'The Art of Sarah' Ending Explained: Is Sarah Dead Or Alive?

Shin Hae-Sun’s Lady Dior, or The Art of Sarah, tells the story of a working-class woman trying to climb up the ropes and reach right at the top, where no one can touch her. The thing about this Sarah Kim is that we don’t know who she is, we don’t know where she came from, and we don’t know anything about her childhood. What made her want to live the life of a loner? A con artist who only cons everybody and never truly finds peace. The Art of Sarah sees Sarah change names like a chameleon. Never once do you know what her next move is going to be. But one thing is for sure: she’ll never stop, or will she? This show is not class commentary in that Sarah cons the rich out of their wealth and then shows them who’s boss. Really, it’s about how people at the bottom scramble to make it to the top, only for someone else in the same spot as them to try and steal it too. The show’s ultimate message is that if you have done something wrong, you will end up punished, but it might not affect you at all.

Spoiler Alert

Who Are Ga-Hui, Eun-Jae, And Sarah? 

To get to the ending of The Art of Sarah, we must first go back to the past. In 2018, we met a woman named Ga-Hui. She’s sincere and wants to work at the super expensive departmental store Samwol. She gets a job there at the most expensive luxury bag store, but what does that do for her? Ga-Hui starts off as motivated and excited. She wants to be able to one day buy the bags she’s selling. But to get to that position, her manager tells her she’d have to eat only one meal for the next 10 years. That’s how bottom of the ranks she truly is. And for such people, circumstances never allow them to forget where they stand. The thing that really gets Ga-Hui, though, is that one day, she has to rush to the washroom while she’s alone at the shop, and something is stolen. Obviously, the department store will not take responsibility, so it’s Ga-Hui who has to pay the 50 million won out of her pocket. Something she certainly can’t afford. But this is where Ga-Hui’s scheming begins. She learns that as an employee, she can get discounts, and when her manager asks her to buy a bag for her, she’s busy with work. While doing this for her manager, Ga-Hui has an epiphany. She decides to start selling these second-hand bags and scamming people. She calls herself the Cheongdam Goddess. But ultimately, Ga-Hui has to borrow from a loan shark, and this is when the problem arises. When Ga-Hui is able to pay back the loan sharks, the interest has increased 10-fold, and they force her to sign a new contract, leaving her in permanent debt. There is no way she would be able to survive this by just reselling bags. This is when she makes the decision to say goodbye to the world, saying she doesn’t want to live as Ga-Hui anymore. 

It appears to me Ga-Hui did intend to kill herself at the reservoir, but the idea of starting Boudoir appeared to her in the dream waters when the expensive bag she jumped into broke down in the water and gave her the name of the brand she wanted to begin. It gives her a new identity, and she swims her way out of the water to the land and changes her final post as the Cheongdam Goddess from a suicide note to a marketing gimmick. She says she wants to bring the most exclusive luxury brand that only European royalty uses to Korea, i.e., Boudoir. Interesting how nobody thought it was too similar to “Dior,” eh?  

Next comes Eun-Jae, another woman in distress. A woman who has nothing literally. Ga-Hui might’ve been poor, but she had motivation. Eun-Jae works at a hostess bar, making it clear she’s given up on life entirely. But this is all a facade, because she’s going to use what she’s doing to capture the heart of a rich loan shark named Hong Seong-Sin. Ironically, Seong-Sin owns the people who forced Ga-Hui into debt and her ultimate death. Obviously, Seong-Sin doesn’t know this, and we only learn about this much later in the show. Turns out, she planned to scam him out of money and also life. She promises him a kidney and asks him to marry her in return and demands 500 million won. He agrees to do it out of desperation. Only rich people will fight for life like that. 

For a year, Seong-Sin teaches Eun-Jae the way of the rich. He makes her an Oxford graduate and brings her along to expensive gatherings. She learns everything about being rich, even purchasing a gazillion luxury bags with Seong-Sin’s money. The cash we saw her spend at the beginning of the show. But she ditches Seong-Sin right in the hospital, where she’s meant to give him her kidney. But Seong-Sin’s loan sharks catch her, bashing her up, only for Seong-Sin to let her go. Acting as the “bigger” man. This is when Eun-Jae, who has grown rather fond of Seong-Sin, agrees to give him her kidney (yes, in the future, Sarah Kim is big enough to hide her DNA from the police, too).  

