Post by humblestudent2 on Oct 11, 2007 20:51:22 GMT -5
Final Episode (Episode 20) recap
Note: a soju party, therapy session, and discussion will begin immediately after this recap
Begins: Tuesday afternoon, May 8, Day 30
“Tuesday: Kang Oh-soo”
At the end of Episode 19, Yeong-cheol fell down the stairs and, as it turns out, broke his arm when he came home while the police team was searching his apartment. Oh-soo is with him in the hospital when he recovers consciousness. Yeong-cheol, who, by the way, is not under arrest, starts to put on his clothes and get ready to leave.
Oh-soo tells him he should rest, but Yeong-cheol doesn’t even listen to him. “I hear Soon-ki is dead,” he says. “I guess I don’t have to follow you guys any more.” He hints that in the old days he got good at following Oh-soo’s gang around so as not to be caught by them. This has contributed to his skill as Seung-ha’s spy and cameraman. “Who killed Soon-ki anyway?” he asks Oh-soo as he leaves. “Do you know?”
In fact, he does. He is pretty sure that the killer is his own brother Heui-soo.
Oh-soo goes home and finds his brother sitting there in a despondent and apprehensive mood. Heui-soo probes Oh-soo about whether it’s true that Seok-jin has been cleared of the murder. Oh-soo responds with a police-type warning: “You have to answer my questions truthfully.”
Oh-soo points out that Heui-soo had time to come back from Jeju and commit the murder and get back there, during the time when he was supposedly not feeling well and keeping to his room. “You would have felt bad if you knew about the affair,” says Oh-soo. “And you had access to Seok-jin’s things.”
“You think it was me?” asks Heui-soo sharply. “I hope it wasn’t,” says Oh-soo. Heui-soo puts on a show of being terribly insulted. “Then it’s okay to check the security tapes at the airport?” asks Oh-soo. That hits home; Heui-soo looks visibly shaken. “Min I-beom (Heui-soo’s hired underling) will be arrested soon,” says Oh-soo. That hit too. Looking really guilty indeed, Heui-soo blusters, “Even if I am on the camera it doesn’t prove anything…”
Oh-soo knows it now and Heui-soo knows he knows. Oh-soo asks why he did it. Heui-soo plays all the cards he has left. He says that it’s all just assumption and that Oh-soo should just forget about it, or let everyone think it was the tarot card guy, because “we’re brothers” after all. Now Oh-soo gets to decide whether he will cover up murder for his brother, as his father did for him 12 years ago. “I wish you’d run far away,” says Oh-soo. “But I know better than anyone else that people can forget the past, but the past won’t forget them.”
Oh-soo goes off, feeling miserable, and once in his car he just starts sobbing loudly. Heui-soo, meanwhile, orders his current secretary to get him and his wife two plane tickets for Paris, leaving the country as quickly as possible.1
Meanwhile another t’aekbae has come. Oh-soo who is down at the station by now opens it. This time the red envelope contains the “Wheel of Fortune” tarot and a stack of four photographs and a cut-and-paste note, saying, “When the trumpet sound stops and the new world comes, the Gate of Hell will close its door.” The photographs are all pictures of Oh-soo working as a detective; the most recent one is from the Tarot period and shows him getting something from a vending machine, I think the one in the subway station.
Oh-soo quickly spreads out these four photos with the earlier photos and it seems that the appearance of a finger pointing at Oh-soo is supposed to be even more obvious, but I’ll have to wait to see the DVDs before I understand this. Anyway none of that matters, except that in one of the photos there is a visible defect which might be from a crack in the camera lens and which might prove that the photo was taken by Yeong-cheol’s camera.
“Tuesday: Jeong Tae-seong”
Oh Seung-ha was talking with Team Chief Ban about his client Seok-jin's statements when the word came in about the events at Yeong-cheol's apartment. He hears Ban say "How did Yeong-cheol get hurt?" and a look of concern washes over his face. He is in his car, maybe heading for the hospital, when he gets a call on his cell phone that we can see he doesn't want to take. It's Congressman Kang, requesting a meeting.
They meet for a chilly lunch in an otherwise empty dining room at the hotel. Kang is very self-possessed. "You kept your promise," he says. "You came back for me." He knows that Seung-ha is Jeong Tae-seong.
Mr. Kang excuses his actions 12 years ago, covering up Oh-soo's crime, by saying that people have misperceptions because of the situations they're in. He says he did his duty as a parent. "You never looked back on the pain you caused a mother and a child," retorts Seung-ha/Tae-seong. "You ruined a mother's life."
"What about you?" asks Mr. Kang calmly. "You also are ruining people's lives for your own purposes. You also believe that a crooked line is straight." "You don't have the right to judge me," answers Seung-ha. They look at each other and really seem very similar in demeanor. Seung-ha is not admitting that there is any justice in what Mr. Kang is saying, but as he leaves he seems a bit affected by it all.
Seung-ha then goes by Yeong-cheol's apartment; the police have left, and he's back at home. Yeong-cheol answers the door and is worried that Seung-ha has come here - "what if Oh-soo is outside?" Seung-ha comes in and immediately sees the picture on the wall of the smiling youths Yeong-cheol and Tae-hoon. it bothers Seung-ha somehow.
