Post by humblestudent2 on Oct 2, 2007 23:26:26 GMT -5
Episode 16 recap
Episode begins: Monday evening April 30, Day 22
“The Lawyer’s Sister”
On Monday night, having been alerted by Hae-in that Oh Seung-heui (the lawyer’s blind sister) had switched flash drives on him, Oh-soo realizes that Oh seung-ha muat be Jeong Tae-seong, the supposedly-dead younger brother of Jeong Tae-hoon and the elusive “mastermind”.
The next morning, Oh-soo hustles out to the nursing home at first light and soon establishes with the nurses that, yes, on the day she received the package, she obtained a second drive, the same make as the one he has from her, and copied music onto it with the help of a nurse. So he is well-prepared when he enters her room to question her. Polite but very firm, even cold, he tells her that he can’t understand why she is protecting Oh Seung-ha if she heard what he thinks she heard (that is, that “Seung-ha” is not her brother at all).
Seung-heui’s unpracticed evasions don’t fool Oh-soo in the least, but she still refuses to admit anything, telling him that her brother is a good-hearted man who would never hurt anyone, and telling him to leave.
Oh-soo goes back to the station, and shares with Chief Ban and his team his belief that a living Tae-seong is the “mastermind”. But at this point they are interrupted by –
“A Wave of T’aekbae”
With perfect coordination, three packages are delivered at the same moment: one to Oh-soo at the police station, one to Seok-jin at the hotel, and one to Soon-ki at Seok-jin’s apartment. Seok-jin receives the Eight of Swords; Soon-ki receives the Eight of Swords (terrified, he still rummages through the envelope and package hoping for more blackmail pix, but no, this time it’s just the card). Oh-soo gets both cards, and a picture of three figures (part of Rodin’s “Gates of Hell”) with a message on the back in cut-and-paste letters: “Distrust and betrayal lead the friends through the gates of Hell.” Oh-soo hardly has time to glance at his delivery when both Seok-jin and Soon-ki call him; he arranges to meet them at the apartment.
Seok-jin comes home and he and Soon-ki stare grimly at each other, awaiting Oh-soo. Soon-ki asks if this isn’t just a plot to murder him and blame the tarot killer! Soon-ki says that the tarot guy wouldn’t hurt him, in fact he likes him, and “that’s why he let me know your weak spot.” “Wake up!” retorts Seok-jin, who has not lost all his senses, “he did that to make our friendship like it is!”
Still, when Oh-soo arrives, neither of them will tell him what has been going on with all the photographs and red envelopes and affairs and blackmail, although Soon-ki’s insinuating denials and Seok-jin’s guilty evasive looks convince him that they are hiding something. “We have to trust and protect each other,” Oh-soo says, but this message is not getting very far. Oh-soo tells them to come home at the same hour, notify him of their whereabouts, etc., and tells them police will watch the building.
“The Lawyer’s Notebook”
Earlier in the morning, the police (Ban and Min-Jae, among others) were at Oh Seung-ha’s office investigating… a burglary! Someone executed a complex professional break-in, cutting off the electricity and disabling the security cameras and so on, in order to swipe Seung-ha’s laptop (noteubookeu).
Later in the morning, Boss Kyeon calls Seung-ha to arrange a meeting. Kyeon has already had a conversation with Congressman Kang, privately reassuring him that Seung-ha is not actually Jeong Tae-seong. Kyeon might believe this or he might not. However, Kyeon at least knows that Seung-ha is the guy who, through him, hired Two-knives to trail Reporter Seong and steal his stuff.
They meet by the river, and Kyeon, who apparently really does know Seung-ha from his shady youth (as we figured out last episode), loses no time: Two-knives is going to take the rap for the Seong Joon-p’yo business, but shouldn’t Seung-ha pay him for keeping quite about it?
That at any rate is what he intends to talk about, but Seung-ha takes control of the conversation from the beginning; he knows that Kyeon swiped his laptop, and when Kyeon asks for hush money, Seung-ha quashes that real fast – he has had Kyeon’s own phone tapped, no less, and has a tape of him ordering the murder of some underworld rival, which will go to the prosecutor if anything happens to him. “Are you just bluffing, like used to?” Kyeon asks him. “I don’t do that any more,” Seung-ha assures him. He goes on to clue Kyeon in that soon, someone is going to offer him a lot of money for something – who it is will depend on what choices other people make. Seung-ha sportingly warns Kyeon that there may be trouble for him if he takes the job. Kyeon doesn’t seem worried about this.
