Our anti-hero finally gets himself into a situation he can’t control, and time is against them as his wife does everything she can to save him. The more she learns about his current troubles, the more she realizes that she doesn’t know her husband as well as she thought.
EPISODE 5 RECAP
Winter, 2006
While working at her mother’s store, Ji-won perks up when Hee-sung comes in to buy a couple of beers. The power goes out, and Hee-sung silently uses his lighter to light a candle. He’s about to leave when Ji-won says that a nearby store was robbed the last time there was a blackout, but he just stares blankly.
Ji-won locks the doors, but she notices that Hee-sung is still outside, keeping watch. Awww. It starts to snow, but he doesn’t leave until the power returns.
Two years later, Ji-won complains that Hee-sung hit on her first so she confessed, and now he’s playing hard to get. She asks why he calls her and keeps tabs on her, and he says it’s because her mom seeks him out every time Ji-won stays out late.
Ji-won pouts for a piggyback ride home, and when Hee-sung doesn’t respond, she calls him “ajusshi” and tells him not to talk to strangers, hee. He turns to go, but she calls after him, “But you like me. I know it. I can see it. It’s obvious.” Hee-sung asks almost angrily what she thinks she knows about him and almost threatens to tell her what kind of person he really is.
In the present, Hee-sung is still in his hotel room when Kyung-choon pulls up in his taxi. He approaches, and Kyung-choon tells him to get in. He tells Hee-sung that he’s been wanting to meet him, and when Hee-sung asks what he wants, his answer is cryptic, “Jung Mi-sook.”
Hee-sung says he doesn’t know Kyung-choon or Mi-sook, and Kyung-choon sarcastically laments that Nam Soon-kil died for nothing. Hee-sung answers a call from Moo-jin, who just learned that Jung Mi-sook was Do Min-seok’s assumed victim who was never found.
Kyung-choon laughs that Hee-sung is on the run for murder yet has a wife and child, waving around the picture of Hee-sung and a pregnant Ji-won. Hee-sung tears up the picture and snarls that he had nothing to do with Do Min-seok’s murders. He does offer Kyung-choon compensation, put Kyung-choon pulls out a rag and clamps it over Hee-sung’s face.
Hee-sung is able to stab Kyung-choon in the leg with the shard of glass he rigged, allowing him to escape the taxi. The drug that was on the rag makes him woozy, but he manages to crawl to a barrel that’s got some burning coals inside, and he tosses in the torn-up photo.
The two men fight, and Kyung-choon grabs Hee-sung and puts the rag over his face again until he passes out. He drags Hee-sung back to his taxi, unaware that the hotel manager is watching from her office.
Meanwhile, Ji-won is shown a watch that was found in the warehouse where she fought Do Hyun-soo. She recognizes the engraved watch band that she gave to Hee-sung for his birthday. Ji-won fibs to the cop that the watch is hers, and as he’s leaving, she hears a call-in of a taxi driver kidnapping a man.
Woo-chul gets yelled at by Chief Oh for letting a criminal wiretap the police, but he says that what’s important now is catching Kyung-choon. Chief Oh does a flying leap at Jae-seob for being the one who got fooled, then grabs Jae-seob by the hair. Jae-seob grabs him back, and soon all the detectives are in a full-on brawl, hee.
Woo-chul finally bellows at them to stop and says they have to catch Kyung-choon tonight, because this will be all over the news tomorrow. He’s requested the taxi’s log and has a team looking into Kyung-choon’s personal affairs, and Chief Oh threatens to shave all their heads (starting with Jae-seob) if Kyung-choon isn’t caught tonight.
On their way to check out the kidnapping report, Ji-won and Ho-joon call in to Woo-chul, who tells them that they’re about to trace Kyung-choon’s taxi’s location. Ho-joon asks about the watch since Ji-won said it was hers, so she quickly makes up a story about having it in her pocket because the band needed repair.