Seung-ha tries to give Yeong-cheol a plane ticket and tells him he's made arrangements for him to leave the country, he's lined up a hotel and arranged for some money for him and so on. But Yeong-cheol still won't hear of it and is very disturbed that Seung-ha is trying to "push him away". He promises that he won't reveal Seung-ha's identity, assuming that this is Seung-ha's main concern. He says he'll go to the police station tomorrow to "see Oh-soo struggle". Seung-ha can't shake him from this. His whole being is wrapped up in the great plan of revenge now. He won't leave the tunnel either.
We next see Seung-ha at the church, gazing at the crucifix and flashing back to when he recruited Yeong-cheol to be his helper. We see the Yeong-cheol of three years ago, shy, hesitant, and reserved, and the Tae-seong of three years ago, cool and confident. Yeong-cheol is amazed to see that Tae-seong is alive.and was the person who wrote to him in Australia. Tae-seong tells Yeong-cheol that they are going to put everything right. He gives him the camera, saying it belonged to "someone who died in an auto accident" - the real Seung-ha, presumably - and tells Yeong-cheol that he is going to take pictures of "important people" with it.
That was three years ago. In that time, Tae-seong has remade him in his own image; Yeong-cheol is now the distorted reflection of Seung-ha; he has been nourished on the drug of vengeance and he's hooked on it. There is not much left of the gentle guy who would have written a novel about nature. It's clear that Seung-ha sees this as well as we do.
Coming out of the church Seung-ha meets Hae-in. She smiles at him and gives him the whistle that Oh-soo gave her and tells him to "use it whenever you need me." "Aren't you scared of me?" asks Seung-ha. "Detective Kang asked the same thing," she says, and remarks on how alike they are: "You hate each other but pity and understand each other." "No, I don't pity him, I'll never forgive him," protests Seung-ha. "Yes, you have," she says - "look in your heart."
"Wednesday: the third biggest hotelier"
Yeong-cheol comes down to the police station as he said, and gives a statement in which he doesn't admit anything of importance. He says he bought the tarot cards himself at the café; though Joo-heui doesn't remember him, that's because he's just not a memorable person.
Behind the one-way glass, with Oh-soo, is Hwang Dae-bil. The police have tried to keep secret the fact that he's co-operating with them. As he listens to Yeong-cheol speak, he becomes pretty sure that he is the guy who spoke to him on the phone and guided him to Seong Joon-p'yo's location.2
He doesn't admit to being involved in t'aekbae deliveries. When Ban tells him to tell the truth, he looks unerringly at Oh-soo's hidden location and says, "It would be nice if you had told the truth, but it's too late now."
They don't believe that they have enough to hold Yeong-cheol yet, though they think that would change if the photographs can be matched with Yeong-cheol's camera.
Then Jae-min calls: Min I-beom has turned up at the bar that he has been staking out. He is getting back up and they are about to arrest him.
Oh-soo goes off by himself with himself and hits Heui-soo's speed-dial on his cell phone, but then hangs up. He is torn between warning him and keeping quiet. He makes another stab at calling him but hangs up again...
When Seung-ha comes in to his office, Kwang-doo tells him that Hae-in stopped by; she brought him a potted plant with purple flowers and a letter in a green envelope. "People are waiting for you," says Kwang-doo, trying to coax Seung-ha out of the tunnel. "Walk forward.." The letter talks about the many nice experiences Hae-in wishes to share with Seung-ha including going out to Soo-gon's farm next spring to see the daffodils bloom. "Will that be possible?" murmurs Seung-ha to himself. "Can I turn back?"
I-beom has been brought in to the police station. He is told that the GPS system in his car can be analyzed and it will show all his locations. He quickly gives up Heui-soo, saying "I just did a favor but I didn't kill anyone."
Heui-soo is at home, trying to hurry Na-heui out of the house so they can catch a plane and get out of the country. She doesn't want to go, but he tries to guilt-trip her into going: But it's all for naught, as Jae-min and Min-jae come in and arrest him and cuff him and take him away.
Seung-ha, who is down at the station, tells Seok-jin that Heui-soo has been arrested; he is cleared of murder but will still be charged with hiring Soon-ki's beating. Seok-jin seems more stunned by Heui-soo's arrest than concerned with his own case.
Heui-soo is brought into the station through a crowd of reporters asking stupid questions. He glares at Oh-soo who is watching from a distance; Oh-soo breaks down and cries. Seung-ha watches this impassively.
“Wednesday: Chest pain”
Soon there is radio news coverage of the arrest of Kang Heui-soo, the country's third biggest hotel executive, and so on. Hae-in hears of the arrest and calls Kwang-doo, who confirms that, yes, it is Oh-soo's brother.
Yeong-cheol is eating in a diner when the report comes on the TV. He doesn’t bat an eyelash.
Congressman Kang is traveling in his car when he hears a radio news report of Heui-soo’s arrest. He grabs at his chest for a moment …
Oh-soo goes home and finds the Congressman in the living room. Mr. Kang is as close to being distraught as he ever gets. He just can't believe that Heui-soo, whom he has always thought of as a tender-hearted person, would do such of thing. He is apparently having a moment of epiphany; he feels that this whole business is because of his mistaken belief that "only the strong could be happy". He asks Oh-soo's forgiveness.
