The Story of Park’s Marriage Contract

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

Completed
💕 Fan Favourite

The Story of Park’s Marriage Contract

열녀 박씨 계약 결혼뎐 · 2023 · South Korea

WriterKo Nam-jung

DirectorPark Sang-hoon

Episodes12 eps · ~70 min each

⏱️ Binge Time14h 0m

AiredNov 24, 2023 – Jan 6, 2024

GenreRomance · Fantasy · Historical

Content RatingPG-13

Viki
Viu

Time Travel
Contract Marriage
Joseon Era
Reincarnation
Strong Female Lead

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Twelve performances across two centuries — the Joseon noblewoman, the cold chaebol, and the ensemble that makes this time-slip sing.

Lee Se-young

Park Yeon-woo

Lead

Bae In-hyuk

Kang Tae-ha

Lead

Joo Hyun-young

Sa-wol

Supporting

Yoo Seon-ho

Kang Tae-min

Supporting

Jo Bok-rae

Hong Seong-pyo

Supporting

Cheon Ho-jin

Chairman Kang

Villain

Jin Kyung

Min Hye-suk

Antagonist

Kim Yeo-jin

Lee Mi-dam

Supporting

Lee Jun-hyeok

Hwang Myeong-su

Antagonist

Jung Si-a

Oh Hyun-jung

Supporting

Kwon Ah-reum

Yoo Ha-na

Supporting

Son So-mang

Kang Hye-ryeong

Supporting

Spoiler-light recaps — enough to remember where you left off, nothing that ruins the ride.

EP 01

Yeon-woo’s Secret Business

November 24, 2023

In 19th-century Joseon, Park Yeon-woo secretly runs a clothing business against every rule of her era. On her wedding night, her new husband collapses and dies — and before she can process the grief, unknown assailants kidnap her and throw her into a well. She wakes up drowning in a 2023 hotel swimming pool, where she is rescued by a man who wears her husband’s face.

EP 02

A Strange New World

November 25, 2023

Yeon-woo wakes in present-day Seoul, bewildered by everything from escalators to smartphones. Her rescuer — Kang Tae-ha, vice president of SH Group — is cold, logical, and deeply inconvenienced. His grandfather arrives from abroad and Tae-ha hatches a plan: pass Yeon-woo off as his fiancée. She agrees, desperate for help finding her way home.

EP 03

The Contract Is Drawn

December 1, 2023

Tae-ha formalises the arrangement: play his wife until the chairman leaves, and he will help her return to Joseon. Yeon-woo begins adapting to modern life with endearing confusion — convenience stores, smartphones, the concept of delivery food. Meanwhile Sa-wol, her loyal handmaid who time-travelled alongside her, starts quietly loving every second of her new freedom.

EP 04

Cracks in the Armor

December 2, 2023

Yeon-woo joins a traditional hanbok brand and her instinctive mastery of fabric and design makes an instant impression. Despite himself, Tae-ha is drawn to her unfiltered sincerity — the one thing his calculated, chaebol world has never offered him. Stepmother Min Hye-suk grows suspicious of the strange woman who has wandered into Tae-ha’s orbit.

EP 05

The Heart Remembers

December 8, 2023

Unsettling parallels between the Joseon Kang family and their modern counterparts begin to surface. Tae-min — Tae-ha’s cheerful celebrity half-brother — warms to Yeon-woo immediately, recognising her as the first genuinely real person in his gilded life. Yeon-woo and Sa-wol’s resolve to return home starts quietly wavering as 2023 Seoul gets harder to leave.

EP 06

Feelings Take Root

December 9, 2023

The episode fans consider the romantic centrepiece of the drama — a string of vulnerable, unguarded moments that finally cracks Tae-ha open. He begins caring for Yeon-woo beyond the terms of any contract. Chairman Kang’s health deteriorates and Min Hye-suk escalates her scheming, enlisting Hwang Myeong-su to dig up whatever dirt can be found on the mysterious woman from nowhere.

EP 07

Secrets Unravel

December 15, 2023

Min Hye-suk’s investigation closes in on the truth of Yeon-woo’s origins. Tae-ha confronts his grandfather about the buried secrets surrounding his mother’s death — a painful reckoning that reshapes the entire family dynamic. Yeon-woo begins to fear that her presence in the future is somehow accelerating Tae-ha’s heart condition, and the guardian deity Cheon Myeong moves into the foreground.