When Ho-joon keeps asking questions, Ji-won says it’s her husband’s watch, but he points out that she said it was hers. Ji-won snaps at him for focusing on unimportant details, then really bites his head off when he starts to say something else. Ha, the poor kid stammers that he was just going to tell her to buckle her seatbelt.
While getting his head wound treated, Moo-jin mentions Jung Mi-sook, and the Yeoungju doctor recognizes the name. He’s surprised that a man who dug all over the village looking for his wife would kill a person, and he tells Moo-jin that the cops need to find Do Hyun-soo quickly, so that they can find Kyung-choon’s wife’s body.
Moo-jin protests that it’s only an assumption that Hyun-soo helped his father with the murders, especially since the cops determined that Do Min-seok was the only killer. He tells the doctor that you can’t punish someone for crimes their family members committed, and the doctor starts to confide something, but instead he just sighs that Moo-jin is frustrating.
Ji-won and Ho-joon show the hotel manager Kyung-choon’s photo and she confirms that he’s the taxi driver she saw kidnapping a man. Ho-joon steps away to call in the info, and Ji-won asks the manager some questions about the victim but gets nowhere. Then she hears a familiar ringtone, and finds Hee-sung’s phone (with Eun-ha as his screensaver) on the ground nearby.
She tells Ho-joon that she doesn’t understand it, but that she thinks her husband is the kidnapping victim. She brings up a picture of Hee-sung and the manager confirms that it was him. Jae-seob calls Ho-joon again, and Ji-won grabs the phone to ask where Kyung-choon’s taxi is located now.
They jump in their police car and Ji-won peels out to follow the signal of Kyung-choon’s taxi. Kyung-choon doesn’t seem to be in a hurry as he drives with Hee-sung unconscious in his trunk, so Ji-won soon catches up to him. Kyung-choon tosses his black box out of the window, which lands on Ji-won’s windshield and smashes it, causing her to lose control and slam into a roadside stand.
Moo-jin whines at the doctor to say what he was going to say, but the doctor insists on taking his supplements first, ha. Just as he’s about to say whatever it is, they’re interrupted by a Yeoungju detective who wants to talk to Moo-jin about the break-in at Bok-ja’s house. ARGH!
The doctor invites the detective to tell Moo-jin whatever it is, since he was on Do Min-seok’s case at the time, and they proceed to have the most vague conversation about “that” until Moo-jin nearly cries in frustration. Finally the doctor says there was a witness.
Jae-seob wakes up, hands and feet tied, at the bottom of an empty indoor pool. Kyung-choon drags a knife down his face, marveling at his new identity and life, and Hee-sung brags that he even owns a house just to antagonize him. Hee-sung chuckles that the one Kyung-choon really wants revenge on is dead and that he’s just a way for Kyung-choon to vent his anger, spitting the rumors about Do Hyun-soo in Kyung-choon’s face.
Kyung-choon asks if Hee-sung is scared he’ll kill him, but Hee-sung says that he’s not scared of someone he can see right through. Kyung-choon stabs him in the arm to make a point that he can still feel pain, and he promises to keep torturing Hee-sung until he tells him where to find his wife.
Hee-sung gasps, “That was close enough… “ and when Kyung-choon leans down to listen, Hee-sung bites his ear off. He growls that killing him would be a failure to get revenge, because Kyung-choon can’t prove something that Hee-sung didn’t do or even know of.
At the accident scene, Ji-won touches base with Jae-seob and is forced to tell him that she believes her husband is Kyung-choon’s victim, though she doesn’t know why, or even what Hee-sung was doing at that hotel. Too flustered to know what to do, she begs Jae-seob to give her an order. When he says they’ll know more once they locate Kyung-choon’s vehicle, Ji-won screams that they’ll find Hee-sung in pieces by then.
She sobs that her priority is no longer to catch Kyung-choon, but to find her husband alive. She argues that Jae-seob has caught kidnappers before with less evidence, so he taps into his infamous intuition and comes up with an idea.