Oh-soo apologizes for being unable to protect Heui-soo, but Mr. Kang says it wasn't his fault. Oh-soo suggests that his father leave town for a while and let him deal with Heui-soo's defense and so on, but he won't do that either. He's intent on doing his duty as a parent.
But as Oh-soo drives off to get back to work, Mr. Kang grabs at his chest again and falls to the floor.
The next time Oh-soo sees him, he is in the hospital - dead. Oh-soo collapses on the body and cries great sobs. Hae-in later comes by the hospital and sees Oh-soo standing in front and reaches out and gives him a hug, but he might not even notice it - he is as motionless and expressionless as a mannequin.
From his eyrie, Seung-ha is looking out over the city, as if he could see his handiwork. Tears appear on his cheeks.
Night. We see Oh-soo alone in the great empty Kang house. Outside, Seung-ha approaches and pulls his celebratory peppermint candy from his pocket and puts it to his lips. He can’t eat it. His hand falls to his waist; he lets the candy fall to the pavement; the sound of its fall resonates like a gunshot.
“Thursday: It ends as it began”
(At this point there is a scene in the screenplay which was omitted from the program as aired. In this scene, Seung-ha goes to the nursing home and tells Seung-heui he is going away. When she asks him to say that he will be back, he does … after some hesitation.)
Seung-ha then goes by Hae-in’s house and drops off a present in a bag for Hae-in with her mom.
Seung-ha, back at his office, with the day drawing on towards night, calls Soo-gon. He is cheerful, he is out delivering vegetables, he supposes he will be rich soon. Why don’t you come out and visit this weekend with Hae-in? he asks.
But Soo-gon’s car phone battery is running down – the phone is about to die, he says – and then he is no longer there. Just Seung-ha, alone, who has now said all his good-byes.
Seung-ha’s cell phone rings – it’s Oh-soo. We don’t hear the call.
Afterward, we see Seung-ha’s reflection again in the glass of his desk; we see the purple flowers that Hae-in brought for him; he leaves them there and turns out the lights.
Meanwhile Hae-in opens the bag. It is Seung-ha’s mother’s own music box. She opens it; inside it is his mother’s ring. She holds the ring in her hands and she knows something is terribly wrong.
Then she gets a call from chief Ban. Nobody knows where Oh-soo is, but he took a pistol from storage, and the last person he called was Seung-ha. Hae-in has an idea of where he might have gone.
We see Oh-soo driving through the city with the pistol lying on the passenger seat.
As Seung-ha leaves the office and heads for his car in the twilight, intent on his own concerns, a guy with a baseball cap approaches him on the sidewalk. As they meet, the guy - it's Yong-goo (see Episode 19) - wordlessly and without warning stabs Seung-ha in the abdomen. He goes on his way. It takes a few seconds for Seung-ha to even realize what has happened - he sees the blood pouring from the wound, staining his shirt.
It doesn't bother him much - he even smiles a bit at the irony of it. He is planning to die tonight anyway. He intends to be killed by Kang Oh-soo.
I can think of several reasons why he wants this. One that it will make Oh-soo a murderer in fact and possibly get him punished as one. He has punished all the other people whom he views as accomplices in the destruction of his family by posing temptations to them and luring them into disastrous actions.3 Tempting Oh-soo to pull the trigger on him will be a fitting culmination of the scheme.
Another point is that if Oh-soo murders him to avenge all his victims it will validate Seung-ha's whole philosophy of ruthless vendetta. If Oh-soo kills Seung-ha for exterminating his family and friends, then it makes it OK for Seung-ha to have done the same thing.
Now, I’m sure Seung-ha would be imaginative enough to come up with a way that he could trap Oh-soo into trying to murdering him and failing and getting charged for it, or getting killed in the process. And maybe that’s the way the idea looked in the earliest version of the great plan. But now Seung-ha has nothing else to do with his life. He long ago abandoned hope and indeed it is a point of pride with him. His whole campaign of vengeance is justified in his mind by the idea that the crimes against his family were so great that they ripped him out of the normal world of people, beyond ordinary human laws and moral judgments. He doesn't know how to turn around and go back into the world and live like a normal person, and if he admitted that he were able to do, it would jeopardize the whole basis of his actions as Lucifer.
Anyway he is sick of lying, sick of vengeance, and sick of seeing his own handiwork around him. A life of tormenting Oh-soo might be enough for Yeong-cheol now, but it's not enough for him.
And the truth is he now believes he deserves to die.
He could of course accomplish this just by dying on the spot of his stab wound, but the momentum of the great plan carries him forward; he gets in his car and drives to the old junkyard behind the school, where he has arranged to meet Oh-soo amid the car carriers full of old Hyundaes.
Seung-ha arrives at the junkyard; the night is dark; walking unsteadily, sees OS ahead of him and arranges his suit jacket to hide his bleeding wound. He advances toward Oh-soo, who draws the gun and levels it at Seung-ha in the same place where he stood 12 years ago.
“I’ll give you what you want,” says Oh-soo. “You need me to kill you.”
“This is a great place to end things,” says Oh-soo. “Only you and I are here.”
Oh-soo holds his aim for a few seconds.
Then he raises the pistol so that it aims over Seung-ha’s head and fires it harmlessly, and points it back at Seung-ha again.
“Will the next one be real?” asks Seung-ha tauntingly.
