Spoilers are allowed here. 🙂
If the accomplice is caught by Episode 12 or 13, I think we should rethink the identity of the killer(s). For one, it’s too early to wrap everything up this week.
For another, the suicide of the Dad always bugged me. He’s a psychopath, right? A psychopath is narcissistic and lacks empathy. He wouldn’t be compelled to kill himself out of remorse and guilt for his victims or his children.
Maybe, he felt frustration and anger that his killing days are over so he killed himself. But… if I remember the beginning of the story correctly… the murders were only discovered AFTER his suicide. The police wouldn’t have investigated his residence and workshop and found the thumbs (ugh!) if it wasn’t for his suicide. The serial murders were uncovered by his suicide. He couldn’t have been frustrated or angry that the police was unto him if they didn’t know about them.
So his suicide doesn’t make sense to me.
But I shouldn’t say more since I still have to catch up with y’all. I’m stuck with Episode 9.
🙂
Let’s enjoy the show!
Hi @pkml3, glad to know you’re back safe! Yes you remember correctly. His ‘suicide’ is the most suspicious thing of all. There would have been absolutely no clues leading to him from the murders, if he’d stayed alive.
Somehow the victims had been found with the thumbnails on both hands missing, so the police knew it was a serial killing. It was some time later then only Do Min Seok ‘committed suicide’. I believe that it might have been Jung Mi Sook’s disappearance with a husband that reported her missing, and a witness that reported she saw the kidnapping, that may have led to the victims being discovered. That would have been around 12th May 2002 (according to @miracle23’s time line. Thanks again @miracle23!)
It was only after DMS died (2 weeks after the bodies were discovered, on 26th May 2002) that his workshop was examined and the grisly clues (thumbnails of the right hands) were found. This effectively closed the police investigation.
The fact that only the right thumb nails had been found, meant that the left thumbnails were missing. That pointed to a possible accomplice or someone that the murderer had ‘shared’ his victims with, but the police did not go any further in the investigation.
It seems ridiculous for Do Min Seok to leave all the evidence in his workshop, which would implicate himself and his family, before killing himself. He might have been a killer, but he was also a family man. If he really wanted to die, he should have left no trace of the crime beforehand.
From where we are, it looks increasingly like he’s been made the scapegoat (although he might also have been a killer), to take the fall and to take the heat off someone else.
Off to watch Episode 12 with the subs!!!
Yup, DMS’s suicide is definitely questionable. BHS, he really reminded me of the killer in a movie The Client. In there, the killer wore a facade, showing devastation and grieve towards the death of his wife when he became the sole suspect for it and a serial murder case. He made his sceptic lawyer became sympathetic towards him until his lawyer successfully argued that the actual evidence was circumstantial evidence and he won the case.
Will only watch ep 12 this weekend! Till then 😊
Dear @Packmule3 and dear @GrowinBeautifully, I am happy to read you and to know you are well. Hope to be reunited with you in another Drama soon,
FGB4877
Dear @FGB4877, I just happened to go back to some old posts on DB yesterday, and saw your comment there. Was thinking of you, and here you are!! What kind of drama are you looking for now? I’ve been in the mood for light and fluffy stuff to offset Stranger 2 and Flower of Evil.
I too hope to see you again, on a show we’re both enjoying. 😃
Yes, the suicide of DMS bugs me too – why would he do that, seriously?
Just finished watching Ep12, BHS is such a sick guy looking like he’s trying to plant evidence for Hyun Soo to be the killer of the maid instead of him.
This episode is not as stressful as the previous ones but I like the changes they’re showing on Hyun Soo and it also gives out more layers for future episodes development. Hae Soo might do something dangerous to save Hyun soo as she emphasized to JiWon that she would pay off the “debt” she owes. I really look forward to watching the remaining episodes.
Dear @GrowingBeautifully, it is always a pleasure to read you!!!
At this very moment I am watching Yokai Shareouse, a comedy about a naive girl that ends up in a shareouse with japanese folklore monsters. They love her and celebrate her a lot more than her human acquaintances. It is somewhat silly (sometimes cringeworthy) but it has an earnest heart. On the other hand there are not a lot of CGI, so the actors rely on traditional effects and cinematography. I don’t know if this COVID-19 is creeping out me or if this is the season approaching Halloween but I want something spooky but funny, like Master’s Sun =D .
Have I missed on something good after The King: Eternal Monarch and Hospital Playlist?
