You’ve been warned: this post contains spoilers.
Hurry up! Watch the first two episodes then come back to read my comments. This is turning out to be a good kdrama. (But don’t fail me now, screenwriters!)
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Move over Lovely, Horribly! I’ve found my new horror kdrama sans annoying female lead with a haggard face and messy hair. (Sorry, Song Ji Hyo. But I’ll still root for you, the Ace of Running Man.)
I’ll list of things I found interesting about this show. Agree or disagree?
1. The song “She.” That was a neat trick. My initial reaction at seeing the feminine-looking hand wiggling in the mud is “OMG. She’s dead!” followed by confusion, “It’s a guy??” and finally, “But who’s the song referring to, then? Who’s ‘She’?”
By the end of Episode 2, there are two plausible women. One is the new female assistant or trainee named Jung Yeo-wool (YW). Choi Daniel’s character, Lee Da Il (DI) promised to help her find her younger sister’s murderer and he’s the kind of person to keep his word.
But the unforgettable woman of the song can also be the ghostly Lady in Red. My bet is on the latter.
The lyrics audible in the kdrama —
She may be the face I can’t forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
She may be the song that summer sings
Maybe the chill that autumn brings
Maybe a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day.
2. The Red Lady. My theory is Lee Da Il has previously encountered this Red Lady. Probably during the suicide of one of his soldiers in the army. She’s probably the face he couldn’t forget — like in the song.
3. Lee Da Il’s involvement in the suicide of his army buddy is suspicious.
In his conversation with YW regarding her sister’s suicide, he became upset at the pat answers people offer as reason for suicide.
DI: What did the police say?
YW: They told me that people sometime hallucinate or talk nonsense before they die. They investigated everyone who were at the scene, and that woman wasn’t even in the CCTV footage.
DI: Do you believe them?
YW: No, my sister wasn’t mad. She uses sign language when she wishes to tell me something private. It’s just like whispering. She used sign language on purpose.
DI: Why?
YW: She was probably scared of that woman.
DI: First, let’s try to find out what that woman did to your sister. Do you know why your sister might have made that kind of choice?
YW: No, I don’t know anything. All her texts, emails, and social media uploads were all gone. Yi Rang had already deleted everything right before she died.
DI: What was the police’s conclusion?
YW: She was an orphan, had a hearing disability, and didn’t leave behind any will. So they said that she was just sick of life.
DI: (scoffs, and rubs his hands and eyes) What a joke. Nobody has the right to simplify the reason behind anyone’s death so easily like that. (he gazes at her intensely.)
To me, he sounded too aggrieved for somebody who supposedly had “closure” from the end of his lawsuit.
Also, I don’t know if a mistranslation occurred in the subs, but two things are murky about DI’s involvement in the suicide.
According to his attorney, the same lawyer of kidnapped child, he’s a good man, the type who needs to get to the bottom of things and find out what’s bothering him. In a flashback, it was revealed that he was “Staff Sergeant Lee DA Il who was arrested and fired for revealing classified information.” His long fight in court came to an end two years after he claimed that “Private First Class Kim had committed suicide, and he dug into the cruel treatments in the army and the corruption of the military officials and reveal it to the public which caused a huge social firestorm.”
He was found not guilty and was compensated for having received jail sentence. However, his position in the army couldn’t be reinstated after the suit.
However, when the police detective Park Jung-Dae was researching about him on the internet, he found a report that read, “The gruesome truth behind a soldier’s suicide… Sergeant ‘obeyed orders’ to bully the late Kim.”
So was he personally involved in the harassment that lead to Kim’s suicide? Or was he saying that there’s endemic and systematic bullying in the military and he had no choice in the matter? Does he feel guilty like YW feels culpable for her sister’s suicide?
4. The Chesterfield sofa. It’s funny that DI complains that Mr. Han Sang Seop (SS) his “boss” at the detective agency isn’t meticulous about details (i.e., mixing the books with other things in the moving box).
But there is ONE fine detail that SS insisted on – the Chesterfield sofa.
A Chesterfield sofa is a deep-buttoned leather sofa with the backrest and the arms of equal height. It was popularized by Sigmund Freud and became associated with therapy sessions with a psychoanalyst. When SS uses the sofa as props to set apart their detective agency from an inquiry agency. He wants to evoke the image of a trained observer and psychoanalyst, like Sherlock Holmes, to convince his clients to trust them in their professional service.
It’s also hilarious when SS channels Sherlock by wearing a poor imitation of Sherlock’s deerstalker (SS wore a beret) and Sherlock’s calabash pipe. Perhaps then, he does pay attention to details, but only those he considers important.
I also laughed when he mispronounced Benedict Cumberbatch’s name as Cumberbitch. Good adlib!
5. Lee Da-Il is the Korean version of Sherlock Holmes. At first, the dizzying speed of his deduction is hard to keep up with. Now, I just playback what he says.