“People of the Lie”
Now Oh-soo goes over to the library to see Hae-in, his personal Tarot and Dante consultant - she should really be billing the police for her time and scholarship, even leaving aside the psychic readings. Hae-in has already had a somewhat stressful day. In the middle of the night, she woke up from a nightmare, in which someone (Soon-ki) was being beaten and was yelling “Seok-jin! Save me!” Then, at work, she ran across the copy of M. Scott Peck’s “People of the Lie”, which Seung-ha had earlier got her started reading, back in episode 2. (In that episode, she read a passage about how in his earliest form Lucifer was a servant of God who went around giving people tests and choices and stuff.) Today, seeing it, she thought about continuing her reading, but on picking it up she was hit by a harrowing vision of a woman (Tae-seong’s mother, as we know) being run down by a truck. Fortunately Seung-ha was on hand to help her settle down emotionally.
So Seung-ha and Hae-in are strolling outside the library when Oh-soo shows up. Seung-ha is rather brusque with Oh-soo; he really doesn’t like the fact that Oh-soo went to the nursing home and bothered his sister (which she called to tell him about). “You must have forgotten that stress is bad for her,” Seung-ha says. “If you have other questions, ask me.” Seung-ha then takes off. Oh-soo stares after him, his own fist clenching a bit.
The Rodin photo, Hae-in informs him, allegorically depicts the three beasts that confront Dante in the first Canto of the Inferno, which represent the sins of lust, pride, and greed. “Someone is trapped and will die because of his bad decisions.” As for the tarot cards, the Eight of Swords, Soon-ki’s card, is a rather baleful one. It represents “internal strife”; people are deceiving each other, and “At the end, all the people will point their swords at each other.” The blood-red background and the woman’s black dress signify that there will be death. Seok-jin’s Two of Swords signifies dilemma; the woman with the swords is blindfolded and can’t see what to do with them. The stars in the sky signify that “there is hope”, but there will have to be help from an outside source.
(Later Tuesday evening, Hae-in has the cards back at the tarot café and prepares to do a reading on them. (In the screenplay, there is an unaired scene first in which Joo-Heui teases Hae-in about her relationship with Detective Kang, and Hae-in makes it clear that he is just like a big brother to her.) Reading the cards, she sees Joon-p’yo in his agony, trying to give the pocket recorder to someone… then, suddenly she sees two boys standing in front of the record shop, 12 years ago. We know them to be the Jeong brothers, Tae-hoon and Tae-seong. Perhaps Hae-in recognizes Tae-hoon from her other visions… but she certainly recognizes Tae-seong as being the boy who gave her the umbrella back then in front of the same store… the boy she already has half identified with Oh Seung-ha.)
“I saw you in the tunnel”
Around this time, Hwang Dae-bil, who has been thinking about Oh-soo’s words from last episode, goes by the hospital to ask about his victim, and is told that Seong Joon-p’yo is dead. (That concludes the poll, for all the interest that it got.) When this news gets back to Oh-soo, he decides to go over and confront the “mastermind” himself. (By the way, Oh-soo was suspended for three months, out of the break-in at Dae-bil's place, even though Dae-bil himself did not press charges. However, he continues to meet with his team and go in and out of the station at will and attend interrogations and such....)
He meets Seung-ha in the church. Recalling Hae-in’s telling him that to seek salvation he must not be afraid to enter the “dark tunnel”, he tells Seung-ha, “I went into the tunnel and saw you there in the dark. I know that you are Jeong Tae-seong, though I can’t prove it.”
