Moonshine

A fast rundown of what this one’s about.

CompletedCOHABITATION ROM-COM PICK

Moonshine

꽃 피면 달 생각하고 (Kkot Pimyeon Dal Saenggakhago) · 2021 · South Korea

WriterKim Joo-Hee

DirectorHwang In-Hyuk

Episodes16 eps · ~70 min each

Where to Watch✅ OnDemandKorea, KOCOWA+, Viki, Prime Video

⏱️

Binge Time18h 40m

AiredDec 20, 2021 – Feb 22, 2022

GenreHistorical · Comedy · Romance

Content Rating15+

KBS2OnDemandKoreaKOCOWA+VikiVIUPrime Video

Joseon DynastyProhibitionCohabitationPolitical IntrigueBootlegger

Everything that matters, at a glance.

The inspector, the moonshiner, and the Crown Prince who complicates everything.

Yoo Seung-ho

Nam Young

Lead

Lee Hye-ri

Kang Ro-seo

Lead

Byeon Woo-seok

Lee Pyo

Supporting

Kang Mi-na

Han Ae-jin

Supporting

Jang Kwang

Moon Yeon-jo

Supporting

Choi Won-young

Lee Shi-heum

Supporting

Im Won-hee

Woon Shim

Supporting

Moon You-kang

Shim Heon

Supporting

Park Ah-in

Lee Dong-hee

Supporting

Kim Ki-bang

Chun Gae

Supporting

Chae Seo-an

Yeon Jung-jeon (Queen Yeon)

Supporting

Jung Sung-il

King Lee-kang

Supporting

Episode-by-episode, spoiler-light — a refresher, not a rewatch.

EP 01

A Chaotic First Encounter

Dec 20, 2021

Nam Young arrives in Hanyang chasing exam success and family honor, only to get pulled into the city’s illegal liquor underworld almost immediately. Kang Ro-seo, drowning in her brother’s debts, turns to brewing moonshine to survive — and collides head-on with the very inspector sworn to shut her down. Crown Prince Lee Pyo, meanwhile, keeps sneaking out of the palace for a drink of his own, oblivious to how tangled these three lives are about to become.

EP 02

Under the Same Roof

Dec 21, 2021

A stolen horse leaves Nam Young broke enough to need a room — and Ro Seo’s house is the only option, putting the prohibition inspector directly under the roof of the woman secretly running an illegal still. She and her brewer Geum improvise a mobile bar built for fast getaways, turning survival into a nightly game of cat-and-mouse with the man now sleeping down the hall.

EP 03

The Eyes He Recognizes

Dec 27, 2021

Nam Young finally connects the dots — the distinctive eyes he’s been chasing belong to his own housemate, and Ro Seo scrambles to evict him before her secret unravels. A raid on a rival’s illegal ice storage hands her an unexpected opening, and she takes it, selling her moonshine at the crowded Buddha’s Birthday festival while the Crown Prince’s own drinking habit keeps crossing paths with the investigation closing in on her.

EP 04

A Debt Repaid in Trust

Dec 28, 2021

Discovering Ro Seo’s operation firsthand leaves Nam Young genuinely disillusioned, but she repays that disappointment by saving his life when a sword fight erupts between the Crown Prince’s guards and a ruthless gang. The chaos leaves a key suspect missing, with both Nam Young and a rival merchant searching for him for very different reasons, while Ro Seo’s business gets messier as her brewer Geum returns with fresh trouble.

EP 05

Blame and a Cliff

Jan 3, 2022

A rescue attempt goes wrong when the man Ro Seo tries to save falls from a cliff and vanishes, leaving her and Nam Young pointing fingers at each other over the fallout. He works quietly to shield her from the legal consequences of her illegal brewing anyway, even as her guilt over dragging him into danger pushes her toward taking matters into her own hands.

EP 06

An Arranged Marriage

Jan 4, 2022

Ro Seo dodges consequences for the kidnapping only because the injured Sang Mok can’t remember her involvement, buying her a narrow escape. Nam Young’s relief is short-lived — his father arranges his marriage to Kang Ae Jin, forcing him to confront feelings for Ro Seo he’s spent weeks not naming. She tries distance instead of honesty, even as a lucrative deal to supply a future tavern quietly clears her family’s debt.

EP 07

Before the Wedding

Jan 10, 2022

Lee Pyo runs interference to keep Ro Seo out of Nam Young’s interrogation, but it only sharpens his suspicion — and his father’s pressure to marry Ae Jin before summer ends. Free of her debt at last, Ro Seo weighs a real business partnership with Woon-shim, stepping into independence just as Nam Young and Lee Pyo team up on a heist targeting a bootlegger tied to Nam Young’s past.

EP 08

The Scar from Mangwol Temple

Jan 11, 2022

Nam Young finally catches the man behind a murder and a forge raid — and spots a scar that matches a face from a childhood trauma he’s never fully explained. While he connects his past to the present case, Ro Seo and Geum brew a special batch for a powerful patron, then have to smuggle it past the city’s strictest checkpoint without getting caught.

EP 09

The Kiss and the Crown

Jan 17, 2022

Ro Seo pushes a liquor wagon straight into danger to buy Nam Young an escape route, and their flight leads them back to a mysterious forest well that keeps resurfacing in their story. Nam Young finally says what he’s been avoiding, sealing it with a kiss, just as the truth about Lee Pyo — the Crown Prince all along — comes out during a violent confrontation.

