Post by humblestudent2 on Oct 10, 2007 20:39:18 GMT -5
Episode 19 recap
Begins – late Saturday night, May 5, Day 27
“I confess!”
Oh-soo has just figured out Seok-jin’s secret, the secret he has been hiding from him for weeks, the key to Soon-ki’s blackmail, and the reason would ‘rather be a murderer’ than give the police his alibi. He has betrayed the trust of his boss and best friend, Oh-soo’s brother, by carrying on an affair with his wife, Choi Na-heui. She is his alibi.
Oh-soo is outside the police station, crying into his hands, in a real emotional state. Meanwhile, Seok-jin, who has been trying to keep Oh-soo and the other police in the dark about the affair, sits motionless in his cell for a while, then leaps up and starts screaming for Oh-soo and the other police to come – “I’ll confess! I’ll confess!’ he shouts frantically, as if deranged. The other members of the team get him into the interrogation room, and he making up the story of the murder as Oh-soo comes in. “I killed Soon-ki!” he shouts repeatedly. Then, sharing some of the truth, he says that he had Kyeon’s men beat Soon-ki, and he gave him money and a ticket to Hong Kong, and then he went back to the apartment, but then he thought about it and went back and killed him!!
Oh-soo and Ban look at each other: as we know, no money or plane ticket have turned up. (Or rather, they have – they turned up in a red envelope and Heui-soo is still deciding what to do with them, staring at them, wondering who sent them, while Na-heui paces in her room, stewing, knowing that she is Seok-jin’s alibi.) Oh-soo clears the rest of the cops out and tests Seok-jin, telling him (falsely) that the money and ticket were found. Seok-jin assumes they would be. He begs Oh-soo to leave Na-heui out of things – “I don’t care what happens to me.”
Oh-soo and Ban go over this. Oh-soo claims that someone must have taken the money and ticket. Ban can’t understand why Seok-jin would lie about killing Soon-ki, but Oh-soo says he’s protecting someone. At this moment, Jae-min comes running in: the lab report is in, and the pills from Seok-jin’s locker are in fact cyanide, as everyone expected. Ban wants to get the new arrest warrant, but Oh-soo wants more time to deal with the alibi issue.
“Late night for Seung-ha”
Seung-ha and Hae-in are sitting in their respective houses remembering the painful scene at the church earlier in the evening (in Episode 18). Hae-in cries as she remembers him saying, “I don’t believe in hope.” Seung-ha is not crying but is more like a sad zombie. Then he gets a cell phone call which irritates him into acation. He drives down to the river. He finds Kyeon and his underlings there, same place as last time.
Seung-ha reminds Kyeon that he had said not to contact him. Kyeon apparently thinks he is in a position to blackmail Seung-ha and that he has ammunition that will counteract Seung-ha’s knowledge of his own crimes. He thinks that Seung-ha himself killed Soon-ki and is framing Seok-jin. Seung-ha deflates Boss Kyeon quickly, informing him that he himself is Seok-jin’s lawyer. “Secretary Na ordered you to attack Kim Soon-ki. The police are looking for you. Are you going to turn yourself in?” he asks in a deadpan tone. “They might go easy on you.”
“You’re something else!” declares Kyeon with an involuntary smile of admiration. “I guess you aren’t going to turn yourself in,” Seung-ha observes. “You’re just like me,” Boss Kyeon declares, and warns Seung-ha not to trust his brain too much – that could be more dangerous than chasing money.
Seung-ha returns home, but outside his door he finds an opponent harder to dismiss than Boss Kyeon – he finds Hae-in. She asks him to walk with her, but he replies in a chilly tone that he has a lot to do. She persists: she can’t sleep. She’s so worried about Seung-ha, that he’ll get hurt or disappear. “It hurts me to think you aren’t happy. Please stop, it’s not too late.”
“I don’t care what you think,” Seung-ha begins, and she slaps him in the face. “Why do you say something you don’t even mean?” she asks. “You have to be brave, you have to turn back” or else “you’ll be trapped in darker pain than your revengeful thoughts.” “When you’re used to the dark, it doesn’t seem like pain any more,” he responds sadly, and goes in and leaves her standing alone in the darkened corridor, which is much like a tunnel.
“The Alibi Witness”
On Sunday morning, Seung-ha comes to the police station to confer with his client. Seok-jin, still trying to stop the truth about the affair from coming out at whatever cost, tells Seung-ha that he killed Soon-ki and asks him to get the case turned over to the prosecutor. Seung-ha calmly tells him that “Your friend (Oh-soo) will save you. He will do the duty of Oedipus, and.I will help your friend to end this case.”