Seung-ha of course is above denying it, but points out that he doesn’t have any evidence, and would like Oh-soo not to make such accusations unless he can prove them. (Oh-soo’s fist is very tightly clenched at this point.) Seung-ha teases him, pointing out that he is “showing his cards to his opponent” and saying that an emotional guy like him will never win his game. Oh-soo retorts that anyone who treats other people’s lives as a game has lost the right to judge anyone, but says, as he leaves, that he will keep quite about his suspicions, hoping he is mistaken for the sake of “people who trust you”.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
Now Congressman Kang drops a little surprise on Heui-soo – he wants Oh Seung-ha, of all people, hired as the new hotel lawyer to take Kwon’s place! Kang brushes aside all Heui-soo’s objections, praising Seung-ha’s unique abilities, declaring that “he showed his dislike for me” but asserting that this is an argument for getting him on their side.
(The next day, while getting ready for the Jeju trip, Heui-soo invites Seung-ha over to make him the offer. They have little time really to discuss it, because Seok-jin comes in to remind Heui-soo that he has to leave.)
“Trip to Jeju”
For Seok-jin, much of Tuesday1 is spent making Heui-soo’s travel plans, according to his instructions. (As he enters Heui-soo's office to discuss matters, Heui-soo has been inspecting copies of the pictures of Heui-soo and Na-heui's last kiss in her car; he puts them in a manila envelope.) He will take a 3:30 p.m. flight out on Wednesday. He expects to “go drinking really late”, then he has a date to play golf with the governor the next day, with a 9 AM tee time, and he is catching a 4 PM flight back Thursday. (He later suggests to Na-heui that she stay with her mother, but she wants to stay by the house.)
Now, Seok-jin, as we remember from the last episode, is under orders from Heui-soo to find a “clean and complete” solution to the Soon-ki business. As Seok-jin and Heui-soo start to discuss this delicate point, Heui-soo gets a phone call and Seok-jin hears him greet Soon-ki! While Seok-jin waits in a state of great nervousness, hearing only Heui-soo’s side of the call, Soon-ki tells Heui-soo that he has something very important to discuss with him – something that he doesn’t want to have to tell Congressman Kang about, or the reporters. He wants a meeting with Heui-soo, and Seok-jin should not know about it! Heui-soo says he’ll meet him in two days after the Jeju trip. Soon-ki is happy, but of course this meeting is never to take place; Heui-soo hangs up, and tells Seok-jin “he’s threatening me with reporters.” Seok-jin says he’ll take care of things. Heui-soo, observing Seok-jin’s nervous demeanor, asks, “When I said I wanted a ‘clean and complete’ solution, I hope you didn’t take that in an extreme way? I just want to do something else than bribing him, since that hasn’t worked.”
Seok-jin proceeds to arrange for Boss Kyeon’s services. As Wednesday arrives and the time of the trip approaches, Seok-jin continues to keep Kyeon abreast of the police’s watch over the apartment that he and Soon-ki are sharing.
Meanwhile, however, some guy is gimmicking Seok-jin’s car in the hotel garage, apparently (judging from some beeps on the sound track) sticking some kind of tracking device underneath it.
As Heui-soo walks through the airport on the way to check-in, he walks a man; something is transferred from hand to hand. If you have good eyesight, you may recognize the man as the same guy who gimmicked Seok-jin’s car. If you have really good eyesight, you may see that what happened is that the guy gave Heui-soo a car key. I don’t have that good eyesight – not at 56 K – but that’s what the screenplay said.
“I made my decision”
Oh-soo drops by Seok-jin’s place and says hi to Soon-ki, who is inside while Seok-jin is still at work. Oh-soo tells Soon-ki to stay there, and that he’ll be outside to make sure he’s okay. “You look terrible, man,” says Soon-ki, in a momentary flash of humanity, as Oh-soo leaves. “Get something to eat.”
Just then Oh-soo gets a phone call. It is the conscience-stricken Hwang Dae-bil. “If I tell the truth, will it be taken into consideration?” he asks. “Of course,” says Oh-soo, and tries to set up a meeting with him. But the connection goes dead. Oh-soo drops everything else and heads off in his car, to try to find Dae-bil.
But as he leaves, a carload of underlings of Boss Kyeon goes to work. A couple of guys disguised as workmen go into Seok-jin’s building. They put fake inspection signs on the elevators. They go up to the apartment….. and in short order they have bundled Soon-ki into a car and have headed off to an empty and deserted warehouse.