Oh-soo isn’t ready to shoot him. “You are in hell like I am,” he says. “I made you like this. I didn’t tell the truth.” “Stop hesitating and shoot me!” orders Seung-ha, but instead Oh-soo drops the pistol to the ground.
“What are you doing?” asks Seung-ha, confused and even alarmed. “You have to end this.” He grabs up the gun from the ground and puts it in Oh-soo’s hand. “Shoot me, you can do it.” He tries to provoke Oh-soo: “I made all your friends die. I made your brother a murderer. I made your father die. Shoot me now!”
“Live,” says Oh-soo. “Try your hardest to step out of the dark tunnel, Tae-seong.”
“Give me that gun,” cries Tae-seong, now frantic. “I need to put an end to this. I can’t forgive myself.” He grabs for the gun and struggles with Oh-soo for it in the darkness, much as Tae-hoon and Oh-soo struggled over a knife in the same spot 12 years ago. It’s not clear what Tae-seong intends to even do with the gun. We can't see the gun and don't know who has it.
But then, of course, the gun goes off.
The two of them stand there, each with the same surprised look that Tae-hoon had 12 years ago when the knife went in.
Maybe this would be a good place to switch to a feel-good fanfic ending? Maybe the bullet didn’t hurt anyone? Maybe Oh-soo will tell Tae-seong, “Are you crazy? You could hurt someone with that.” And maybe he’ll say, “What the hell happened to you anyway? You're bleeding! You need an ambulance!” And Seung-ha can get patched up and later maybe Oh-soo can work with Tae-seong as a private detective, playing Paul Drake to Seung-ha’s Perry Mason. Seung-ha can get together with Hae-in, and maybe Oh-soo will notice Min-jae finally, and they can all be in a big family picture at the end of the drama!! Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be a happy ending?
But it wouldn’t be symmetrical.
No, it has to end as it began.
Oh-soo was shot. He slumps to the ground. “Don’t you die!” cries Seung-ha, but it’s no help. “Live,” croaks Oh-soo, with equal futility as Seung-ha’s own resources are ebbing fast. “Forgive me .. and you.” Oh-soo dies.
Seung-ha, in tears, begs Oh-soo to get up, crying in remorse as Oh-soo cried in remorse after killing Tae-hoon on this very spot. It’s no good. And Seung-ha is now seriously dying now. He can’t stand on his feet any more; he sits next to Oh-soo. He gets out Hae-in’s whistle and smiles at it ruefully. It won’t be used. There will be no time. There will be no next spring. “I forgive myself – and you –“ he says.
There are a few seconds of memories of happy moments – then darkness. The last of the Kang family and the last of the Jeong family, alike in so many other ways, are now alike in death.
It ends as it began 35 days ago in episode 1, with a stabbed lawyer bleeding to death, killed to avenge a victim whose assailant he defended.
It ends as it began 12 years ago in Episode 1, with death in an absurd scramble for a weapon in a junkyard, with Oh-soo playing Tae-hoon's old role, and Tae-seong playing Oh-soo's old role.
It ends as it began 12 years ago in Episode 1, with Hae-in arriving too late; all her love and all her gifts have been useless in the face of the momentum of Seung-ha's determination4 which has carried things to catastrophe. Nothing is left for her but the role of sniffer dog, the same role she played in the spring of 1995, finding the bodies of the two men she loved where she found one body before.
End of series, Thursday night, May 10, Day 32.
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(Wake and group therapy session/soju party begins here)
Man! That was a bleak ending! I haven't seen anything as bleak in a long while. Some people said back when this started that “Mawang” had sort of a grim outlook, but I wasn’t expecting this.
Personally I learned the ending a few weeks ago, and I remember going around in a real daze for a couple days. I kept saying to myself stuff like, "They're only actors! They're not real people anyway! It's only a story! It's supposed to make you feel like that, that's the cathartic role of tragedy."
Of course having everyone dead at the end is very much in the tradition of classical tragedy – look at Hamlet for example.
Anyway the point of a work like this, as with Oedipus Rex or Dante's work itself for example, is to bring out ideas about life and sin and redemption and stuff, and if the ending is shocking, maybe it will scare us all into leading better lives and getting out of our own tunnels. I sort of feel like that myself.
I was looking at the news reports about when this show aired in Korea, sort of expecting to see that it was a great sensation, but it looks like its ratings actually weren’t all that good. That’s unfortunate, because I honestly believe it’s a real classic. I don't regret one second of the time I've spent on this.
(1) I’m not sure why that would solve anything. Surely a murderer can be extradited from France to Korea, if Korea agrees not to apply the death penalty?
(2) This is a rather biased identification procedure; it would never stand up as evidence in the US courts anyway...
(3) The victims could have all saved themselves. Lawyer Kwon didn't have to pick up the knife. Dae-shik didn't have to manhandle and taunt Sora's mom when she showed up frantically looking for Sora. Joon-p'yo could have just gone to the police or for that matter published the truth about Seung-ha, but he was intent on his own plans for revenge or wealth. Soon-ki didn't have to blackmail his friend, and Seok-jin could have confessed the affair rather than plot with mobsters.
(4) Of course Seung-ha warned Oh-soo of this very thing - that the strong points of tragic heroes like Oedipus lead them on into catastrophe. He was really talking to himself, it turns out...