Oh-soo calls up Heui-soo to “hear your voice”, and, really, to apologize vaguely in advance for the trouble he’s about to cause. When Heui-soo pumps Oh-soo for information about the case, Oh-soo says that Seok-jin will be cleared, which of course doesn’t make Heui-soo happy – “what do you mean he’ll be cleared?” he asks in an agitated tone.
But Oh-soo has to ring off, because the person he has arranged to meet arrives: Heui-soo’s wife. Oh-soo tells Na-heui that Seok-jin is trying to confess, that he is lying in order to protect her. But he urges her to tell the truth and prove his alibi even though “it’ll be painful for you and Heui-soo.”
“You can change destiny.”
Meanwhile another t’aekbae arrives for Oh-soo at the police station. Oh-soo hurries back from his meeting with Na-heui to open it. It’s a red envelope containing the pictures of Heui’soo removing the tracking device from Seok-jin’s car after he got back from the warehouse. The timestamp on the pictures is around the time of Soon-ki’s death. The cut-and-paste note says, in a variation on the earlier letters: “God makes destiny but you can change destiny.” Preparations are made to get the security tapes from Seok-jin’s parking garage.
Jae-min finds another cop who identifies the guy in the picture as one Min I-beom, a former cop kicked off the force for bribery who now does “personal requests” for rich people. They have an address for him. But meanwhile Heui-soo has gotten on the phone to I-Beom to tell him to hide out, so when Oh-soo gets to his address, he’s not there and he’s not answering his phone. Min-jae says he has a girlfriend who works in a bar in Gangnam.
“Thinking only of the good”
As the latest package was showing up at the police station, Seung-ha got a call from her sister’s nursing home, causing him to drop everything and race out there in great concern. She has lost consciousness from low blood sugar. When he gets out there she is getting an IV; they say she is pretty weak and they are still pretty worried about her condition. She has been worse since a middle-aged man came to see her – whom we know to be Kwang-doo.
At length Seung-heui wakes up, and basically tells him that she and her visitor understand his pain but he should give up his mastermind activities. “He understood you and felt your pain. I want you to be happy, live each day thinking only of the good. Can you do that?” He doesn’t answer her.
That night, we see Seung-ha back in the Seoul subway at the Gates of Hell poster. “Who is standing at the Gates of Hell?” he murmurs to himself. At this moment his junior partner Yeong-cheol shows up; they go for a walk to discuss things. Yeong-cheol is euphoric, obsessing about the success of their great work of revenge. Smiling and stammering, he goes on about how they are “finally finding justice” and tells Tae-seong how great he is. “I’m sure Tae-hoon is happy. Aren’t you happy?”1
Seung-ha tells Yeong-cheol gently, “You’ve done your part.” Now he can get out of it and go back to his normal life. Seung-ha will help him get back to Australia so he can write the novel, the “story in nature” that he had wanted to. But Yeong-cheol won’t have it. His eyes wide, his smile a grimace, he says he won’t leave, he’ll stay till the end, and starts ranting about what a nappeun nom Oh-soo is and how he wants to watch him suffer.
“The Alibi Witness”
When Oh-soo enters the squadroom, the rest of the team is there – with Choi Na-heui. She has come in to testify and save Seok-jin. “Thank you, sister-in-law,” he says. In the interrogation, she says Seok-jin he was with her until 3 AM. She had called because a man came to the house with a photo of the two of them together. They had thought that Soon-ki, who had been blackmailing them, was behind it. But Seok-jin couldn’t have killed Soon-ki himself.
Coming out – it is Monday morning now – Na-heui tells Oh-soo she is sorry for everything. Oh-soo remembers Hae-in’s analysis of the Two of Swords, Seok-jin’s card – that there was hope, but someone else would have to come forward and help.
Meanwhile Heui-soo has been trying to find out where Na-heui was all night and has already asked her mother about it. Now he takes a call from her. He is angry – “Where have you been all night? Why were you at the police station?” Na-heui doesn’t want to discuss it right now.
Seung-ha, talking with his client again, tells Seok-jin that Na-heui has given testimony that clears him of murder. Seok-jin claims that Na-heui is lying, but Seung-ha responds that “She was being brave for you, so you have to try your hardest to –“ At this point it strikes him that this is uncomfortably close to what Hae-in was telling him. He is telling Seok-jin that he has to show courage matching Na-heui’s, and to come out of jail, yet he himself has spurned Hae-in’s brave efforts.