Now it is night. In a nightmarish scene, the underlings are beating Soon-ki mercilessly with bats, kicking him viciously when he falls. “Seok-jin! Save me!” he cries. Seok-jin stands in the shadows with boss Kyeon.
At length, with Soon-ki nearly senseless, Seok-jin orders Kyeon and his underlings to stop the beating. Kyeon objects, saying that if they let Soon-ki live, he’ll make trouble. “I’m giving the orders,” Seok-jin shouts, and orders Kyeon and his men to take off.
Earnestly, Seok-jin tries to get Soon-ki to come to his senses. He tells him that the orders came from Heui-soo. “If we’re not careful, we’ll both be dead!” he says. He gives Soon-ki the packet of money that was originally given to his mom, and with it a plane ticket to Hong Kong. “Go to a hospital, get fixed up, then go to Hong Kong and lie low,” he tells Soon-ki; he’ll tell Oh-soo and Heui-soo some story.
Seok-jin takes off, leaving Soon-ki alone, as he thinks, and goes back to his apartment. He talks on the phone with Oh-soo, saying he has just gotten home from work and that Soon-ki is already there in bed.
Meanwhile, however, another guy goes to the Kang house and delivers a manila envelope for Na-heui. It contains copies of the photos of Na-heui and Seok-jin in her car.1 So, just after Seok-jin gets back in the apartment, he gets a call from Na-heui who wants a meeting, and he has to sneak out again. He meets her on the riverfront. “Were these pictures from your friend?” she asks. “Probably,” he says, “but he won’t bother you again.”
That’s for sure. Back at the warehouse, as Soon-ki, badly injured, tries to recover his functions, a man walks up in the darkness. It is Heui-soo. He is not on Jeju. He is here in Seoul.
Soon-ki, his instincts wrong to the very last, looks up at Heui-soo and sees him as his saviour. He is quick to squeal on Seok-jin: “Secretary Na betrayed you,” he says.
“I know,” says Heui-soo, his voice full of solicitude as he pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “I thought a long time about what to do,” he says as he puts a cigarette in Soon-ki’s mouth, which unthinkingly accepts it. “And I made my decision,” he says as he strikes a match to it.
In a short time the cigarette has fallen from Soon-ki’s lips. He lies on his side, his muscles seizing up rhythmically in a seizure, his legs wriggling like those of a dying insect. Heui-soo watches Soon-ki die. Next to his body, he drops a blue handkerchief embroidered with the initials “SJ”. Wordlessly, he walks out.
As Soon-ki now lies motionless and lifeless, out of the darkness another man walks up: the mastermind. “Your friends have not disappointed me,” Seung-ha murmurs.
Meanwhile, Min-jae and Jae-min, who were staked out at Yeong-cheol’s workplace, have followed him from there to Seok-jin’s apartment. Now Yeong-cheol is ostentatiously banging on the door, yelling, “Is nobody home?” The detectives call Oh-soo, who heads on over. As he arrives, his handphone rings. It’s a call from Soon-ki’s phone. Someone is sending a picture to the phone’s screen. The picture is of Soon-ki’s dead face. Oh-soo gasps in horror. Back at the warehouse, Seung-ha drops the phone next to the body and walks away.
Episode ends, late Wednesday night, May 2, Day 24. (Thus Soon-ki meets his end, which frankly he has been asking for for about 12 episodes now. This episode is very intricate, and it is a challenge to disentangle and understand the elements of the three separate plots: Seok-jin’s plot to kidnap and terrify Soon-ki is at least understandable, though to be honest I can’t really tell you what the role of the elevator inspection signs was. Heui-soo’s plot to murder Soon-ki and frame his secretary is considerably more complex. I suppose the tracking device was useful to keep out of Seok-jin’s way, but why did he send the photos to Na-heui, for example? And then there is the Mastermind’s own plot. Why did Seung-ha send the image? Why did Yeong-cheol go over to the apartment? Just to taunt Oh-soo? The effect seems to be to put the police on the trail much sooner than they would otherwise have been.)
(1) These are my own weekdays and were not mentioned on the show - I am using them here mainly to keep the action sorted out.
(2) Just to be clear, these are not the mastermind’s photos, which come in red envelopes. Heui-soo’s photos come in manila envelopes.