Note: a soju party, therapy session, and discussion will begin immediately after this recap
Begins: Tuesday afternoon, May 8, Day 30
“Tuesday: Kang Oh-soo”
At the end of Episode 19, Yeong-cheol fell down the stairs and, as it turns out, broke his arm when he came home while the police team was searching his apartment. Oh-soo is with him in the hospital when he recovers consciousness. Yeong-cheol, who, by the way, is not under arrest, starts to put on his clothes and get ready to leave.
Oh-soo tells him he should rest, but Yeong-cheol doesn’t even listen to him. “I hear Soon-ki is dead,” he says. “I guess I don’t have to follow you guys any more.” He hints that in the old days he got good at following Oh-soo’s gang around so as not to be caught by them. This has contributed to his skill as Seung-ha’s spy and cameraman. “Who killed Soon-ki anyway?” he asks Oh-soo as he leaves. “Do you know?”
In fact, he does. He is pretty sure that the killer is his own brother Heui-soo.
Oh-soo goes home and finds his brother sitting there in a despondent and apprehensive mood. Heui-soo probes Oh-soo about whether it’s true that Seok-jin has been cleared of the murder. Oh-soo responds with a police-type warning: “You have to answer my questions truthfully.”
Oh-soo points out that Heui-soo had time to come back from Jeju and commit the murder and get back there, during the time when he was supposedly not feeling well and keeping to his room. “You would have felt bad if you knew about the affair,” says Oh-soo. “And you had access to Seok-jin’s things.”
“You think it was me?” asks Heui-soo sharply. “I hope it wasn’t,” says Oh-soo. Heui-soo puts on a show of being terribly insulted. “Then it’s okay to check the security tapes at the airport?” asks Oh-soo. That hits home; Heui-soo looks visibly shaken. “Min I-beom (Heui-soo’s hired underling) will be arrested soon,” says Oh-soo. That hit too. Looking really guilty indeed, Heui-soo blusters, “Even if I am on the camera it doesn’t prove anything…”
Oh-soo knows it now and Heui-soo knows he knows. Oh-soo asks why he did it. Heui-soo plays all the cards he has left. He says that it’s all just assumption and that Oh-soo should just forget about it, or let everyone think it was the tarot card guy, because “we’re brothers” after all. Now Oh-soo gets to decide whether he will cover up murder for his brother, as his father did for him 12 years ago. “I wish you’d run far away,” says Oh-soo. “But I know better than anyone else that people can forget the past, but the past won’t forget them.”
Oh-soo goes off, feeling miserable, and once in his car he just starts sobbing loudly. Heui-soo, meanwhile, orders his current secretary to get him and his wife two plane tickets for Paris, leaving the country as quickly as possible.1
Meanwhile another t’aekbae has come. Oh-soo who is down at the station by now opens it. This time the red envelope contains the “Wheel of Fortune” tarot and a stack of four photographs and a cut-and-paste note, saying, “When the trumpet sound stops and the new world comes, the Gate of Hell will close its door.” The photographs are all pictures of Oh-soo working as a detective; the most recent one is from the Tarot period and shows him getting something from a vending machine, I think the one in the subway station.
Oh-soo quickly spreads out these four photos with the earlier photos and it seems that the appearance of a finger pointing at Oh-soo is supposed to be even more obvious, but I’ll have to wait to see the DVDs before I understand this. Anyway none of that matters, except that in one of the photos there is a visible defect which might be from a crack in the camera lens and which might prove that the photo was taken by Yeong-cheol’s camera.
“Tuesday: Jeong Tae-seong”
Oh Seung-ha was talking with Team Chief Ban about his client Seok-jin's statements when the word came in about the events at Yeong-cheol's apartment. He hears Ban say "How did Yeong-cheol get hurt?" and a look of concern washes over his face. He is in his car, maybe heading for the hospital, when he gets a call on his cell phone that we can see he doesn't want to take. It's Congressman Kang, requesting a meeting.
They meet for a chilly lunch in an otherwise empty dining room at the hotel. Kang is very self-possessed. "You kept your promise," he says. "You came back for me." He knows that Seung-ha is Jeong Tae-seong.
Mr. Kang excuses his actions 12 years ago, covering up Oh-soo's crime, by saying that people have misperceptions because of the situations they're in. He says he did his duty as a parent. "You never looked back on the pain you caused a mother and a child," retorts Seung-ha/Tae-seong. "You ruined a mother's life."
"What about you?" asks Mr. Kang calmly. "You also are ruining people's lives for your own purposes. You also believe that a crooked line is straight." "You don't have the right to judge me," answers Seung-ha. They look at each other and really seem very similar in demeanor. Seung-ha is not admitting that there is any justice in what Mr. Kang is saying, but as he leaves he seems a bit affected by it all.
Seung-ha then goes by Yeong-cheol's apartment; the police have left, and he's back at home. Yeong-cheol answers the door and is worried that Seung-ha has come here - "what if Oh-soo is outside?" Seung-ha comes in and immediately sees the picture on the wall of the smiling youths Yeong-cheol and Tae-hoon. it bothers Seung-ha somehow.