Anyway, Seung-ha vigorously argues to Chief Ban for dropping the murder charge. “He could have hired Kyeon Jong-cheol to poison Kim Soon-ki,” Ban suggests, but Seung-ha shreds this idea: in that case Kyeon Jong-cheol would have the pills and they wouldn’t be in Secretary Na’s locker. The pills, which were found in Seok-jin’s own dietary supplements bottle, just prove that someone is trying to frame him.
“He looked like a nice guy”
Feeling a sense of obligation to his brother, whose cuckolding he has brought to the attention of the police, Oh-soo goes to Heui-soo’s office to explain and to apologize. Heui-soo has heard that Na-heui spent the night at the police station, and asks why. The alibi witness who was with Seok-jin that night was Na-heui, says Oh-soo. “So? (Keuraeseo?)” snaps Heui-soo. Oh-soo says that he asked her to give evidence because there was no other way to clear Seok-jin. At this point Heui-soo angrily slaps Oh-soo’s face, yelling, “You should have asked me about it! You don’t care what happens to me!” At this point the Congressman comes in, and Oh-soo leaves.
Meanwhile Min-jae has found a woman – I think part of Heui-soo’s entourage – who remembers seeing Min I-beom at the airport (when he gave Heui-soo the rental car key. Presumably Heui-soo needed the key so that when he came back from Jeju he would have a means of transportation all ready.)
Heui-soo gets a phone call, apparently from the elusive I-beom, and asks, “what were the police asking about?” He hangs up and tries to reassure himself that “It’s okay … there’s no problem.”
Oh-soo goes out to the library to meet Hae-in who has had another vision. The previous night, she was praying for help and was granted a supplemental reading on the handkerchief. She got a good look of the killer putting the poisoned cigarette in Soon-ki’s mouth. Oh-soo asked what he looked like. “He looked like a nice guy,” she says. “He wore a suit and he had his hair combed back.”
At this point, Hae-in broaches a delicate subject: “Detective Kang, do you know who Jeong Tae-seong is?” Yes, says Oh-soo, but he can’t prove it. “I have kind of an idea myself, but I can’t tell you,” says Hae-in sadly. (It seems clear to me that each of them knows that the other one is thinking of the same person.) “I don’t know how I can stop him.” Then she asks Oh-soo, “Do you resent him?” which seems like a funny question, since Tae-seong has already presided over the deaths of two of Oh-soo’s best friends, but in fact Oh-soo responds that “I keep seeing myself in him.”
Na-heui eventually comes home, and Heui-soo berates her – of course the truth is that he is much more angry at her for clearing Seok-jin than for having the affair. “Did you have to protect Seok-jin by hurting me?” he asks. He tells her she can stay at the hotel for the time being. Na-heui says there’s no point: “You won’t be able to forgive me, so we might as well tell our parents.” “It doesn’t matter!” Heui-soo barks. “Whether I forgive you or don’t forgive you, I’m not divorcing you.”
Later that night, Congressman Kang endorses this: “You can’t get a divorce now, it would ruin our family’s reputation. Go abroad with your wife – that’s the way to hush things up.” Heui-soo makes some remarks about how his father had hushed up his own problems with his wife by living apart from her for 15 years and never divorcing her. “I’ll do as you say,” he assures his father. “I’ve already become more like you.”
“The Duty of Oedipus”
Also on Monday night Oh-soo goes out to Soon-ki’s gravesite, apologizes to him for everything, and goes out drinking. After a while he calls Seung-ha and of course they meet. “Are you satisfied now?” asks Oh-soo, more weary than furious at this point. “I want to ask you for forgiveness but I see the faces of the dead, I want to hate you but I see your brother and your mother. I see me when I see you.”
Seung-ha reacts scornfully, saying “your will to arrest the mastermind is gone. You’re scared to find the truth.” “I’m going to get you,” says Oh-soo. “But I’m just not happy about it any more.” This seems to be pretty much what Seung-ha himself is feeling underneath, but he won’t admit it: “I’m glad to hear that. You won’t let me down,” says Seung-ha. He shows none of his doubts to Oh-soo, but alone in his apartment later, surveying Seoul at night from his window, he mutters, “There's no way to stop it now.”
Meanwhile Kang Oh-soo realizes something very disquieting about Heui-soo’s behavior. He remembers that when he told Heui-soo that Na-heui had been with Seok-jin at the time of the murder, he had just asked, “Keuraeseo?” and then slapped him when it was clear that Na-heui had actually testified about it. He didn’t ask “What was she doing with him?” or any of the questions you would normally expect. That sounds as if he already knew about the affair, but when did he find it out then? Suppose he knew about the affair even before the murder? That would be a motive. And… it would explain why Hae-in saw a nice-looking man in a suit, with his hair combed back, a man to whom Soon-ki had used honorifics.