I am kind of curious… which of my posts did you read? 0_0U
@FGB4877 took me a bit of time to locate it … it was your comment on the Twenty Again Episode 16 recap. You wrote to @Ivoire (whom I chatted with a lot too) about the show being like Flowers for My Life. I gather you liked both shows. 🙂
Episode 12 Adhoc Thoughts
Backstory of BHS
2005, Mum Baek is home and makes Hee Sung’s bed only to find under the mattress, a box containing a knife, photos of victims and their thumb nails. She takes the knife and looks like she’d like to kill herself with it, but looks out and sees BHS outside the house in the rain. He’s digging a shallow grave for Hyun Soo whom he has brought home in his car. The fact that she wanted to kill herself as the first resort, implies that she’s known for some time that BHS kills, that she must have tried to stop him before and had failed. She was at her wits’ end.
It’s interesting that Dad Baek is the person that both son and mum call first for help, and to get the ‘problems’ solved. BHS when accosted by mum makes a complaint: he said he had called his father so many times but he didn’t answer the phone. It looked like without dad, BHS was trying to solve the problem himself by getting rid of Hyun Soo. Hyun Soo was still alive and made a sound but BHS was about to bury him alive.
Mum Baek was so horrified to see BHS drag a still living Hyun Soo into the grave that she stabbed BHS. She said that he scared her and couldn’t handle him anymore. He collapses.
This was what led to him being in a coma. This occasion was also what Hyun Soo referred to when he told Ji Won that he had to get through 2 more near death experiences after the Nam Soon Kil attack, before met JW.
Among the things BHS says are that : “Oh. this isn’t my fault. He jumped in front of my car and I couldn’t get a hold of Dad.”
Mum : “So you’re going to bury him?”
BHS : “What other choice do I have?”
He sounds like the real psychopath, and the type that kills casually. It’s shocking that no other alternative presented itself to him. All his fine talk of bringing Hyun Soo to the hospital had dissipated once Hyun Soo had negated it and collapsed.
Touching Scene
I laughed and cried at this scene, each time I re-watched it.
Little Eun Ha runs out to embrace her daddy, crying because she’d missed him so much. Granny is non-plussed to find that not only is Eun Ha crying as if she’d not seen her father for years, but HS himself crumpled up in tears. Even Ji won cried a tear or two while watching them.
At the school, Eun Ha has this advice for daddy : “Don’t cry like before because you miss me, okay? Since you’re a grown up.”
As if assured by Ji Won’s certainty that he loved her, Hyun Soo tells Eun Ha that he loves her a lot. Maybe I’m reading more into this, but he looked happy to know that he means it. In the past he never thought that he was able to love.
KMJ and Do Hae Su
I’ve never been sold on Kim Moo Jin being such a great guy because he was a louse as a teenager and was not much better as an adult when he took credit for things he didn’t do and tried to sell out Hyun Soo as DMS’s accomplice, for his TV report, however I felt a smidgen of pity for him, because Hae Su cared nothing for him, while he’d held a candle for her, it seems, since 4th grade!!!
He told her that he likes her and that if she could reciprocate, in his words: “An eighth of the amount you care for Hyun Soo would be more than enough.”
I liked the reverse trope at this juncture, at least on Hae Su’s part; and at least for now ie just because they were first loves, does not mean that when they met again, there’d automatically be the same connection and desire to reconcile.
Hae Su says to him : “Why are you looking at me like that? I know we dated when we were kids, but it’s weird that you still feel the same way about me.” (My emphasis, LOL. I love this. She sounds more like a sociopath here.)
He gives her back the necklace.
Hae Su : “How is it you have this?”
KMJ : “Next time throw it away where I can’t see it. I’m sorry for liking you ever since I first saw you in fourth grade. I’ll try to get over you.”
Do Hae Su’s Unmitigated Guilt?
I noted with interest that Hae Su is not sorry that she killed the foreman. What she is sorry about is that she allowed Hyun Soo to take the blame. She had felt, as the older sister, that she should always be the one to take care of HS, but he had reversed this role, and been the one to take care of his sister instead.
I’m not sure I agree entirely with JW’s point of view. Hae Su went to turn herself in, wanting to do the right thing, to clear Hyun Soo of the murder charges, and to take the punishment.
JW refused to allow this as it would negate all that Hyun Soo had taken upon himself for 18 years, and it would make him feel guilty and indebted to his sister for the rest of his life. This reasoning, is acceptable up to a point, but Hae Su should still have been given a chance to make amends.
JW was mean in that she wanted Hae Soo to feel guilty. I believe that Hae Su had been suffering guilt and punishing herself for 18 years. This is probably part of the reason why she would not allow herself to have a warm relationship with anyone.
Although Hae Su says to JW : “Thank you. for trusting Hyun Soo. I’ll repay your for this. I swear I’ll do everything I can to repay you while I’m still alive.” This falls short of her being allowed to do what she deemed to be the right thing… the thing that she described to KMJ that she should have done. The killing might have been accidental or at least self-defence or manslaughter, afterall.