Episode begins: Monday evening April 30, Day 22
“The Lawyer’s Sister”
On Monday night, having been alerted by Hae-in that Oh Seung-heui (the lawyer’s blind sister) had switched flash drives on him, Oh-soo realizes that Oh seung-ha muat be Jeong Tae-seong, the supposedly-dead younger brother of Jeong Tae-hoon and the elusive “mastermind”.
The next morning, Oh-soo hustles out to the nursing home at first light and soon establishes with the nurses that, yes, on the day she received the package, she obtained a second drive, the same make as the one he has from her, and copied music onto it with the help of a nurse. So he is well-prepared when he enters her room to question her. Polite but very firm, even cold, he tells her that he can’t understand why she is protecting Oh Seung-ha if she heard what he thinks she heard (that is, that “Seung-ha” is not her brother at all).
Seung-heui’s unpracticed evasions don’t fool Oh-soo in the least, but she still refuses to admit anything, telling him that her brother is a good-hearted man who would never hurt anyone, and telling him to leave.
Oh-soo goes back to the station, and shares with Chief Ban and his team his belief that a living Tae-seong is the “mastermind”. But at this point they are interrupted by –
“A Wave of T’aekbae”
With perfect coordination, three packages are delivered at the same moment: one to Oh-soo at the police station, one to Seok-jin at the hotel, and one to Soon-ki at Seok-jin’s apartment. Seok-jin receives the Eight of Swords; Soon-ki receives the Eight of Swords (terrified, he still rummages through the envelope and package hoping for more blackmail pix, but no, this time it’s just the card). Oh-soo gets both cards, and a picture of three figures (part of Rodin’s “Gates of Hell”) with a message on the back in cut-and-paste letters: “Distrust and betrayal lead the friends through the gates of Hell.” Oh-soo hardly has time to glance at his delivery when both Seok-jin and Soon-ki call him; he arranges to meet them at the apartment.
Seok-jin comes home and he and Soon-ki stare grimly at each other, awaiting Oh-soo. Soon-ki asks if this isn’t just a plot to murder him and blame the tarot killer! Soon-ki says that the tarot guy wouldn’t hurt him, in fact he likes him, and “that’s why he let me know your weak spot.” “Wake up!” retorts Seok-jin, who has not lost all his senses, “he did that to make our friendship like it is!”
Still, when Oh-soo arrives, neither of them will tell him what has been going on with all the photographs and red envelopes and affairs and blackmail, although Soon-ki’s insinuating denials and Seok-jin’s guilty evasive looks convince him that they are hiding something. “We have to trust and protect each other,” Oh-soo says, but this message is not getting very far. Oh-soo tells them to come home at the same hour, notify him of their whereabouts, etc., and tells them police will watch the building.
“The Lawyer’s Notebook”
Earlier in the morning, the police (Ban and Min-Jae, among others) were at Oh Seung-ha’s office investigating… a burglary! Someone executed a complex professional break-in, cutting off the electricity and disabling the security cameras and so on, in order to swipe Seung-ha’s laptop (noteubookeu).
Later in the morning, Boss Kyeon calls Seung-ha to arrange a meeting. Kyeon has already had a conversation with Congressman Kang, privately reassuring him that Seung-ha is not actually Jeong Tae-seong. Kyeon might believe this or he might not. However, Kyeon at least knows that Seung-ha is the guy who, through him, hired Two-knives to trail Reporter Seong and steal his stuff.
They meet by the river, and Kyeon, who apparently really does know Seung-ha from his shady youth (as we figured out last episode), loses no time: Two-knives is going to take the rap for the Seong Joon-p’yo business, but shouldn’t Seung-ha pay him for keeping quite about it?
That at any rate is what he intends to talk about, but Seung-ha takes control of the conversation from the beginning; he knows that Kyeon swiped his laptop, and when Kyeon asks for hush money, Seung-ha quashes that real fast – he has had Kyeon’s own phone tapped, no less, and has a tape of him ordering the murder of some underworld rival, which will go to the prosecutor if anything happens to him. “Are you just bluffing, like used to?” Kyeon asks him. “I don’t do that any more,” Seung-ha assures him. He goes on to clue Kyeon in that soon, someone is going to offer him a lot of money for something – who it is will depend on what choices other people make. Seung-ha sportingly warns Kyeon that there may be trouble for him if he takes the job. Kyeon doesn’t seem worried about this.