Oh-soo calls Heui-soo, who apologizes for slapping him. Oh-soo asks if his brother knew about the affair already. “No.” Then why didn’t you ask about it? Heui-soo claims that on hearing that the fact that the two of them together conveyed the truth of the affair automatically. Oh-soo doesn’t seem convinced by this at all, and asks when Heui-soo’s flight to Jeju was. “3:30”, Heui-soo tells him. “Am I a suspect?” Oh-soo says it’s all just routine.
But Oh-soo then calls the Hotel in Jeju. They tell him that Heui-soo checked in at 6 PM but then stayed in his room all evening because he wasn’t feeling good, and asked not to be disturbed the entire time. Very apprehensive, he goes to meet Hae-in at the library. He shows her a picture – it is the one from Soon-ki’s bag, the one that shows Na-heui leaving the house, but at the right edge her husband is coming out the door behind her. This is the figure he points to. “That’s not him, is it?” he asks. But of course it is. He protests for a while – looking for some way that it’s a mistake. But there’s no way. He takes off, remembering Seung-ha’s words to him: “I wonder what decision you will make when you find out the truth.
“Your decisions are wrong”
On Tuesday morning, Oh Seung-ha comes in to work and seeks Kwang-doo there, whom he hasn’t seen for three days. Kwang-doo is in a very somber mood. “I went to see your sister,” he says. “Her health got worse,” Seung-ha says. “Consult me in the future.” But Kwang-doo’s next words give Seung-ha a jolt: it’s clear that Kwang-doo now knows who Seung-ha is. He regrets not following up on the young Tae-seong’s welfare 12 years ago. “But your decisions are wrong,” he says. “You can’t give up justice because the world was not fair to you.” He becomes the third or fourth person Seung-ha cares about and respects to get on his case for his masterminding, the others being Seung-heui and Hae-in and you can decide whether to count Oh-soo or not. “I’ll be here for you,” says Kwang-doo, for whenever the boy Tae-seong decides he wants to come out.
(Meanwhile, Boss Kyeon calls Congressman Kang. Things are too hot for him and he’s leaving for China tonight. And he has a “present” for him. He tells him that Oh Seung-ha really is Jeong Tae-seong.2)
Seung-ha then goes to court where his other client, Kim Jeong-yeon, is awaiting her verdict in the case of Dae-shik’s death. She gets probation. A guy in the audience, young, with a roundish face and short hair – looks daggers at Seung-ha on hearing this, and follows him with his eyes as he leaves the courtroom. This guy was at the earlier hearing in the same case in Episode 17, but he was in an earlier scene also. You get 500 points if you can remember the scene, and 2000 points if you remember his name. (Answer in footnote 3)
“Gloves and Scissors”
Meanwhile, the police actually did find one of Yeong-cheol’s fingerprints on the pay phone at the site of Joon-p’yo’s sago. This is enough for a search warrant. The whole team, including Oh-soo who is supposedly on suspension, goes over there. The first thing they see on getting in is a huge black-and-white photo of Tae-hoon and his best friend Yeong-cheol, looking happy and unaware of the coming disasters. They find tarot cards and black gloves. They find scissors which, as in Hae-in’s vision, have red threads wrapped around the handles. They find a camera… Oh-soo sees a crack in the lens.
Yeong-cheol then comes back from his doings, sees the cops in his apartment, runs, chased by Oh-soo, and dashes headlong down the stairs, slips, tumbles down a flight, and hurts himself! “Call an ambulance!” yells Oh-soo … and the episode is over.
Episode ends, Tuesday afternoon, May 8, Day 30
(1) As to whether Tae-hoon would be happy, it's worth noting that Tae-hoon confronted Oh-soo about their bullying of Yeong-cheol when he saw that they were provoking this sensitive youth to carrying a knife and contemplating violence. The knife that Tae-hoon was killed with was taken out of Yeong-cheol's hand. Perhaps Tae-hoon would be happier if Yeong-cheol had just written his novel.
(2) I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know how or when Boss Kyeon found this out. Is it possible that it came up in the old cabaret days? Soo-gon told Hae-in in Episode 18 that when Seung-ha was in the hospital with malnutrition he babbled strange things. I have no reason to believe that Kyeon visited “Seung-ha” in the hospital, but maybe Soo-gon repeated something he said that he then forget but Kyeon remembered? That’s just speculation on my part though.
(3) For the answers, highlight the area from here --> The guy’s name is Yong-goo. He had a scene in Episode 6, where you couldn't even see his face because of the camera angle. He worked for Dae-shik in the loan shark business. He was the loyal guy who turned over Dae-shik’s records to Oh-soo, and told him who Sora’s mother was. <--- to here
Begins – late Saturday night, May 5, Day 27
“I confess!”
