Nan-Hyang runs away from home because she can't bear her inharmonious family where her father is a doctor and her mother is the president of a third rate publishing company. Nan-Hyang meets Jin-Ho and his friend Min-Su and has mutual understandings. Jin-Ho stopped studying temporarily. With them, Nan-Hyang lives at her own way and sometimes deviates from the right path. But, Min-Su's success in exam, who makes efforts in everything, makes her realize self-consciousness. Jin-Ho also returns to the college.

Iljimae's parents were killed due to a conspiracy when he was young. Many years later he became a chivalrous robber, robbing corrupt officials and helping the poor. He eventually manages in taking revenge for his parents' deaths. But the police start to chase him, and he hides himself at a gisaeng's house. The gisaeng was his ex-fiancee. She also lost her parents to a conspiracy. She begs Iljimae to stay with her, but he leaves to do what he has to.

Jang Gyeong Ho visits fellow student Kim Dong Hwan's hometown, and falls in love with his sister, Kim Ok Gyeong. Despite Dong Hwan's objections, Ok Gyeong follows Gyeong Ho to Seoul. With his help she finds a job at Dong Il where she works as a secretary for the president, Mr. Oh.

Yeong-shin and Dong-hyuk graduate from college with a cause. They plan to bring education and modernization to farmers living in the rural area of their hometown. When they arrive, the pair immediately get to work, Dong-hyuk builds a village hall and starts aiding the farmers while Yeong-shin tries to gather the children to form a school. However, the villagers at first resent and resist the pair. It is not until one child, Ok-bun, takes the initiative and and learns to read under Yeong-shin’s care that the villages trust the pair and allow their children to be taken from the fields and taught reading, writing and math.

His own father had hated Crown Prince Sado. The king finally orders to kill him by locking him up in a rice-chest. After his death, his wife Hong goes with her son to her parents' house to live there. Some high officials in the court constantly try to harm Sado's son because they don't want him to become king. But Hong's wisdom saved her son, who grows up to become the 22nd king of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

At the close of the reign of Sin the Great in Goguryeo (B.C.37-A.D.668), royalist Uso is executed by a false incrimination made by a treacherous retainer Yangsin and his sister Jangssi. His daughter becomes a royal concubine of King Nammu, and called Her Majesty Yeonghwa. She revenges herself on the party of Yangsin. After the king passes away, she makes his brother Yeonu accede to the throne and has the whole country under her thumb. But she has no child. When the king begets a son from another woman, she dies of jealousy at last.

King Sukjong assigns Jang Ok-nan, a court lady, as a concubine overnight. Jang plots to drive the current Queen into exile.