For instance, how did he recognize Lee Chan Mi and why did he suspect her?
When he entered that suffocating bedroom/laundry room of Lee Chan Mi, he didn’t know who she was until he read the name of her logbook/diary. Remember? She consulted it to check the day when the dog BoRi. She said the dog disappeared a day before the two kids disappeared. However, when DI observed her clothes, she had dog hair on the pocket of her pants and on her shoes.
Those couldn’t have been old clothes she was wearing because 1) the kindergarten director was very particular about neatness, and 2) she herself was very neat and she kept her room spick and span. This meant that she was lying and had seen the dog recently.
Also, she was caught in the kindergarten’s CCTV dozing off in the children’s room. Per DI, she was setting up an alibi during the times of the abduction. Since she lived in the premises, she could have easily gone back to her bedroom to sleep. Instead she chose to nap in front of the cameras.
Not only that, she had gotten rid of BoRi’s water and food dishes. BoRi was known to go in and out of her doghouse by going under the fence. When she removed the dishes, she inadvertently revealed that she knew that BoRi was being kept someplace else where she visited him regularly (the dog hair).
See that? I had to rewatch the scenes to catch on to what DI was talking about. I think the director could have done a better editing here.
6. Detectives or Private Investigators. Here’s an article about the recent court ruling on private investigators which was mentioned a couple of times in this kdrama.
South Korea’s constitutional court rules in favor of banning private detective agencies
South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of banning private detective agencies, claiming the existing laws are the only way to protect the privacy of the general public.
The unanimous ruling was the court’s response to a complaint filed by an ex-police officer who claimed Article 40 of the Credit Information Use and Protection Act violates the freedom to pursue careers of one‘s choosing.
South Korea is currently the only country among the 34 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where private detective service is illegal.
The law states that no person, other than a credit information company, shall perform “finding out a certain person’s whereabouts and contacts” and “investigating his or her private life.” It also bans using titles such as private intelligence service agents and detectives.
Those who violate the law can face up to three years in prison or a fine up to 30 million won ($26,902).
“There were recent instances where people illegally collected personal information on others by using spy cams or location trackers,” the court said. “Considering this, there is no way to protect people’s privacy and peace of mind other than by banning businesses that investigate personal lives of others.”
On the ban on the use of the title “private detective” and “intelligence service agents,” the court said the ban is necessary as people can be misled to think that private intelligence or detective service is legal in the country.
In many other countries, including Japan and Canada, private detectives, who can be hired by individuals, often work for attorneys in criminal or civil cases.
Currently, two legislative bills that propose the introduction of government-licensed private investigators or detectives have been introduced at the National Assembly.
By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)
Source: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180710000659
7. The Inquiry Agency. Since I’m not Korean, I’ll get an explanation from a reliable source.
…inquiry agencies mainly engaged in the work of investigating credit-related matters such as commercial transactions, asset, and finance to informing their clients. Unfortunately, as these tasks were carried out in an illegitimate way with the help of gangsters and caused social public criticism, the term “inquiry agency” was gradually replaced by “errand center” in the 1970s while continuing to employ the conventional methods…. The usual illegal activities involved include buy over, assault, threat, misrepresentation, fabrication, counterfeit, wiretapping and secret filming, shadowing, theft, burglary, intervention in criminal cases, leakage of private information, illegal debt collection, illegal arrest and confinement, murder by contract, etc.;
Source: http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ss.20130206.14.pdf
No wonder DI and SS do not want to be referred to as an inquiry agency!
8. On hearing. It’s interesting that two of the suicide victims, YW’s younger sister and the teacher, had auditory overload shortly before committing suicide. The sister Yi Rang experienced something like a hearing aid feedback, and the teacher must have been bothered by sounds she was hearing because chopped off her ears ala Vincent Van Gogh. She was very sensitive to the noise the children made.
It must be noted that DI also sensed something when he touched Yi Rang’s hearing aid.
YW’s sister’s dying message is most helpful. “Unnie, run away. Don’t look at that woman. Don listen to what she says.”
Too bad that YW already heard what the Lady in Red said at the moment of her sister’s death. The Lady in Red asked her, “Are you angry?”
9. The title “Ghost Detective.” He’s a ghost investigating a ghost. It seems like he could touch objects (i.e., he held the hearing aid) but he couldn’t touch humans.
He could touch YW however, like when she grabbed his hand and pulled him up, and when she patted him on the shoulder (to his surprise).
10. The Lady in Red as the specter of suicide. I’m not sure about this but it’s possible that she appears at her victims’ sides to goad them to kill themselves and then she hangs around to witness their very personal deaths.
11. The romance between the leads. Frankly, I don’t mind if no romance develops between DI and YW.
Those are my notes for now. Will add more tomorrow as I’m about to doze off while typing this.