Oh-soo has just figured out Seok-jin’s secret, the secret he has been hiding from him for weeks, the key to Soon-ki’s blackmail, and the reason would ‘rather be a murderer’ than give the police his alibi. He has betrayed the trust of his boss and best friend, Oh-soo’s brother, by carrying on an affair with his wife, Choi Na-heui. She is his alibi.
Oh-soo is outside the police station, crying into his hands, in a real emotional state. Meanwhile, Seok-jin, who has been trying to keep Oh-soo and the other police in the dark about the affair, sits motionless in his cell for a while, then leaps up and starts screaming for Oh-soo and the other police to come – “I’ll confess! I’ll confess!’ he shouts frantically, as if deranged. The other members of the team get him into the interrogation room, and he making up the story of the murder as Oh-soo comes in. “I killed Soon-ki!” he shouts repeatedly. Then, sharing some of the truth, he says that he had Kyeon’s men beat Soon-ki, and he gave him money and a ticket to Hong Kong, and then he went back to the apartment, but then he thought about it and went back and killed him!!
Oh-soo and Ban look at each other: as we know, no money or plane ticket have turned up. (Or rather, they have – they turned up in a red envelope and Heui-soo is still deciding what to do with them, staring at them, wondering who sent them, while Na-heui paces in her room, stewing, knowing that she is Seok-jin’s alibi.) Oh-soo clears the rest of the cops out and tests Seok-jin, telling him (falsely) that the money and ticket were found. Seok-jin assumes they would be. He begs Oh-soo to leave Na-heui out of things – “I don’t care what happens to me.”
Oh-soo and Ban go over this. Oh-soo claims that someone must have taken the money and ticket. Ban can’t understand why Seok-jin would lie about killing Soon-ki, but Oh-soo says he’s protecting someone. At this moment, Jae-min comes running in: the lab report is in, and the pills from Seok-jin’s locker are in fact cyanide, as everyone expected. Ban wants to get the new arrest warrant, but Oh-soo wants more time to deal with the alibi issue.
“Late night for Seung-ha”
Seung-ha and Hae-in are sitting in their respective houses remembering the painful scene at the church earlier in the evening (in Episode 18). Hae-in cries as she remembers him saying, “I don’t believe in hope.” Seung-ha is not crying but is more like a sad zombie. Then he gets a cell phone call which irritates him into acation. He drives down to the river. He finds Kyeon and his underlings there, same place as last time.
Seung-ha reminds Kyeon that he had said not to contact him. Kyeon apparently thinks he is in a position to blackmail Seung-ha and that he has ammunition that will counteract Seung-ha’s knowledge of his own crimes. He thinks that Seung-ha himself killed Soon-ki and is framing Seok-jin. Seung-ha deflates Boss Kyeon quickly, informing him that he himself is Seok-jin’s lawyer. “Secretary Na ordered you to attack Kim Soon-ki. The police are looking for you. Are you going to turn yourself in?” he asks in a deadpan tone. “They might go easy on you.”
“You’re something else!” declares Kyeon with an involuntary smile of admiration. “I guess you aren’t going to turn yourself in,” Seung-ha observes. “You’re just like me,” Boss Kyeon declares, and warns Seung-ha not to trust his brain too much – that could be more dangerous than chasing money.
Seung-ha returns home, but outside his door he finds an opponent harder to dismiss than Boss Kyeon – he finds Hae-in. She asks him to walk with her, but he replies in a chilly tone that he has a lot to do. She persists: she can’t sleep. She’s so worried about Seung-ha, that he’ll get hurt or disappear. “It hurts me to think you aren’t happy. Please stop, it’s not too late.”
“I don’t care what you think,” Seung-ha begins, and she slaps him in the face. “Why do you say something you don’t even mean?” she asks. “You have to be brave, you have to turn back” or else “you’ll be trapped in darker pain than your revengeful thoughts.” “When you’re used to the dark, it doesn’t seem like pain any more,” he responds sadly, and goes in and leaves her standing alone in the darkened corridor, which is much like a tunnel.
“The Alibi Witness”
On Sunday morning, Seung-ha comes to the police station to confer with his client. Seok-jin, still trying to stop the truth about the affair from coming out at whatever cost, tells Seung-ha that he killed Soon-ki and asks him to get the case turned over to the prosecutor. Seung-ha calmly tells him that “Your friend (Oh-soo) will save you. He will do the duty of Oedipus, and.I will help your friend to end this case.”