In the middle of all this, Eun-Jae met a younger man named Ji-Hwon. She made him her pet, convincing him that she would leave everything to be with him. The 26-year-old even slept with a woman older than him just for Eun-Jae’s sake. He was smitten but had no idea he was being used. To secure her place as the sole inheritor of Seong-Sin’s estate and money, Eun-Jae convinced Ji-Hwon that she was being abused by Seong-Sin and got him to stab Seong-Sin. Only right when he was trying to stab the older man, Eun-Jae stepped in between. Making it clear to Seong-Sin that she deserves his love and monetary affection. Eun-Jae’s ultimate act of revenge is getting rid of the tree that was given to Seong-Sin as repayment of debt. The decades-old tree represents the old rich, and the new Sarah Kim wants nothing to do with it. 

Is Boudoir Real? 

The ultimate shocker in this story is that everyone believes that “Boudoir,” a luxury brand that only European royalty uses, truly exists. Sarah, newly baptized after a kidney transplant, finds a woman who can make the perfect counterfeit luxury bags. So perfect that the perfection proves it’s not real. Mi-Jeong is smitten with Sarah instantly. Sarah gives her a new identity, which also happens to be Boudoir. This is where her problem really began. Sarah didn’t hide herself from Mi-Jeong; in fact, she made her biggest revelation by calling herself fake in front of her. She essentially gave her the “Fake it till you make it” mentality, which led to Mi-Jeong ultimately impersonating Sarah. No, Boudoir was never real. Sarah made the perfect marketing campaign to give the impression of a shockingly unknown brand that the richest of the rich want to own. 

Who Is The Woman In The Sewer? 

The ultimate question remains: who is the woman who died? And we learn pretty early on that it is not Sarah Kim, but is it? The parallels between Mi-Jeong and Sarah’s lives are so similar that you’ll miss the difference between them in the blink of an eye. They both come from nothing and have similar ambitions. The show is titled “The Art Of Sarah,” because she’s a con artist, but Mi-Jeong is a true artist, creating the most luxurious bags. We never learn anything about either girl’s childhood. Clearly, they’ve had to live through some trauma, but while Mi-Jeong was able to find a quiet job to look after herself, Sarah was too ambitious to sit quietly and watch. She wanted revenge. Had Mi-Jeong not caught onto Sarah’s act, Sarah might’ve taken over Chae-U’s position in society. She never appeared to be nouveau riche when she entered her market; she was already of high value. She had enough money from Seong-Sin to make her own brand and buy property to create a fake showroom for the same. So much so that she convinced Chae-U to give her a spot in Samwol, bringing her right where she was at the beginning, but this time looking down rather than up. 

The woman in the sewer is Mi-Jeong, but the unfortunate truth is Mu-Gyeong has literally nothing to prove that the woman sitting across from him at the interrogation table isn’t, in fact, Sarah Kim. Mi-Jeong had imitated everything of Sarah’s, from the tattoo on her ankle to getting the same dress made twice, so she could get rid of her and replace her in the ultimate con. But Mi-Jeong’s plan was flawed because she didn’t realize Sarah was capable of murder. So, Sarah commits the final act of murder, killing the imposter and staging the perfect crime. The thing I don’t get, though, is that there was no way Sarah would’ve wanted to switch roles yet again, because she achieved everything she wanted as Sarah. So this was a thorn in her plan. 

What Does Sarah Do Finally? 

The Art of Sarah’s ending feels like the ultimate betrayal to us as an audience because instead of escaping her fate, she ends up in jail for real. However, she’s adopted a new identity. This time, it’s of Mi-Jeong. The only thing Sarah ever truly cared about was showing the rich that she could get them to fall on their knees for her, and she did that with Budoir. I do feel like Jeong Yeo-Jin might’ve been more in the know than we’re made to believe, and that’s why Sarah gives her the ownership of Boudoir now that “Sarah Kim” is dead. It seems to have always been a backup plan of hers. After 10 years of imprisonment for the murder of Sarah Kim, Mi-Jeong will get out and return to her position as the owner of Boudoir. That must be the deal she made with Yeo-Jin. In the end, Mu-Gyeong, who gets promoted for this arrest, feels dissatisfied because even though he made an arrest, he’s certain the woman in front of him is Sarah Kim. So he asks her the ultimate question, “Who are you?” The woman sitting in front of him is Ga-Hui, but she’s also Eun-Jae, and she’s also Sarah Kim. Yes, she’s not Mi-Jeong, but when she flips around, we see her in Boudoir, the most prominent part of her identity. Ultimately, Sarah is everybody and nobody. She’s a representation of those who find themselves with nothing and try their best to make an honest living, only to fail miserably. She’s the rich who steal from the poor for their own benefit. She’s a criminal, but she’s also a victim. I don’t know what I felt about the ending of the show, because the buildup was great, but being imprisoned was not on my expected bingo card for Sarah Kim. But I guess she made it. 

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