Seung-ha tries to give Yeong-cheol a plane ticket and tells him he's made arrangements for him to leave the country, he's lined up a hotel and arranged for some money for him and so on. But Yeong-cheol still won't hear of it and is very disturbed that Seung-ha is trying to "push him away". He promises that he won't reveal Seung-ha's identity, assuming that this is Seung-ha's main concern. He says he'll go to the police station tomorrow to "see Oh-soo struggle". Seung-ha can't shake him from this. His whole being is wrapped up in the great plan of revenge now. He won't leave the tunnel either.
We next see Seung-ha at the church, gazing at the crucifix and flashing back to when he recruited Yeong-cheol to be his helper. We see the Yeong-cheol of three years ago, shy, hesitant, and reserved, and the Tae-seong of three years ago, cool and confident. Yeong-cheol is amazed to see that Tae-seong is alive.and was the person who wrote to him in Australia. Tae-seong tells Yeong-cheol that they are going to put everything right. He gives him the camera, saying it belonged to "someone who died in an auto accident" - the real Seung-ha, presumably - and tells Yeong-cheol that he is going to take pictures of "important people" with it.
That was three years ago. In that time, Tae-seong has remade him in his own image; Yeong-cheol is now the distorted reflection of Seung-ha; he has been nourished on the drug of vengeance and he's hooked on it. There is not much left of the gentle guy who would have written a novel about nature. It's clear that Seung-ha sees this as well as we do.
Coming out of the church Seung-ha meets Hae-in. She smiles at him and gives him the whistle that Oh-soo gave her and tells him to "use it whenever you need me." "Aren't you scared of me?" asks Seung-ha. "Detective Kang asked the same thing," she says, and remarks on how alike they are: "You hate each other but pity and understand each other." "No, I don't pity him, I'll never forgive him," protests Seung-ha. "Yes, you have," she says - "look in your heart."
"Wednesday: the third biggest hotelier"
Yeong-cheol comes down to the police station as he said, and gives a statement in which he doesn't admit anything of importance. He says he bought the tarot cards himself at the café; though Joo-heui doesn't remember him, that's because he's just not a memorable person.
Behind the one-way glass, with Oh-soo, is Hwang Dae-bil. The police have tried to keep secret the fact that he's co-operating with them. As he listens to Yeong-cheol speak, he becomes pretty sure that he is the guy who spoke to him on the phone and guided him to Seong Joon-p'yo's location.2
He doesn't admit to being involved in t'aekbae deliveries. When Ban tells him to tell the truth, he looks unerringly at Oh-soo's hidden location and says, "It would be nice if you had told the truth, but it's too late now."
They don't believe that they have enough to hold Yeong-cheol yet, though they think that would change if the photographs can be matched with Yeong-cheol's camera.
Then Jae-min calls: Min I-beom has turned up at the bar that he has been staking out. He is getting back up and they are about to arrest him.
Oh-soo goes off by himself with himself and hits Heui-soo's speed-dial on his cell phone, but then hangs up. He is torn between warning him and keeping quiet. He makes another stab at calling him but hangs up again...
When Seung-ha comes in to his office, Kwang-doo tells him that Hae-in stopped by; she brought him a potted plant with purple flowers and a letter in a green envelope. "People are waiting for you," says Kwang-doo, trying to coax Seung-ha out of the tunnel. "Walk forward.." The letter talks about the many nice experiences Hae-in wishes to share with Seung-ha including going out to Soo-gon's farm next spring to see the daffodils bloom. "Will that be possible?" murmurs Seung-ha to himself. "Can I turn back?"
I-beom has been brought in to the police station. He is told that the GPS system in his car can be analyzed and it will show all his locations. He quickly gives up Heui-soo, saying "I just did a favor but I didn't kill anyone."
Heui-soo is at home, trying to hurry Na-heui out of the house so they can catch a plane and get out of the country. She doesn't want to go, but he tries to guilt-trip her into going: But it's all for naught, as Jae-min and Min-jae come in and arrest him and cuff him and take him away.
Seung-ha, who is down at the station, tells Seok-jin that Heui-soo has been arrested; he is cleared of murder but will still be charged with hiring Soon-ki's beating. Seok-jin seems more stunned by Heui-soo's arrest than concerned with his own case.
Heui-soo is brought into the station through a crowd of reporters asking stupid questions. He glares at Oh-soo who is watching from a distance; Oh-soo breaks down and cries. Seung-ha watches this impassively.
“Wednesday: Chest pain”
Soon there is radio news coverage of the arrest of Kang Heui-soo, the country's third biggest hotel executive, and so on. Hae-in hears of the arrest and calls Kwang-doo, who confirms that, yes, it is Oh-soo's brother.
Yeong-cheol is eating in a diner when the report comes on the TV. He doesn’t bat an eyelash.
Congressman Kang is traveling in his car when he hears a radio news report of Heui-soo’s arrest. He grabs at his chest for a moment …
Oh-soo goes home and finds the Congressman in the living room. Mr. Kang is as close to being distraught as he ever gets. He just can't believe that Heui-soo, whom he has always thought of as a tender-hearted person, would do such of thing. He is apparently having a moment of epiphany; he feels that this whole business is because of his mistaken belief that "only the strong could be happy". He asks Oh-soo's forgiveness.