Oh-soo calls up Heui-soo to “hear your voice”, and, really, to apologize vaguely in advance for the trouble he’s about to cause. When Heui-soo pumps Oh-soo for information about the case, Oh-soo says that Seok-jin will be cleared, which of course doesn’t make Heui-soo happy – “what do you mean he’ll be cleared?” he asks in an agitated tone.
But Oh-soo has to ring off, because the person he has arranged to meet arrives: Heui-soo’s wife. Oh-soo tells Na-heui that Seok-jin is trying to confess, that he is lying in order to protect her. But he urges her to tell the truth and prove his alibi even though “it’ll be painful for you and Heui-soo.”
“You can change destiny.”
Meanwhile another t’aekbae arrives for Oh-soo at the police station. Oh-soo hurries back from his meeting with Na-heui to open it. It’s a red envelope containing the pictures of Heui’soo removing the tracking device from Seok-jin’s car after he got back from the warehouse. The timestamp on the pictures is around the time of Soon-ki’s death. The cut-and-paste note says, in a variation on the earlier letters: “God makes destiny but you can change destiny.” Preparations are made to get the security tapes from Seok-jin’s parking garage.
Jae-min finds another cop who identifies the guy in the picture as one Min I-beom, a former cop kicked off the force for bribery who now does “personal requests” for rich people. They have an address for him. But meanwhile Heui-soo has gotten on the phone to I-Beom to tell him to hide out, so when Oh-soo gets to his address, he’s not there and he’s not answering his phone. Min-jae says he has a girlfriend who works in a bar in Gangnam.
“Thinking only of the good”
As the latest package was showing up at the police station, Seung-ha got a call from her sister’s nursing home, causing him to drop everything and race out there in great concern. She has lost consciousness from low blood sugar. When he gets out there she is getting an IV; they say she is pretty weak and they are still pretty worried about her condition. She has been worse since a middle-aged man came to see her – whom we know to be Kwang-doo.
At length Seung-heui wakes up, and basically tells him that she and her visitor understand his pain but he should give up his mastermind activities. “He understood you and felt your pain. I want you to be happy, live each day thinking only of the good. Can you do that?” He doesn’t answer her.
That night, we see Seung-ha back in the Seoul subway at the Gates of Hell poster. “Who is standing at the Gates of Hell?” he murmurs to himself. At this moment his junior partner Yeong-cheol shows up; they go for a walk to discuss things. Yeong-cheol is euphoric, obsessing about the success of their great work of revenge. Smiling and stammering, he goes on about how they are “finally finding justice” and tells Tae-seong how great he is. “I’m sure Tae-hoon is happy. Aren’t you happy?”1
Seung-ha tells Yeong-cheol gently, “You’ve done your part.” Now he can get out of it and go back to his normal life. Seung-ha will help him get back to Australia so he can write the novel, the “story in nature” that he had wanted to. But Yeong-cheol won’t have it. His eyes wide, his smile a grimace, he says he won’t leave, he’ll stay till the end, and starts ranting about what a nappeun nom Oh-soo is and how he wants to watch him suffer.
“The Alibi Witness”
When Oh-soo enters the squadroom, the rest of the team is there – with Choi Na-heui. She has come in to testify and save Seok-jin. “Thank you, sister-in-law,” he says. In the interrogation, she says Seok-jin he was with her until 3 AM. She had called because a man came to the house with a photo of the two of them together. They had thought that Soon-ki, who had been blackmailing them, was behind it. But Seok-jin couldn’t have killed Soon-ki himself.
Coming out – it is Monday morning now – Na-heui tells Oh-soo she is sorry for everything. Oh-soo remembers Hae-in’s analysis of the Two of Swords, Seok-jin’s card – that there was hope, but someone else would have to come forward and help.
Meanwhile Heui-soo has been trying to find out where Na-heui was all night and has already asked her mother about it. Now he takes a call from her. He is angry – “Where have you been all night? Why were you at the police station?” Na-heui doesn’t want to discuss it right now.
Seung-ha, talking with his client again, tells Seok-jin that Na-heui has given testimony that clears him of murder. Seok-jin claims that Na-heui is lying, but Seung-ha responds that “She was being brave for you, so you have to try your hardest to –“ At this point it strikes him that this is uncomfortably close to what Hae-in was telling him. He is telling Seok-jin that he has to show courage matching Na-heui’s, and to come out of jail, yet he himself has spurned Hae-in’s brave efforts.
Anyway, Seung-ha vigorously argues to Chief Ban for dropping the murder charge. “He could have hired Kyeon Jong-cheol to poison Kim Soon-ki,” Ban suggests, but Seung-ha shreds this idea: in that case Kyeon Jong-cheol would have the pills and they wouldn’t be in Secretary Na’s locker. The pills, which were found in Seok-jin’s own dietary supplements bottle, just prove that someone is trying to frame him.