EP 10

Blowing Up the Storage

Jan 18, 2022

An assassination attempt on Nam Young and Ro Seo is stopped only by a guard’s last-second intervention, a moment that convinces Lee Pyo his own uncle was involved in a prior death close to the throne. Merchant Shim’s ruthlessness has made him enemies on every side, pushing even an old rival into an alliance with Nam Young — and Ro Seo answers his aggression by blowing up his storage herself.

EP 11

A Funeral That Isn’t Real

Jan 24, 2022

Nam Young appears to die after being stabbed, and the news devastates everyone who loves him — until it’s revealed his ‘death’ was staged to buy him time to heal. Ro Seo, wanted for a staged kidnapping of her own, breaks down at his funeral before learning the truth, while Nam Young, freshly aware of what really happened to her father, chooses distance over honesty for reasons he isn’t ready to explain.

EP 12

House Arrest

Jan 25, 2022

Reunited, Nam Young reveals his death was bait to trap Merchant Shim — who slips away anyway after being shot. Guilt over what he knows about her father’s death keeps Nam Young pulling away even as he places Ro Seo under house arrest to protect her while he works to clear her name. Their investigation starts circling something bigger: a conspiracy tied to the death of a former Crown Prince.

EP 13

The Queen’s Palanquin

Feb 8, 2022

A mysterious woman in a palanquin turns out to be Queen Yeon herself, sheltering Ro Seo from the manhunt closing in on her. Reunited with Nam Young, Ro Seo finally forces the full truth out of him about her father’s murder at Mangwol Temple, while Lee Pyo learns his own uncle orchestrated the death of the previous Crown Prince — and gets blackmailed into silence over it.

EP 14

The Six-Fingered Man

Feb 8, 2022

Summoned to the palace despite being a wanted woman, Ro Seo receives her father’s keepsake and logbook from the Queen — evidence that pushes her investigation forward. A raid on Merchant Shim’s smuggling operation turns violent, and Lee Shi-heum silences him with an arrow before he can talk. Nam Young’s own suspicions lead him toward a six-fingered man and a telltale ink scent that point straight at the real mastermind.

EP 15

Naming the Mastermind

Feb 21, 2022

Nam Young and Ro Seo finally put a name to ‘Jannabi’: Chief Royal Secretary Lee Shi-heum, the man behind everything. With the evidence in hand, Nam Young moves to alert the King directly, while Lee Pyo unravels under the realization that his own crown exists because of his uncle’s conspiracy — and fears speaking up could get Ro Seo and Nam Young killed.

EP 16

The King’s Pardon

Feb 22, 2022

Nam Young and Ro Seo return to Mangwol Temple and recover the evidence her father left behind, the final piece needed to bring Shi-heum down. With the King incapacitated, they seize his distillery directly, and Ro Seo confronts her father’s killer face to face. Lee Pyo’s belated but decisive move helps expose his uncle for good — and the King, finally restored, pardons Ro Seo, lifts the prohibition, and orders Shi-heum’s execution.

Full spoilers — what happened, and why it hits the way it does.

What actually happened The finale delivers a clean sweep: Nam Young and Ro Seo recover the evidence hidden at Mangwol Temple, seize Merchant Shim’s distillery while the King is incapacitated, and finally force a direct confrontation with Lee Shi-heum, the Chief Royal Secretary revealed as the true mastermind behind Ro Seo’s father’s murder and years of corrupt prohibition enforcement. The King recovers just in time to pardon Ro Seo, lift the alcohol ban entirely, and order Shi-heum’s execution.

What it means Moonshine spends sixteen episodes arguing that prohibition itself was never really about morality — it was a tool for one man to control both the throne and the people underneath it, and the show’s ending makes that explicit by having the ban lifted the same moment its architect falls. Ro Seo’s pardon isn’t just a romantic-comedy formality; it’s the show closing the loop on a law that criminalized her survival from episode one.

Nam Young and Ro Seo’s reckoning The romance survives its rockiest stretch — Nam Young’s guilt over what he knew about her father’s death, and the distance he put between them because of it — by choosing honesty over protection in the end. Their partnership as investigators, not just as a couple, is what actually cracks the conspiracy, and the finale rewards that by letting the reveal belong to both of them equally rather than centering Nam Young’s badge or Ro Seo’s bloodline.

Lee Pyo’s arc Crown Prince Lee Pyo’s journey ends with him choosing his friends over his own political safety, a quiet but real redemption after an entire back half spent paralyzed by his uncle’s blackmail. His belated decision to help expose Shi-heum doesn’t erase the damage his silence caused, but it does confirm the show’s read on him: someone whose good instincts kept losing to fear, until they finally didn’t.

The KDW verdict Moonshine earns its happy ending by making sure it costs something — a fake death, a father’s murder, a king’s near-collapse — before it hands out pardons and lifted bans. What starts as a cohabitation rom-com about a prohibition inspector and his moonshiner roommate ends as something closer to a political thriller with a wedding-adjacent bow on top, and the show mostly threads that shift without losing what made the early episodes so much fun.