it looks like Seo Ji-hye is waring sareei, which is indina dress...

Episode 1 synopsis and random comments
Beware spoilers.

I'm approaching this drama with a complete tabula rasa. I know virtual nothing about the history of Gaya. I just enjoyed the episode, cringed a little bit at the CGI, laughed at Cliff of Doom's failure, and mainly just enjoyed myself.

We are dealing with the foundation of a nation, as the opening lines indicate: "After the opening of Heaven and Earth, there was no name in the country... we followed the orders of the Heavens". So what we see in Episode 1 is the juicy combination of prophecies, human struggles, and new technologies.

The drama starts in 18 AD. Several things are happening all at once. In the South, 13 tribes are having a ritual to inaugurate a new iron furnace (with a fascinating scene that shows how the bellows are pedaled by a group of men). They gossip that Baekje has a king, and the High Priest wonders if he could unite the tribes to become a king too. Then we shift to somewhere in the North, where the king of Goguryeo (elderly Jumong?) vanquishes a tribe after a pretty gruesome battle. The pregnant wife of their leader manages to escape, after a nice display of archery skills where she manages to shoot almost all her pursuers while on horseback. She ends up on a ship, pursued by her late husband's nemesis. There's a storm. We witness two babies being born, a shipwreck, and baby swapping. Most interestingly, that same night a big rock which looks like a meteorite cracks open in the (future Gaya) temple and a large egg with an inscription appears: the baby born under Polaris who brings a ship will be king. I think this is a nice twist on the origins of Kim Suro as born from an egg (which is all that I found out when I looked him up on Wikipedia). The baby will be the Iron King, so it's fitting that he's born under a sign from a meteorite.

To add, I did a short course on Silla a while ago, and I learned that 7th century Silla may have been renown for its bronze works, but Gaya was the champion of iron. Thus, having control of the mines and technological knowledge of Gaya was essential in Silla's eventual military success. So iron is clearly an important theme, as indicated of course by the title of the drama.

cc @kiara @pakalanapikake @marcusnyc20 @sicarius Just to let you know that I have started.

Episode 2-6 thoughts
This was the childhood part of the drama. Suro is adopted by the head of the forge, Jo Bang, and his wife, who lost their own baby. There is amnesia, hidden truths, a gruesome scene where slaves are executed to accompany their dead master to the next world. We basically have a Shakespearean setup whereby Su-ro's real mother does not recognise her own son, marries in haste and has another son (whom she wants to make king of Gaya), and she hates Suro. The forge and the materials that pour into iron-making are the center of the drama. Everyone wants it because it means power, except the smiths themselves who have the dream of making "iron that does not bend, break, or rust".