“He looked like a nice guy”
Feeling a sense of obligation to his brother, whose cuckolding he has brought to the attention of the police, Oh-soo goes to Heui-soo’s office to explain and to apologize. Heui-soo has heard that Na-heui spent the night at the police station, and asks why. The alibi witness who was with Seok-jin that night was Na-heui, says Oh-soo. “So? (Keuraeseo?)” snaps Heui-soo. Oh-soo says that he asked her to give evidence because there was no other way to clear Seok-jin. At this point Heui-soo angrily slaps Oh-soo’s face, yelling, “You should have asked me about it! You don’t care what happens to me!” At this point the Congressman comes in, and Oh-soo leaves.
Meanwhile Min-jae has found a woman – I think part of Heui-soo’s entourage – who remembers seeing Min I-beom at the airport (when he gave Heui-soo the rental car key. Presumably Heui-soo needed the key so that when he came back from Jeju he would have a means of transportation all ready.)
Heui-soo gets a phone call, apparently from the elusive I-beom, and asks, “what were the police asking about?” He hangs up and tries to reassure himself that “It’s okay … there’s no problem.”
Oh-soo goes out to the library to meet Hae-in who has had another vision. The previous night, she was praying for help and was granted a supplemental reading on the handkerchief. She got a good look of the killer putting the poisoned cigarette in Soon-ki’s mouth. Oh-soo asked what he looked like. “He looked like a nice guy,” she says. “He wore a suit and he had his hair combed back.”
At this point, Hae-in broaches a delicate subject: “Detective Kang, do you know who Jeong Tae-seong is?” Yes, says Oh-soo, but he can’t prove it. “I have kind of an idea myself, but I can’t tell you,” says Hae-in sadly. (It seems clear to me that each of them knows that the other one is thinking of the same person.) “I don’t know how I can stop him.” Then she asks Oh-soo, “Do you resent him?” which seems like a funny question, since Tae-seong has already presided over the deaths of two of Oh-soo’s best friends, but in fact Oh-soo responds that “I keep seeing myself in him.”
Na-heui eventually comes home, and Heui-soo berates her – of course the truth is that he is much more angry at her for clearing Seok-jin than for having the affair. “Did you have to protect Seok-jin by hurting me?” he asks. He tells her she can stay at the hotel for the time being. Na-heui says there’s no point: “You won’t be able to forgive me, so we might as well tell our parents.” “It doesn’t matter!” Heui-soo barks. “Whether I forgive you or don’t forgive you, I’m not divorcing you.”
Later that night, Congressman Kang endorses this: “You can’t get a divorce now, it would ruin our family’s reputation. Go abroad with your wife – that’s the way to hush things up.” Heui-soo makes some remarks about how his father had hushed up his own problems with his wife by living apart from her for 15 years and never divorcing her. “I’ll do as you say,” he assures his father. “I’ve already become more like you.”
“The Duty of Oedipus”
Also on Monday night Oh-soo goes out to Soon-ki’s gravesite, apologizes to him for everything, and goes out drinking. After a while he calls Seung-ha and of course they meet. “Are you satisfied now?” asks Oh-soo, more weary than furious at this point. “I want to ask you for forgiveness but I see the faces of the dead, I want to hate you but I see your brother and your mother. I see me when I see you.”
Seung-ha reacts scornfully, saying “your will to arrest the mastermind is gone. You’re scared to find the truth.” “I’m going to get you,” says Oh-soo. “But I’m just not happy about it any more.” This seems to be pretty much what Seung-ha himself is feeling underneath, but he won’t admit it: “I’m glad to hear that. You won’t let me down,” says Seung-ha. He shows none of his doubts to Oh-soo, but alone in his apartment later, surveying Seoul at night from his window, he mutters, “There's no way to stop it now.”
Meanwhile Kang Oh-soo realizes something very disquieting about Heui-soo’s behavior. He remembers that when he told Heui-soo that Na-heui had been with Seok-jin at the time of the murder, he had just asked, “Keuraeseo?” and then slapped him when it was clear that Na-heui had actually testified about it. He didn’t ask “What was she doing with him?” or any of the questions you would normally expect. That sounds as if he already knew about the affair, but when did he find it out then? Suppose he knew about the affair even before the murder? That would be a motive. And… it would explain why Hae-in saw a nice-looking man in a suit, with his hair combed back, a man to whom Soon-ki had used honorifics.