Det Choi on reflection seems to have come to a similar conclusion. He refused to do anything about Do Hyun Soo, when he was confident that the latter had not been the killer or the accomplice. He told Ji Won :”The tragedy of a young brother and sister who became the enemy of the world overnight. I don’t want to touch it either.”
Hopefully Hae Su will find a way to come to terms with not feeling guilty, and to live a fuller and warmer life.
@GB, thank you so much for another detailed analysis on FOE. I’m a great fan of your write ups!
@miracle 23, so we’re right about JMS, the taxi driver’s wife, being alive. Both her and Hyun Soo got their memories removed (by DMS?) – did DMS decide not to kill her at the end so just erased her memories and let her go? Or was it a procedure for DMS before killing her and somehow she escaped?
I’m very speechless reading comments from other sites complaining about the plot. The way they use viewers eyes to analyze this drama that those people forget we are given more information than the characters.
I couldn’t watch ep 13. It’s just too stressful. On @GB’s scale, probably a 10.5/10. I only saw snippets from instagram clips that usually get released a day after the ep.
About the end, I’m positive that it’s a “staged situation”. It has been established well enough that HS will never really attack Ji won. He’s had plenty of opportunities to do that by now and hasn’t raised a finger, let alone in front of an audience. So whatever he’s doing might actually be for the benefit of the onlookers with a two fold goal in his mind:
1) it sort of protects Ji Won from public/professional slander. She’s now the poor, oppressed wife who was taken advantage of all these years. After all, her husband held a knife to her neck in full view of her police colleagues. How long does it take to extrapolate that this might have been the situation all along?
2) about trust, I don’t think he really thinks that she doesn’t trust him. She’s had ample and more opportunities for that and has proven time and again that she’s his biggest advocate. What might be implied here is either a) a staged provocation scene or b) HS believes that JW won’t be able to prove his innocence. This is reasonable doubt.
3) Such a hostage situation might lead the police to believe he’s unsafe and might attack his family further. Thus, protection would be provided to his home, his wife and his child. This would serve the purpose against the actual accomplice threatening them.
In the meanwhile, he’s out there to set his own trap. I think he wanted to run away because he doesn’t trust the police to be able to prove his innocence. Sure, his methods are highly questionable but they’ve always been since the beginning of the drama.
“Don’t look at me as if you are sending me off to die.” He’s out there to catch the culprit by himself and Ji Won is right by his side… Through his watch that is inseparable from him. The watch also gathers as many close ups as the wedding rings 🙂
If at any point in the customary noble idiocy moment, Hyun Soo throws away that watch to protect Ji Won (by stopping her from coming to his rescue like 3 times before) – that’s when I’d know I should keep tissues ready.
@Arihsi LOL the stress … When I first watched it, there were no subs and I was on such great tenterhooks that I paced up and down in front of the screen, especially at times when violence might have been imminent. It took me a day to watch again with subs, but at least with much less tension in the viewing.
I had the same thoughts about HS’s taking JW hostage being staged, and I really hope you’re right. The editing however makes it seem like he acted on the idea of trust or lack thereof, because of what his spectral father had advised him.
I agree that he’s likely to go off and do whatever he thinks he should to take care of outstanding matters, without necessarily following protocol, however this time he’s doing it without any backup.
We saw that the only guy on his side, is our cowardly KMJ who’s not likely to be of much help. I shake my head that once again, KMJ gets accolades for his live stream, which he only did out of desperation. Again the situation was not something that he initiated himself, but he gets the praise, because he happened to get manipulated into helping by HS. I’d like for KMJ to for once get a chance to prove himself really smart and resourceful. Maybe he’ll manage better with Hae Su to take care of?
@AU0101 Thanks for your kind words. I just go with odd thoughts that come along.
One such was that I rolled my eyes over BHS suddenly being able to not only stand on his own, without support, but be able to chase the housekeeper around the house. After over a decade in a coma, he should have needed weeks of physiotherapy before he could walk unsupported. In fact, even his being in a coma was weird. Why should a knife injury to his abdomen, affect his brain, and keep him from waking up.
In this Ep 13, I’d have loved for JW to have been in on all that Makmum-dong prank call thing and to have been in on staging HS’s ‘failed arrest’, the way that the Baeks united in carrying out their ‘Mission Impossible’ style scam on the Hyun Soo, and now on the police.
BHS has become the brains in this. What his father resolved mainly with money, BHS does with amazing deceit. He has however made the mistake of jettisoning Yeom Sang Cheol without rewarding him for his silence. I expect YSC to be an important factor in bringing BHS down.
It’s so interesting, (and strange) that without any clear prospect of reward, YSC should have kept Jung Mi Sook hidden and alive for 18 years. I wonder if it was his idea or someone else’s. It must have cost him a lot of money. If she was kept as insurance or investment, it was for a very indefinite kind of future gain. However she’s finally about to be ‘used’, poor woman.