EP 08

The Price of Staying

December 16, 2023

Medical evidence confirms what Yeon-woo feared: her continued presence is killing Tae-ha. He refuses to hear it — and for the first time declares his love openly. Yeon-woo is torn between her heart and her duty to return to Joseon to save both versions of the Kang family from being destroyed. Sa-wol quietly wrestles with the same impossible choice.

EP 09

Counting Down

December 22, 2023

Yeon-woo resolves to find a way home and begins working toward the conditions for her return. The couple spends precious remaining days together while Tae-ha refuses to stop looking for any loophole that doesn’t mean losing her. A bombshell reveal exposes Chairman Kang as the original architect of Yeon-woo’s kidnapping in Joseon — a conspiracy that spans two centuries.

EP 10

Villains Unmasked

December 23, 2023

Chairman Kang and Hwang Myeong-su’s full scheme is laid bare — a conspiracy that exploited women across both timelines for power and social gain. Tae-ha confronts his grandfather in a scene that ends with the old man sustaining a severe injury. Min Hye-suk, finally done being a scapegoat, chooses to walk away from SH Group entirely and find her own quiet happiness.

EP 11

The Last Days Together

January 5, 2024

With the villains neutralised, Yeon-woo announces she must return to Joseon. Tae-ha goes to his doctor on his knees, in tears, begging for more time. Sa-wol chooses to remain in 2023 with Seong-pyo, quietly securing a modern identity under Yeon-woo’s family name. The couple spends two final weeks in ordinary domestic bliss — cooking, watching TV, brushing teeth — before Yeon-woo’s tearful goodbye.

EP 12

A New Fate

January 6, 2024

Back in Joseon ten days before her original wedding, Yeon-woo warns the Joseon Tae-ha about the poisoned tonic — and together they expose the conspirators at a dramatic trial. She rallies a crowd of women to petition the king to abolish the deadly “virtuous woman” reward system. In the modern timeline, Tae-ha’s heart has inexplicably healed; he waits faithfully by a crepe myrtle tree for over a year — until Yeon-woo finally walks back into his life, and they marry for real.

Full spoilers ahead — read only after you’ve finished the series.

The finale opens not in 2023 but in Joseon — ten days before the wedding that started everything. Armed with foreknowledge of the conspiracy, Yeon-woo approaches the Joseon version of Kang Tae-ha and warns him that his ceremonial tonic has been poisoned. He drinks it anyway — but fakes his death. It is a calculated gambit to draw out every conspirator at once, and it works with devastating precision.

At the joint trial, Joseon Tae-ha reveals himself alive in front of the king, and both Min Hye-suk’s Joseon counterpart and the scheming servant Myung-su are brought to justice. But the episode’s most quietly radical moment belongs to Yeon-woo: she steps forward before the king himself and petitions for the abolition of the “virtuous widow” reward system — the very social custom that drove men to murder women for the prestige it conferred on their families. A crowd of women rallies behind her. The king listens.

The Joseon Tae-ha’s fate is one of the drama’s most genuinely moving choices. Despite still loving Yeon-woo, he understands he is not the man she fell in love with — that was the 2023 version, the one she changed. He becomes a steadfast platonic companion, and he dies of his heart condition knowing he was loved, his final journal entry a wish to be reborn and loved by her in another life. It is a rare K-drama subplot that earns its tears without romantic payoff.

Yeon-woo’s return to 2023 is as elemental as her departure — Myung-su corners her on a cliff and she jumps, the water carrying her back to the future just as the well once carried her forward. In the modern timeline, Tae-ha’s heart has inexplicably healed — the show attributes this to a change in fate rather than medicine, which is either magical-realist poetry or a narrative shortcut depending on your tolerance. He has given SH Group’s control to an outside CEO (who turns out to be the reincarnation of Yeon-woo’s father), given Seong-pyo and Sa-wol an entire building as a wedding gift, and bought the whole hotel just to keep the crepe myrtle tree alive while he waits for over a year.

Yeon-woo walks out of the water and finds him exactly where he promised to be. She tells him his prayers changed her fate. They marry in a quiet, intimate ceremony with no corporate fanfare — just the two of them and the people they love. It is a finale that understands what the audience actually wants: not a spectacle, but the feeling that everything that was broken has been put right. Two centuries, two timelines, one stubborn man with a crepe myrtle tree — and a love story that refused to stay in its era.