. Yi Yeol comes to fully grasp the cost of Eun Jo’s choices and the risks she carries, while Eun Jo navigates palace life under constant scrutiny—unaware that Yi Yeol has already pieced together her secret and quietly admires her for it. Their growing affection emerges not through declarations but through lived experience. By the time their feelings become unmistakable, the romance feels grounded in understanding, shaped by what they have seen, endured, and recognized in each other rather than by fate or narrative contrivance. And Nam Ji Hyun and Moon Sang Min bring a chemistry that feels both fresh and quietly charming.

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Puja Talwar is a Soompi writer with a strong Yoo Yeon Seok and Lee Junho bias. A long time K-drama fan, she loves devising alternate scenarios to the narratives. She has interviewed Lee Min Ho, Gong Yoo, Cha Eun Woo, and Ji Chang Wook to name a few. You can follow her on @puja_talwar7 on Instagram.

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