Meanwhile, Woo-chul goes to see Hee-sung’s “parents” to notify them of his kidnapping. He asks if they’ve heard of Do Hyun-soo and the serial murders in Yeoungju (which they deny), and tells them that the police believe the kidnapper is trying to frame Do Hyun-soo for murder in order to revive the case, so he’s taken Hee-sung to set him up as Hyun-soo’s supposed victim.
Woo-chul takes his leave after promising to station some cops to protect them, but he’s suspicious of how calm Hee-sung’s parents were about the whole thing. His partner agrees that they seemed more interested in the Do Hyun-soo case than their son’s well-being.
Inside, Hee-sung’s parents argue over whether they should have made him live with them when they took him in. Mom bursts into the real Hee-sung’s hidden room, scared that when the kidnapper is caught, people will find out that Hee-sung isn’t their real son. Dad says that the kidnapper will kill Hee-sung/Hyun-soo, then they can lie that they didn’t know who he really is and pretend to be a pitiful old couple who got used by him.
Kyung-choon begins to pump water into the swimming pool, where he’s bolted Hee-sung’s hands to the floor. Hee-sung repeats that he can’t prove what he doesn’t know, but Kyung-choon continues that his wife disappeared on May 12, 2002, a beautiful day, and that she was last seen in Do Min-seok’s car.
Still in Yeoungju, Moo-jin has drinks with the detective who worked on Do Min-seok’s case. He goes to the bathroom and writes notes on his arm, like the date and place that Kyung-choon’s wife disappeared.
Kyung-choon pauses his monologuing to take some medicine, then continues talking about a witness, who saw Mi-sook being forced into Do Min-seok’s car. Min-seok was acquitted because, according to Kyung-choon, his son provided a false alibi. Hee-sung insists that he told the truth about being with his dad that entire day, and that the witness was drunk and changed her statement while his stayed consistent.
Kyung-choon shows Hee-sung his fish tile, and from Hee-sung’s reaction, he definitely recognizes it. Kyung-choon says that Nam Soon-kil said this one belonged to Do Hyun-soo, when it’s the one Mi-sook was carrying when she disappeared. Hee-sung recalls his father’s funeral, when his sister Hae-soo gave him the fish tile keychain. She’d said it was for luck, and had told him to keep it on him at all times.
In the present, Hae-soo avoids the reporters demanding to ask her questions about her brother, only sticking her head out to say that demurely that she didn’t know her father was a serial killer and offer a perfunctory “sorry” to the victims’ families.
Jae-seob tells Ji-won that he caught one kidnapper because he’d noticed there was an expensive lock on his door in a very run-down area. They believe that Kyung-choon might have something similar, and they head to his home to investigate.
Kyung-choon grows angry when Hee-sung completely stops talking after seeing the fish tile. The water rises to Hee-sung’s chin but he continues to say that he doesn’t know where Mi-sook is until the water covers his head.
While going through Kyung-choon’s garbage, Ji-won finds a torn-up ad for a fancy lock system and calls the number, and the employee who answers remembers installing a lock in an area where construction was halted. They find Kyung-choon’s taxi there and determine which building he’s in by the new lock, which Jae-seob smashes.
They run in just as Kyung-choon is making his escape, and Jae-seob disarms and arrests him, but Kyung-choon grabs the knife again and stabs Jae-seob in the side. Ho-joon bursts in, gun drawn, but he hesitates as Kyung-choon grabs Jae-seob and holds his body like a shield.
Jae-seob yells to Ho-joon to shoot, but Ho-joon still hesitates. So with a roar, Jae-seob slams himself and Kyung-choon backwards in to the wall, smashing Kyung-choon’s head into a bolt and killing him.
Ji-won continues inside, and she finds Hee-sung in the pool and doesn’t hesitate to jump in to rescue him. She can’t get his face above the water line because of his bonds, so she takes a gulp of air then uses her mouth to push the air into Hee-sung’s lungs. She repeats this until Hee-sung opens his eyes.
