An emperor tells his wife he wants a divorce so he can marry the runaway slave he has fallen for. She agrees, and in the same breath asks the court to approve her remarriage to the prince of the rival kingdom. That counter-demand drives The Remarried Empress, the Korean romance-fantasy series from Disney+ (a Hulu Original in the US, also streaming on Disney+) starring Shin Min-a, Ju Ji-hoon, Lee Jong-suk and Lee Se-young, adapted from the Naver Webtoon version of Alphatart’s web novel, a webtoon with close to three billion views.

The setup is a palace drama, but the premise works more like a negotiation. Shin Min-a plays Navier, Empress of the Eastern Empire, whose marriage to her childhood friend Emperor Sovieshu (Ju Ji-hoon) has been peaceful and loveless. Sovieshu falls for Rashta (Lee Se-young), an escaped slave, and decides to put her on the throne beside him. Navier accepts the divorce on one condition: that she be allowed to remarry Heinrey (Lee Jong-suk), the crown prince of the Western Kingdom, a man who, in the source material, can secretly turn into a bird.

The Korean posters carry Navier’s line, 재혼 승인을 요구합니다, which translates as “I demand approval to remarry.” In Japan, the series title is that sentence: 再婚承認を要求します. The marketing has put the counter-offer, not the betrayal, at the center of the show, and that is the sharpest thing about this K-drama. In rofan, the webtoon shorthand for romance fantasy, a heroine’s private life is also a matter of state, and Disney’s own guide to the series says as much: romantic gestures here are tangled up with political motives.

The teaser trailer sets up the contract before it breaks. Sovieshu promises Navier that whatever happens, she is his only wife. Then Rashta arrives, Sovieshu announces the divorce, and Navier answers with her demand. Heinrey moves closer to comfort her, and Sovieshu, the man who pushed her away, cannot hide his jealousy. The premise suggests a story less about who loves whom than about who gets to sign off on whose next marriage.

Director Cho Su-won, known for Pinocchio and Still 17, made the most visible choice and has been open about the risk. The empire is Western in costume and setting, the production filmed in Prague, and every character keeps the name the readers know. At the world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, he raised the question himself: “I think some people may wonder why the costumes and the setting are Western.” Keeping Navier, Sovieshu, Heinrey and Rashta as they were in the webtoon, he said, “was the biggest reason.” He also admitted the pressure: “Honestly, I’m a little afraid of the original’s fans. How to convince them was my biggest worry.”

Cho did not promise a seamless translation. He warned that there may be awkward, cringe-inducing moments, and said he hoped viewers would get past them little by little. He expected comments comparing the series to other shows, and online reaction to the teaser obliged: some viewers have already called it “a Joseon Bridgerton.” He credited the production company, Studio N, and the cast for helping him hold the line, and said he thinks this kind of world suits Disney+.

The cast describe the same problem from inside. Ju Ji-hoon said that turning a made-up fantasy into live action makes viewers picture somewhere medieval and see a human class system the script never actually invented, so a formal, period-drama way of speaking became unavoidable. His solution came at the first table read: treat it less like realism and more like theatre or a musical. “When Hamlet is put on stage, nobody feels resistance to it, right?” he said. He also joked about playing the husband audiences will hate: it is a role that is supposed to get cursed at, so a cool reaction meant it had come out well.

Shin Min-a, playing an empress for the first time, said the challenge was compression. The source is vast, with many episodes and characters, so betrayal, divorce and remarriage had to form a complete arc within ten episodes, with characters condensed along the way. Her first priority was that Navier earn the viewer’s sympathy. “I think a more human Navier comes through,” she said. She also admitted that wearing so many gowns was a little tiring.

Lee Jong-suk said he had assumed he would never get the chance to play a prince. Lee Se-young, after a run of good, upright roles, said she found Rashta’s appeal strong, and that Rashta’s eccentric behaviour made for plenty of embarrassing moments to film. Her casting connects the series to The Red Sleeve and The Crowned Clown, two Korean court dramas she led. Ju Ji-hoon arrives from another Disney webtoon adaptation, Light Shop, and Shin Min-a from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. The scripts are by Yeoh Geena and Hyun Choong-yeol, the writers of The Uncanny Counter.

For Disney+, the stakes are commercial as well as creative. Korean outlets describe the show as the platform’s first K-romance fantasy, and the company has given it a festival launch: the first three episodes screened in the On Screen section in Busan, where every screening sold out, and the trailer passed thirteen million views in its first forty-eight hours. The release plan reads as a bet that a webtoon fandom will follow the story to a weekly streaming schedule.

Shin Min-a said that only the opening episodes were shown at the festival, and that each character’s appeal comes through more in the second half, along with the conflict, frustration and release that K-drama fans call goguma and cider. Ju Ji-hoon told the Busan audience to expect a new flavour.

What the premise leaves open is the question the title answers too quickly. Navier’s authority came from a marriage she did not choose for love. When she negotiates her way into a second one, does she leave the system that made her an empress, or does she simply move her crown to another court?

Disney+ moved the premiere up by a day. The first four episodes arrived on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, ahead of the originally announced November 4 date, on Disney+ and, in the United States, on Hulu. Two new episodes follow every Wednesday from November 11 until the finale on November 25, for ten episodes in total. Disney’s own guide lists the original Korean audio with English subtitles and an English-dubbed version.

Is The Remarried Empress based on a webtoon? Yes. It adapts the Naver Webtoon of the same name, based on the web novel by Alphatart.

How many episodes does The Remarried Empress have? Ten, released as a four-episode premiere followed by two episodes a week.

Where can I watch The Remarried Empress? On Disney+, and in the US also on Hulu, where it is a Hulu Original.

Who is in the cast of The Remarried Empress? Shin Min-a as Navier, Ju Ji-hoon as Sovieshu, Lee Jong-suk as Heinrey and Lee Se-young as Rashta, with Lee Bong-ryun, Choi Dae-hoon and Park Ho-san in supporting roles.