Kim Yushin
On 31 December 2009, Kim Ji-young, an obscure playwright and representative of Great Works Ltd., a culture content company, filed a plagiarism lawsuit against MBC and screenwriters Kim Young-hyun and Park Sang-yeon, saying they ripped off her script for "Seondeok, Queen of Mugunghwa", an unperformed musical she said she wrote in 2005. Kim argued that the development of the story and conflict between characters were similar to her play, including discord between two major female characters, Seondeok and Mishil; a romance between Deokman and General Kim Yushin; and the story of the young Deokman wandering through a desert. The MBC drama contains all of these plot twists, which are not based on history but which Kim says she invented. Kim said she shared some of her scripts with the Korea Creative Content Agency to attract investment in the musical, and believed that's how the content was leaked. Kim asked for in compensation and an injunction banning the broadcast of the soap opera. The injunction was turned down and "Queen Seondeok" ran from May to December 2009, but the copyright infringement case continued.