“People of the Lie”
Now Oh-soo goes over to the library to see Hae-in, his personal Tarot and Dante consultant - she should really be billing the police for her time and scholarship, even leaving aside the psychic readings. Hae-in has already had a somewhat stressful day. In the middle of the night, she woke up from a nightmare, in which someone (Soon-ki) was being beaten and was yelling “Seok-jin! Save me!” Then, at work, she ran across the copy of M. Scott Peck’s “People of the Lie”, which Seung-ha had earlier got her started reading, back in episode 2. (In that episode, she read a passage about how in his earliest form Lucifer was a servant of God who went around giving people tests and choices and stuff.) Today, seeing it, she thought about continuing her reading, but on picking it up she was hit by a harrowing vision of a woman (Tae-seong’s mother, as we know) being run down by a truck. Fortunately Seung-ha was on hand to help her settle down emotionally.
So Seung-ha and Hae-in are strolling outside the library when Oh-soo shows up. Seung-ha is rather brusque with Oh-soo; he really doesn’t like the fact that Oh-soo went to the nursing home and bothered his sister (which she called to tell him about). “You must have forgotten that stress is bad for her,” Seung-ha says. “If you have other questions, ask me.” Seung-ha then takes off. Oh-soo stares after him, his own fist clenching a bit.
The Rodin photo, Hae-in informs him, allegorically depicts the three beasts that confront Dante in the first Canto of the Inferno, which represent the sins of lust, pride, and greed. “Someone is trapped and will die because of his bad decisions.” As for the tarot cards, the Eight of Swords, Soon-ki’s card, is a rather baleful one. It represents “internal strife”; people are deceiving each other, and “At the end, all the people will point their swords at each other.” The blood-red background and the woman’s black dress signify that there will be death. Seok-jin’s Two of Swords signifies dilemma; the woman with the swords is blindfolded and can’t see what to do with them. The stars in the sky signify that “there is hope”, but there will have to be help from an outside source.
(Later Tuesday evening, Hae-in has the cards back at the tarot café and prepares to do a reading on them. (In the screenplay, there is an unaired scene first in which Joo-Heui teases Hae-in about her relationship with Detective Kang, and Hae-in makes it clear that he is just like a big brother to her.) Reading the cards, she sees Joon-p’yo in his agony, trying to give the pocket recorder to someone… then, suddenly she sees two boys standing in front of the record shop, 12 years ago. We know them to be the Jeong brothers, Tae-hoon and Tae-seong. Perhaps Hae-in recognizes Tae-hoon from her other visions… but she certainly recognizes Tae-seong as being the boy who gave her the umbrella back then in front of the same store… the boy she already has half identified with Oh Seung-ha.)
“I saw you in the tunnel”
Around this time, Hwang Dae-bil, who has been thinking about Oh-soo’s words from last episode, goes by the hospital to ask about his victim, and is told that Seong Joon-p’yo is dead. (That concludes the poll, for all the interest that it got.) When this news gets back to Oh-soo, he decides to go over and confront the “mastermind” himself. (By the way, Oh-soo was suspended for three months, out of the break-in at Dae-bil's place, even though Dae-bil himself did not press charges. However, he continues to meet with his team and go in and out of the station at will and attend interrogations and such....)
He meets Seung-ha in the church. Recalling Hae-in’s telling him that to seek salvation he must not be afraid to enter the “dark tunnel”, he tells Seung-ha, “I went into the tunnel and saw you there in the dark. I know that you are Jeong Tae-seong, though I can’t prove it.”