Oh-soo apologizes for being unable to protect Heui-soo, but Mr. Kang says it wasn't his fault. Oh-soo suggests that his father leave town for a while and let him deal with Heui-soo's defense and so on, but he won't do that either. He's intent on doing his duty as a parent.
But as Oh-soo drives off to get back to work, Mr. Kang grabs at his chest again and falls to the floor.
The next time Oh-soo sees him, he is in the hospital - dead. Oh-soo collapses on the body and cries great sobs. Hae-in later comes by the hospital and sees Oh-soo standing in front and reaches out and gives him a hug, but he might not even notice it - he is as motionless and expressionless as a mannequin.
From his eyrie, Seung-ha is looking out over the city, as if he could see his handiwork. Tears appear on his cheeks.
Night. We see Oh-soo alone in the great empty Kang house. Outside, Seung-ha approaches and pulls his celebratory peppermint candy from his pocket and puts it to his lips. He can’t eat it. His hand falls to his waist; he lets the candy fall to the pavement; the sound of its fall resonates like a gunshot.
“Thursday: It ends as it began”
(At this point there is a scene in the screenplay which was omitted from the program as aired. In this scene, Seung-ha goes to the nursing home and tells Seung-heui he is going away. When she asks him to say that he will be back, he does … after some hesitation.)
Seung-ha then goes by Hae-in’s house and drops off a present in a bag for Hae-in with her mom.
Seung-ha, back at his office, with the day drawing on towards night, calls Soo-gon. He is cheerful, he is out delivering vegetables, he supposes he will be rich soon. Why don’t you come out and visit this weekend with Hae-in? he asks.
But Soo-gon’s car phone battery is running down – the phone is about to die, he says – and then he is no longer there. Just Seung-ha, alone, who has now said all his good-byes.
Seung-ha’s cell phone rings – it’s Oh-soo. We don’t hear the call.
Afterward, we see Seung-ha’s reflection again in the glass of his desk; we see the purple flowers that Hae-in brought for him; he leaves them there and turns out the lights.
Meanwhile Hae-in opens the bag. It is Seung-ha’s mother’s own music box. She opens it; inside it is his mother’s ring. She holds the ring in her hands and she knows something is terribly wrong.
Then she gets a call from chief Ban. Nobody knows where Oh-soo is, but he took a pistol from storage, and the last person he called was Seung-ha. Hae-in has an idea of where he might have gone.
We see Oh-soo driving through the city with the pistol lying on the passenger seat.
As Seung-ha leaves the office and heads for his car in the twilight, intent on his own concerns, a guy with a baseball cap approaches him on the sidewalk. As they meet, the guy - it's Yong-goo (see Episode 19) - wordlessly and without warning stabs Seung-ha in the abdomen. He goes on his way. It takes a few seconds for Seung-ha to even realize what has happened - he sees the blood pouring from the wound, staining his shirt.
It doesn't bother him much - he even smiles a bit at the irony of it. He is planning to die tonight anyway. He intends to be killed by Kang Oh-soo.
I can think of several reasons why he wants this. One that it will make Oh-soo a murderer in fact and possibly get him punished as one. He has punished all the other people whom he views as accomplices in the destruction of his family by posing temptations to them and luring them into disastrous actions.3 Tempting Oh-soo to pull the trigger on him will be a fitting culmination of the scheme.
Another point is that if Oh-soo murders him to avenge all his victims it will validate Seung-ha's whole philosophy of ruthless vendetta. If Oh-soo kills Seung-ha for exterminating his family and friends, then it makes it OK for Seung-ha to have done the same thing.
Now, I’m sure Seung-ha would be imaginative enough to come up with a way that he could trap Oh-soo into trying to murdering him and failing and getting charged for it, or getting killed in the process. And maybe that’s the way the idea looked in the earliest version of the great plan. But now Seung-ha has nothing else to do with his life. He long ago abandoned hope and indeed it is a point of pride with him. His whole campaign of vengeance is justified in his mind by the idea that the crimes against his family were so great that they ripped him out of the normal world of people, beyond ordinary human laws and moral judgments. He doesn't know how to turn around and go back into the world and live like a normal person, and if he admitted that he were able to do, it would jeopardize the whole basis of his actions as Lucifer.
Anyway he is sick of lying, sick of vengeance, and sick of seeing his own handiwork around him. A life of tormenting Oh-soo might be enough for Yeong-cheol now, but it's not enough for him.
And the truth is he now believes he deserves to die.
He could of course accomplish this just by dying on the spot of his stab wound, but the momentum of the great plan carries him forward; he gets in his car and drives to the old junkyard behind the school, where he has arranged to meet Oh-soo amid the car carriers full of old Hyundaes.
Seung-ha arrives at the junkyard; the night is dark; walking unsteadily, sees OS ahead of him and arranges his suit jacket to hide his bleeding wound. He advances toward Oh-soo, who draws the gun and levels it at Seung-ha in the same place where he stood 12 years ago.
“I’ll give you what you want,” says Oh-soo. “You need me to kill you.”
“This is a great place to end things,” says Oh-soo. “Only you and I are here.”
Oh-soo holds his aim for a few seconds.
Then he raises the pistol so that it aims over Seung-ha’s head and fires it harmlessly, and points it back at Seung-ha again.
“Will the next one be real?” asks Seung-ha tauntingly.
