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Minister Cho is the main antagonist of the 2019 South Korean horror television series, Kingdom.

He is the head of the corrupt Cho Family, consisting of murderous and corrupt individuals like Second Queen Cho. He is also the one that comes up with the infection and the plan that will plague the Joseon Kingdom.

Biography[]

Minister Cho was born into the wealthy, but corrupt Cho Clan, and at some point he met a female marital partner and had two children, Second Queen Cho and Cho Beom il.

The female marital partner of Minister Cho is assumed to be deceased, as she does not appear throughout the entire series. However Cho Hak Ju, Second Queen Cho, and Cho Beom il, followed in their family's corrupt ways and desired to remove the royal family from power and obtain extreme political power.

During the Japanese invasions of Korea, Minister Cho forced the royal physician to utilize the resurrection plant to bring the dead back to life and had the zombies attack the Japanese forces, thus possibly giving victory to the Korean Peninsula.

At this point, his daughter, Second Queen Cho has married the King (who is thirty years older than her) and managed to have a child with him. Minister Cho threatens the queen that the child must be a boy. He also later warns her that he is the one to give the queen the position that she has and that he can take it away in a blink of an eye (something that will later cause him his own downfall.

He zombifies the dead king, due to the fact that the king must be alive until the baby is born and blackmails the physician to be silent about the plan.

Minister Cho TV show flier

Season 1[]

Minister Cho first appears to be calm and silent, with an intimidating position in the government. All the other ministers are in great fear of him and they follow his every task. When the message that the King is dead is put out, he and the rest of the Cho Clan is afraid that the news of the king's condition will be revealed to the public and to the crown prince Lee Chang.

He knows that the only outsider that knows about this is the Royal Physician, and he arrests all medical students and tortures them while being a judge at their questioning. A medical student accuses the Cho Clan of being "pigs" and that Minister Cho is the one that starves the subjects and forces the people of Joseon Dynasty to be brainwashed by even the slightest glimpse of food and that the King is better dead than alive, as he does nothing to protect his subjects (The king however is already dead, but is in a undead/zombified state with Minister Cho giving order from the behind the scenes). Minister Cho looks unfazed to this and simply repeats "The King is better dead than living, did you just admit to treason?".

It is assumed that the queen and Minister Cho executed all the medical students after. Meanwhile, Prince Lee Chang is suspicious of all the commotion and the behavior within the palace and wonders what has happened to his father. Despite attempts to stop him, Lee Chang and his faithful right hand Mu-Yeong sneaks out of the walls of the palace to see the Royal Physician, the man who was in charge of the King's health.

Unfortunately for them, the Clinic suffered a zombie attack after patients resorted to cannibalism of a infected corpse in order to survive. Thus at night, the patients became infected also and attacked the Clinic's staff, including the Royal Physician. Later at night, the zombies attack again but a handful survive due to Lee Chang's efforts.

However, the joy of the surviving citizens does not last long, as the Minister Cho and Second Queen Cho has become aware of the location of the prince and in the efforts to arrest and kill him, kills many soldiers and citizens. The Prince, nevertheless, manages to divert away the soldiers and are safely able to escape.

However, he engages in a duel with the Royal Naval Officer, Cho Beom Il, the son of Minister Cho and a loyal member of the Cho Clan, but in the midst of the battle, Cho Beom Il is bitten by a small infection created by the zombified Royal Physician (whose undead body has been locked up in a small box by Seo-bi and Yeong Shin) and he slowly starts to turn.

Lee Chang, knowing that he has to severe the head, decapitates Beom Il and Beom Il's head would later be sent to Minister Cho in a box. After receiving the box at the palace, Minister Cho, clearly angered by his son's death, states that he will kill the prince with his own hands and that nobody can kill the prince personally, except for him.

He also adds that he will remove or kill anyone that gets in his way, after showing his daughter, Second Queen Cho, the head of her own brother. He looks at the queen and tells her that her child needs to be a male child and that if she does not obey his orders, then she too is getting in the way of his plan and that he will also not hesitate to remove her.

The Queen, stares vacantly, and looks away from the bloody head of her brother. Minister Cho, now more bloodthirsty and power hungry, shows the ministers the zombified king and claims that the King is simply "sick" and that the zombie the ministers see before them is still the King of Joseon and that anyone who thinks he is dead is committing treason. The ministers, afraid for their lives, quickly agree, except for a couple of ministers that remain suspicious, including the elderly Royal Confucian Scholar. Minister Cho, would continue to intimidate the ministers into following through with his plan, thus spreading the Cho Clan's corruption into the palace. Meanwhile, Lee Chang would continue to battle the infection and aid the impoverished citizens of the land. At the Royal Garden, in the gazebo by the lake, Minister Cho and his daughter discuss their plan, he tells his daughter to quarantine and lock up the cities of Joseon, as it will render the escape of the prince impossible, his daughter questions him if he is willing to risk the resources and wealth that comes out of these cities just to capture one man.