Seung-ha of course is above denying it, but points out that he doesn’t have any evidence, and would like Oh-soo not to make such accusations unless he can prove them. (Oh-soo’s fist is very tightly clenched at this point.) Seung-ha teases him, pointing out that he is “showing his cards to his opponent” and saying that an emotional guy like him will never win his game. Oh-soo retorts that anyone who treats other people’s lives as a game has lost the right to judge anyone, but says, as he leaves, that he will keep quite about his suspicions, hoping he is mistaken for the sake of “people who trust you”.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
Now Congressman Kang drops a little surprise on Heui-soo – he wants Oh Seung-ha, of all people, hired as the new hotel lawyer to take Kwon’s place! Kang brushes aside all Heui-soo’s objections, praising Seung-ha’s unique abilities, declaring that “he showed his dislike for me” but asserting that this is an argument for getting him on their side.
(The next day, while getting ready for the Jeju trip, Heui-soo invites Seung-ha over to make him the offer. They have little time really to discuss it, because Seok-jin comes in to remind Heui-soo that he has to leave.)
“Trip to Jeju”
For Seok-jin, much of Tuesday1 is spent making Heui-soo’s travel plans, according to his instructions. (As he enters Heui-soo's office to discuss matters, Heui-soo has been inspecting copies of the pictures of Heui-soo and Na-heui's last kiss in her car; he puts them in a manila envelope.) He will take a 3:30 p.m. flight out on Wednesday. He expects to “go drinking really late”, then he has a date to play golf with the governor the next day, with a 9 AM tee time, and he is catching a 4 PM flight back Thursday. (He later suggests to Na-heui that she stay with her mother, but she wants to stay by the house.)
Now, Seok-jin, as we remember from the last episode, is under orders from Heui-soo to find a “clean and complete” solution to the Soon-ki business. As Seok-jin and Heui-soo start to discuss this delicate point, Heui-soo gets a phone call and Seok-jin hears him greet Soon-ki! While Seok-jin waits in a state of great nervousness, hearing only Heui-soo’s side of the call, Soon-ki tells Heui-soo that he has something very important to discuss with him – something that he doesn’t want to have to tell Congressman Kang about, or the reporters. He wants a meeting with Heui-soo, and Seok-jin should not know about it! Heui-soo says he’ll meet him in two days after the Jeju trip. Soon-ki is happy, but of course this meeting is never to take place; Heui-soo hangs up, and tells Seok-jin “he’s threatening me with reporters.” Seok-jin says he’ll take care of things. Heui-soo, observing Seok-jin’s nervous demeanor, asks, “When I said I wanted a ‘clean and complete’ solution, I hope you didn’t take that in an extreme way? I just want to do something else than bribing him, since that hasn’t worked.”
Seok-jin proceeds to arrange for Boss Kyeon’s services. As Wednesday arrives and the time of the trip approaches, Seok-jin continues to keep Kyeon abreast of the police’s watch over the apartment that he and Soon-ki are sharing.
Meanwhile, however, some guy is gimmicking Seok-jin’s car in the hotel garage, apparently (judging from some beeps on the sound track) sticking some kind of tracking device underneath it.
As Heui-soo walks through the airport on the way to check-in, he walks a man; something is transferred from hand to hand. If you have good eyesight, you may recognize the man as the same guy who gimmicked Seok-jin’s car. If you have really good eyesight, you may see that what happened is that the guy gave Heui-soo a car key. I don’t have that good eyesight – not at 56 K – but that’s what the screenplay said.
“I made my decision”
Oh-soo drops by Seok-jin’s place and says hi to Soon-ki, who is inside while Seok-jin is still at work. Oh-soo tells Soon-ki to stay there, and that he’ll be outside to make sure he’s okay. “You look terrible, man,” says Soon-ki, in a momentary flash of humanity, as Oh-soo leaves. “Get something to eat.”
Just then Oh-soo gets a phone call. It is the conscience-stricken Hwang Dae-bil. “If I tell the truth, will it be taken into consideration?” he asks. “Of course,” says Oh-soo, and tries to set up a meeting with him. But the connection goes dead. Oh-soo drops everything else and heads off in his car, to try to find Dae-bil.
But as he leaves, a carload of underlings of Boss Kyeon goes to work. A couple of guys disguised as workmen go into Seok-jin’s building. They put fake inspection signs on the elevators. They go up to the apartment….. and in short order they have bundled Soon-ki into a car and have headed off to an empty and deserted warehouse.