Oh-soo isn’t ready to shoot him. “You are in hell like I am,” he says. “I made you like this. I didn’t tell the truth.” “Stop hesitating and shoot me!” orders Seung-ha, but instead Oh-soo drops the pistol to the ground.
“What are you doing?” asks Seung-ha, confused and even alarmed. “You have to end this.” He grabs up the gun from the ground and puts it in Oh-soo’s hand. “Shoot me, you can do it.” He tries to provoke Oh-soo: “I made all your friends die. I made your brother a murderer. I made your father die. Shoot me now!”
“Live,” says Oh-soo. “Try your hardest to step out of the dark tunnel, Tae-seong.”
“Give me that gun,” cries Tae-seong, now frantic. “I need to put an end to this. I can’t forgive myself.” He grabs for the gun and struggles with Oh-soo for it in the darkness, much as Tae-hoon and Oh-soo struggled over a knife in the same spot 12 years ago. It’s not clear what Tae-seong intends to even do with the gun. We can't see the gun and don't know who has it.
But then, of course, the gun goes off.
The two of them stand there, each with the same surprised look that Tae-hoon had 12 years ago when the knife went in.
Maybe this would be a good place to switch to a feel-good fanfic ending? Maybe the bullet didn’t hurt anyone? Maybe Oh-soo will tell Tae-seong, “Are you crazy? You could hurt someone with that.” And maybe he’ll say, “What the hell happened to you anyway? You're bleeding! You need an ambulance!” And Seung-ha can get patched up and later maybe Oh-soo can work with Tae-seong as a private detective, playing Paul Drake to Seung-ha’s Perry Mason. Seung-ha can get together with Hae-in, and maybe Oh-soo will notice Min-jae finally, and they can all be in a big family picture at the end of the drama!! Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be a happy ending?
But it wouldn’t be symmetrical.
No, it has to end as it began.
Oh-soo was shot. He slumps to the ground. “Don’t you die!” cries Seung-ha, but it’s no help. “Live,” croaks Oh-soo, with equal futility as Seung-ha’s own resources are ebbing fast. “Forgive me .. and you.” Oh-soo dies.
Seung-ha, in tears, begs Oh-soo to get up, crying in remorse as Oh-soo cried in remorse after killing Tae-hoon on this very spot. It’s no good. And Seung-ha is now seriously dying now. He can’t stand on his feet any more; he sits next to Oh-soo. He gets out Hae-in’s whistle and smiles at it ruefully. It won’t be used. There will be no time. There will be no next spring. “I forgive myself – and you –“ he says.
There are a few seconds of memories of happy moments – then darkness. The last of the Kang family and the last of the Jeong family, alike in so many other ways, are now alike in death.
It ends as it began 35 days ago in episode 1, with a stabbed lawyer bleeding to death, killed to avenge a victim whose assailant he defended.
It ends as it began 12 years ago in Episode 1, with death in an absurd scramble for a weapon in a junkyard, with Oh-soo playing Tae-hoon's old role, and Tae-seong playing Oh-soo's old role.
It ends as it began 12 years ago in Episode 1, with Hae-in arriving too late; all her love and all her gifts have been useless in the face of the momentum of Seung-ha's determination4 which has carried things to catastrophe. Nothing is left for her but the role of sniffer dog, the same role she played in the spring of 1995, finding the bodies of the two men she loved where she found one body before.
End of series, Thursday night, May 10, Day 32.
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(Wake and group therapy session/soju party begins here)
Man! That was a bleak ending! I haven't seen anything as bleak in a long while. Some people said back when this started that “Mawang” had sort of a grim outlook, but I wasn’t expecting this.
Personally I learned the ending a few weeks ago, and I remember going around in a real daze for a couple days. I kept saying to myself stuff like, "They're only actors! They're not real people anyway! It's only a story! It's supposed to make you feel like that, that's the cathartic role of tragedy."
Of course having everyone dead at the end is very much in the tradition of classical tragedy – look at Hamlet for example.
Anyway the point of a work like this, as with Oedipus Rex or Dante's work itself for example, is to bring out ideas about life and sin and redemption and stuff, and if the ending is shocking, maybe it will scare us all into leading better lives and getting out of our own tunnels. I sort of feel like that myself.
I was looking at the news reports about when this show aired in Korea, sort of expecting to see that it was a great sensation, but it looks like its ratings actually weren’t all that good. That’s unfortunate, because I honestly believe it’s a real classic. I don't regret one second of the time I've spent on this.
(1) I’m not sure why that would solve anything. Surely a murderer can be extradited from France to Korea, if Korea agrees not to apply the death penalty?
(2) This is a rather biased identification procedure; it would never stand up as evidence in the US courts anyway...
(3) The victims could have all saved themselves. Lawyer Kwon didn't have to pick up the knife. Dae-shik didn't have to manhandle and taunt Sora's mom when she showed up frantically looking for Sora. Joon-p'yo could have just gone to the police or for that matter published the truth about Seung-ha, but he was intent on his own plans for revenge or wealth. Soon-ki didn't have to blackmail his friend, and Seok-jin could have confessed the affair rather than plot with mobsters.
(4) Of course Seung-ha warned Oh-soo of this very thing - that the strong points of tragic heroes like Oedipus lead them on into catastrophe. He was really talking to himself, it turns out...