Oh-soo calls Heui-soo, who apologizes for slapping him. Oh-soo asks if his brother knew about the affair already. “No.” Then why didn’t you ask about it? Heui-soo claims that on hearing that the fact that the two of them together conveyed the truth of the affair automatically. Oh-soo doesn’t seem convinced by this at all, and asks when Heui-soo’s flight to Jeju was. “3:30”, Heui-soo tells him. “Am I a suspect?” Oh-soo says it’s all just routine.
But Oh-soo then calls the Hotel in Jeju. They tell him that Heui-soo checked in at 6 PM but then stayed in his room all evening because he wasn’t feeling good, and asked not to be disturbed the entire time. Very apprehensive, he goes to meet Hae-in at the library. He shows her a picture – it is the one from Soon-ki’s bag, the one that shows Na-heui leaving the house, but at the right edge her husband is coming out the door behind her. This is the figure he points to. “That’s not him, is it?” he asks. But of course it is. He protests for a while – looking for some way that it’s a mistake. But there’s no way. He takes off, remembering Seung-ha’s words to him: “I wonder what decision you will make when you find out the truth.
“Your decisions are wrong”
On Tuesday morning, Oh Seung-ha comes in to work and seeks Kwang-doo there, whom he hasn’t seen for three days. Kwang-doo is in a very somber mood. “I went to see your sister,” he says. “Her health got worse,” Seung-ha says. “Consult me in the future.” But Kwang-doo’s next words give Seung-ha a jolt: it’s clear that Kwang-doo now knows who Seung-ha is. He regrets not following up on the young Tae-seong’s welfare 12 years ago. “But your decisions are wrong,” he says. “You can’t give up justice because the world was not fair to you.” He becomes the third or fourth person Seung-ha cares about and respects to get on his case for his masterminding, the others being Seung-heui and Hae-in and you can decide whether to count Oh-soo or not. “I’ll be here for you,” says Kwang-doo, for whenever the boy Tae-seong decides he wants to come out.
(Meanwhile, Boss Kyeon calls Congressman Kang. Things are too hot for him and he’s leaving for China tonight. And he has a “present” for him. He tells him that Oh Seung-ha really is Jeong Tae-seong.2)
Seung-ha then goes to court where his other client, Kim Jeong-yeon, is awaiting her verdict in the case of Dae-shik’s death. She gets probation. A guy in the audience, young, with a roundish face and short hair – looks daggers at Seung-ha on hearing this, and follows him with his eyes as he leaves the courtroom. This guy was at the earlier hearing in the same case in Episode 17, but he was in an earlier scene also. You get 500 points if you can remember the scene, and 2000 points if you remember his name. (Answer in footnote 3)
“Gloves and Scissors”
Meanwhile, the police actually did find one of Yeong-cheol’s fingerprints on the pay phone at the site of Joon-p’yo’s sago. This is enough for a search warrant. The whole team, including Oh-soo who is supposedly on suspension, goes over there. The first thing they see on getting in is a huge black-and-white photo of Tae-hoon and his best friend Yeong-cheol, looking happy and unaware of the coming disasters. They find tarot cards and black gloves. They find scissors which, as in Hae-in’s vision, have red threads wrapped around the handles. They find a camera… Oh-soo sees a crack in the lens.
Yeong-cheol then comes back from his doings, sees the cops in his apartment, runs, chased by Oh-soo, and dashes headlong down the stairs, slips, tumbles down a flight, and hurts himself! “Call an ambulance!” yells Oh-soo … and the episode is over.
Episode ends, Tuesday afternoon, May 8, Day 30
(1) As to whether Tae-hoon would be happy, it's worth noting that Tae-hoon confronted Oh-soo about their bullying of Yeong-cheol when he saw that they were provoking this sensitive youth to carrying a knife and contemplating violence. The knife that Tae-hoon was killed with was taken out of Yeong-cheol's hand. Perhaps Tae-hoon would be happier if Yeong-cheol had just written his novel.
(2) I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know how or when Boss Kyeon found this out. Is it possible that it came up in the old cabaret days? Soo-gon told Hae-in in Episode 18 that when Seung-ha was in the hospital with malnutrition he babbled strange things. I have no reason to believe that Kyeon visited “Seung-ha” in the hospital, but maybe Soo-gon repeated something he said that he then forget but Kyeon remembered? That’s just speculation on my part though.
(3) For the answers, highlight the area from here --> The guy’s name is Yong-goo. He had a scene in Episode 6, where you couldn't even see his face because of the camera angle. He worked for Dae-shik in the loan shark business. He was the loyal guy who turned over Dae-shik’s records to Oh-soo, and told him who Sora’s mother was. <--- to here