He tells his daughter that she is too ignorant and empty-headed except for greed, he also tells her that she isn't the one in power here and the she shouldn't lie to herself. He states that he is the one that gave her the position of being a queen and he can take it away at any time he wants. He then walks away, leaving the queen behind.

Minister Cho threatens a minister

Minister Cho threating a minister.

Season 2[]

Minister Cho now has the power of the military, the government, and the capital on his side, as he brainwashed many into believing that the prince is a traitor to the nation, while also making Queen the Queen Regent. Despite all their attempts to stop the prince and his forces from entering the city, the prince Lee Chang still manages to find his way to the capital, Han Yang, where most of the wealthy elites and ministers live and where the palace is.

Minister Cho recieves the head of his own son

Minister Cho receiving the head of his own son.

Lee Chang goes to ultimately discover the condition of his father, and when he enters the king's large bed chambers, Minister Cho orders all the doors to be locked and the zombified king to be released. The Prince, now knowing of the king's condition, cannot slaughter him, as the zombified king is still his father.

However, one of Chang's allies, Retired Minister Ahn Hyeon, tries to open the doors of the bed chambers and suffers many gunshots from the soldiers nearby. Despite being mortally wounded, Ahn Hyeon crawls to the door and the military still fire more shots due to the orders of Minister Cho.

Ahn Hyeon, with his dying breath, opens the door, just as the Prince Lee Chang severs the head of the zombie king, thus making it appear the Prince had killed the ill King. This event is just what Minister Cho wanted, so that it makes the Prince appear guilty of treason and killing the king. Minister Cho walks over to the beheaded zombie king and pretend to be upset over the king's death.

However, Minister Ahn Hyeon, dying, whispers to the prince to have the nurse, Seo-bi, resurrect his dead body with the resurrection plant. Seo-bi does exactly this and the body of Minister Ahn Hyeon is zombified and comes back to life. Consequently, the military and the general, seeing the zombie Ahn Hyeon, realizes that the prince is telling the truth about the zombie infection and turns to the prince's side. The zombified Minister Ahn Hyeon runs to Minister Cho and bites his cheek, causing Minister Cho to become extremely ill, with his temperatures dropping. Seo-bi, seeing this opportunity to find a cure for the infection, medically treats Minister Cho. After many attempts, Seo-bi puts Minister Cho in water, and observes as the parasitic worms swim out of the bite mark and dies, thus curing Minister Cho and unintentionally allowing him to resume his reign of terror.

The Crown Prince Lee Chang sends Seo-bi, the nurse, into the palace to make sure that the "queen's" baby (obtained unofficially by killing many pregnant women and female newborns by the queen's orders, unbeknownst to Minister Cho) is safe. He also sends a wealthy but cowardly magistrate to accompany Seo-bi into the palace and recommend Seo-bi to the Cho Clan of being the queen's personal nurse, while secretly being Lee Chang's spy.

Minister Cho holds the severed Head of the King

Minister Cho holding the severed head of the King.

Seo-bi gets the job and Minister Cho accompanies her to the queen's chamber, Minister Cho is now more ambitious on his goal and is now suspicious that the baby is not related to the queen biologically. He forces Seo-bi to medically observe the queen and tell him if the baby is hers biologically, the queen reluctantly obliges to this observation and Seo-bi tells Minister Cho that the baby is most not likely the queen's.

The queen calmly pours tea and serves it to Minister Cho, who drinks it and tells the queen that she, as a de-facto queen, has ruined the Cho Clan's efforts and that he will execute his own daughter, Seo-bi, and thousands of others that got in his way. However, as soon as he steps out of the door, he begins coughing up blood and vomiting. It is revealed that the queen has poisoned the tea and he falls to the ground and dies, thus meeting his own downfall at the hands of his own daughter.

Aftermath[]

Queen Cho chaotically carries out the rest of his plot and Prince Lee Chang manages to convince the rest of the ministers to join his forces and together they try to remove the queen from power. The queen, knowing that her reign is almost over, releases all the zombies into the palace, infecting the maids and the servants, as well as all the ministers.

The queen also commits suicide in the infection and zombifies herself. Lee Chang and his forces manage to drown the zombies in the frozen Royal Lake and Clan Cho's reign is concluded. The baby survives, however, as Seo-bi rescues it in time, and this provides a conflict to Lee Chang.

The baby might provide a way for the Cho Clan to come back to power again but he does not kill the baby, despite the advice of those around him, and appoints new ministers to teach the child how to run a country in a balanced function.

Years later, it is revealed that the Clan Cho is extremely weak and is slowly dissolving, and Joseon's subjects are well fed thanks to the efforts of the new ministers and the young king. Lee Chang, Seo-bi, Yeong-Shin and a handful of others is investigating the plague to discover the origins of the resurrection plant, as a mysterious stranger is said to have sold these plants, knowing the destructive effects they can bring. When Lee Chang's group enters a small shack, a female stranger is shown to be performing experiments on the zombies with the resurrection plants. The camera pans out to show a parasitic worm, slowly making it's way to the head of the young king.

Gallery[]

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