Now it is night. In a nightmarish scene, the underlings are beating Soon-ki mercilessly with bats, kicking him viciously when he falls. “Seok-jin! Save me!” he cries. Seok-jin stands in the shadows with boss Kyeon.
At length, with Soon-ki nearly senseless, Seok-jin orders Kyeon and his underlings to stop the beating. Kyeon objects, saying that if they let Soon-ki live, he’ll make trouble. “I’m giving the orders,” Seok-jin shouts, and orders Kyeon and his men to take off.
Earnestly, Seok-jin tries to get Soon-ki to come to his senses. He tells him that the orders came from Heui-soo. “If we’re not careful, we’ll both be dead!” he says. He gives Soon-ki the packet of money that was originally given to his mom, and with it a plane ticket to Hong Kong. “Go to a hospital, get fixed up, then go to Hong Kong and lie low,” he tells Soon-ki; he’ll tell Oh-soo and Heui-soo some story.
Seok-jin takes off, leaving Soon-ki alone, as he thinks, and goes back to his apartment. He talks on the phone with Oh-soo, saying he has just gotten home from work and that Soon-ki is already there in bed.
Meanwhile, however, another guy goes to the Kang house and delivers a manila envelope for Na-heui. It contains copies of the photos of Na-heui and Seok-jin in her car.1 So, just after Seok-jin gets back in the apartment, he gets a call from Na-heui who wants a meeting, and he has to sneak out again. He meets her on the riverfront. “Were these pictures from your friend?” she asks. “Probably,” he says, “but he won’t bother you again.”
That’s for sure. Back at the warehouse, as Soon-ki, badly injured, tries to recover his functions, a man walks up in the darkness. It is Heui-soo. He is not on Jeju. He is here in Seoul.
Soon-ki, his instincts wrong to the very last, looks up at Heui-soo and sees him as his saviour. He is quick to squeal on Seok-jin: “Secretary Na betrayed you,” he says.
“I know,” says Heui-soo, his voice full of solicitude as he pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “I thought a long time about what to do,” he says as he puts a cigarette in Soon-ki’s mouth, which unthinkingly accepts it. “And I made my decision,” he says as he strikes a match to it.
In a short time the cigarette has fallen from Soon-ki’s lips. He lies on his side, his muscles seizing up rhythmically in a seizure, his legs wriggling like those of a dying insect. Heui-soo watches Soon-ki die. Next to his body, he drops a blue handkerchief embroidered with the initials “SJ”. Wordlessly, he walks out.
As Soon-ki now lies motionless and lifeless, out of the darkness another man walks up: the mastermind. “Your friends have not disappointed me,” Seung-ha murmurs.
Meanwhile, Min-jae and Jae-min, who were staked out at Yeong-cheol’s workplace, have followed him from there to Seok-jin’s apartment. Now Yeong-cheol is ostentatiously banging on the door, yelling, “Is nobody home?” The detectives call Oh-soo, who heads on over. As he arrives, his handphone rings. It’s a call from Soon-ki’s phone. Someone is sending a picture to the phone’s screen. The picture is of Soon-ki’s dead face. Oh-soo gasps in horror. Back at the warehouse, Seung-ha drops the phone next to the body and walks away.
Episode ends, late Wednesday night, May 2, Day 24. (Thus Soon-ki meets his end, which frankly he has been asking for for about 12 episodes now. This episode is very intricate, and it is a challenge to disentangle and understand the elements of the three separate plots: Seok-jin’s plot to kidnap and terrify Soon-ki is at least understandable, though to be honest I can’t really tell you what the role of the elevator inspection signs was. Heui-soo’s plot to murder Soon-ki and frame his secretary is considerably more complex. I suppose the tracking device was useful to keep out of Seok-jin’s way, but why did he send the photos to Na-heui, for example? And then there is the Mastermind’s own plot. Why did Seung-ha send the image? Why did Yeong-cheol go over to the apartment? Just to taunt Oh-soo? The effect seems to be to put the police on the trail much sooner than they would otherwise have been.)
(1) These are my own weekdays and were not mentioned on the show - I am using them here mainly to keep the action sorted out.
(2) Just to be clear, these are not the mastermind’s photos, which come in red envelopes. Heui-soo’s photos come in manila envelopes.