We go back to 2008, when Hee-sung had angrily offered to tell Ji-won exactly what kind of person he is. He’d said he never graduated high school and was in a gang, and used to get in bad fights. He’d smiled as he remembered beating up a guy, saying that it felt good, and he’d stared at the vision of his father as he admitted that sometimes he sees things that aren’t there.
He’d told Ji-won that he’s not right in the head, and that he sees a dead person. Ji-won had replied that he must have loved them, like she sometimes dreams of her dead grandmother, and Hee-sung had called her clueless.
Ji-won had said that Hee-sung’s problem was that he didn’t see himself the way she sees him, and she’d vowed to keep liking him and promised that one day, things would change for the better. Hee-sung had stared at her in that way that made her heart skip a beat, and he’d said in wonder, “You’re a mystery to me.”
Ji-won had asked if that was a confession, then she’d decided it was and had kissed him. In the middle of the kiss, Hee-sung had opened his eyes, and like Ji-won did with her grandmother in her dream, he’d told the vision of his father, “You can go now. I want to stay here, so please.. please go.”
Slowly, Min-seok had turned and walked away. Ji-won had ended the kiss and nervously asked Hee-sung if he wanted to have a drink, but he had kissed her again, more passionately this time.
In the present, Ji-won grabs a knife and jumps back in the pool to cut the ropes keeping Hee-sung underwater. She pulls him to the surface and keeps giving him air, but he doesn’t wake up. She screams for help, as we hear Hee-sung’s thoughts:
I always thought that I was lucky to have met you. But for the first time, I’m thinking you should never have met me. Yes. I finally know what it means. I’m sorry.
He loses what little consciousness he’d gained, and he’s gone.
COMMENTS
Well, there’s no way Hee-sung is dead, not with this only being Episode 5! But I loved that this episode was all about Ji-won searching for him, because we got to see their relationship from a different angle than the one we’ve seen, which looks a bit like Hee-sung is just using Ji-won for cover. But that glimpse into the beginning of their relationship showed us exactly why Hee-sung cares about Ji-won… she’s the first person who believed in him and saw the best of him, and loved him for all that he was and not just in spite of his shortcomings. Not only that, but she banished the specter of his father, allowing Hee-sung to live the life he wanted to live.
I like the turnaround in this episode of Ji-won getting to save Hee-sung — she’s such a strong, smart character and I enjoy watching her in action. Unfortunately for Hee-sung, his wife’s intelligence is soon going to start working against him, especially now that she knows he’s keeping secrets from her. At this point I do believe that Hee-sung isn’t guilty of murder, and I’d love to see him loop in Ji-won and the two of them use her smarts and connections to clear his name.
I also believe that Hee-sung has mental illness issues, ones that he freely admits and doesn’t really try to hide. He’s haunted by both real and imagined specters of the past, and he often makes decisions that can harm others. He even confessed to Ji-won that it sometimes felt good to hurt people. But I also think that Hee-sung wants to be a good person, that he studies expressions in order to fit in rather than hide his true self. Now that we know him a bit better, I trust that he loves Ji-won and Eun-ha because they see that best side of him, and that he does just want to live a quiet life away from his painful memories.
But someone did kill Kyung-choon’s wife, and if Hee-sung and his father were together that day, there’s only one person left… Hae-soo. I’m starting to suspect that Hae-soo is the real child-killer of Do Min-seok’s, and not Hee-sung as everyone has always believed. If Min-seok was grooming Hee-sung to murder people, it makes sense that he would be doing the same with his daughter, and there are so many things about Hae-soo that make alarms go off in my head. As little screen time as she’s had, we’ve already been given several ominous clues about her… she was there when the village foreman was killed, she had a “secret art room” that her father built for her, she had possession of the missing woman’s fish tile keychain, and even the fact that her job is to make people appear believably dead seems oddly specialized. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s Do Min-seok’s true protege, and that either Hee-sung doesn’t know, or he’s been hiding the truth about her all these years.