@GB, yeah the fact that BHS could stand up and even chased the maid is indeed a major bug in the drama, like how Hyun Soo coincidently ran over by BHS. Those things would only happen in kdramas.
About YSC having kept JMS for all these years, I would imagine one of the reasons being BHS was in coma for so long and he never received the reward he was supposed to get by letting BHS have JMS.
@Arihsi, I also think it’s a staged hostage so now Hyun Soo is also on the dark side like BHS and he can go on to sort out all the messes in the way he wants.
About KMJ, I would expect he would at least be “resourceful” by showing the tape that he recorded at DMS’ workshop. That’s the thing we still haven’t been shown from Ep3?
@Au0101, Oh yes … I’d forgotten about that tape. I’m now curious as to what he knew and hid which could have saved lives, as Hyun Soo said.
I believe that Hae Su may be in real danger, and I hope KMJ will be more a help than a hindrance, if she gets attacked. And the funny thought comes to me… with all the twists in this show, maybe Hae Su may end up saving KMJ instead LOL.
Flower of Twists
The funny thought reminds me, that I did want to mention how show is so skewered with amazing twists. Not just sideways, 90 degree twists, but 180 degree ones that boggle the mind!
I liked that Ep 13 began with Ji Won declaring to the Baeks that no matter what, she was on Hyun Soo’s side, and by the end, she’s putting him into handcuffs, and then he’s holding her ‘hostage’. What a turnaround!
The Det Choi Jae Seop double twist was great. He was so into arresting DHS, then given the chance he didn’t, then now he’s back to coming after him but it’s too late, and JW has disappeared.
KMJ fails to protect Hae Su and rejects Hae Su when they’re kids, goes back to liking her when they’re adults, gets rejected by her this time, says he’ll get over her, but she ends up having to stick to him and he’s having to protect her.
Jung Mi Sook is supposed to be dead but never died. Her husband, Park Kyung Choon wants to find her body, but commits murder and ends up in jail with 2 months to live. In the end she resurfaces despite all his best efforts, and is likely to be alive longer than him, and she doesn’t even remember that he’s her husband. Having Jung Mi Sook alive is supposed to be a trump card to get the Baeks into trouble, but she can’t remember anything that would prove their guilt.
Of course the biggest twist is in the changes in DHS. He started off thinking he was a psychopath/possessed when he was 18, and seeing his spectral dad, but yet was willing to go to jail for a murder he didn’t commit. He then realises that he’s free of his dad with Ji Won nearby, and that he’s able to feel and to love. And then this episode, out of consideration for Ji Won he’s prepared to be handcuffed and go to the police station, only to not only see but hear his dead father again, although Ji Won was with him. And he ends up not only totally refusing to be arrested, but instead, threatening Ji Won on CCTV.
I liked the change in his expression when his father’s advice hit him, and he was no longer the DHS that we’ve been seeing the last 10 episodes, but became more calculating, like the DHS who tied up KMJ. I still believe that his behaviour is a feint to keep Ji Won safe from her colleagues, while he figures a way out of the conundrum.
And LOL, once again Ji Won fails with handcuffing someone. Last time at least the handcuffed lady had both hands cuffed, and almost got away. This time, HS still has his hands free and he does getaway and not alone.
Trauma of Betrayal
It’s interesting that HS used to frequently have delusions of his father, until Ji Won told him how she had chased the spectre of her own grandma away. It seems that all through his married life, he’d not had any more delusions of dad. Even when Ji Won told him that she was going to break up with him, he’d run to KMJ and Hae Su for support instead of receiving a visit from dad.
I’m thinking that the only difference between those other stressful times and this last scene of his ‘almost arrest’, is the issue of trust. His trauma was likely caused by the frequent ‘exorcisms’ where he was not trusted by the villagers. This came on top of his father’s claims to loving his mother, only for her body to be discovered as one of the victims. And on top of his father’s inexplicable ‘suicide’.
The words spoken by DMS’s apparition : ‘I really did love your mother.’ (He sees his dad staring out the window at greenery and trees) ‘And I thought your mother loved me too. But she was in love with an illusion. She couldn’t accept me for who I really was. In the end, she abandoned you two and ran away from me.’
Dad turns to look at Hyun Soo : ‘Love can be very cunning. It’s very sly. It makes you think it can solve everything. But in the end, it betrays you. Hyun Soo, listen to me carefully. When you feel the urge to trust somebody one day, it means you’re becoming weak. That’s all there is to it.’
Hyun Soo’s words to JW reflect the issue of trust.
“Tell me. Do you trust me? … Or deep down inside do you believe that I really could’ve killed her? If you don’t even believe me how will anybody else believe what I say?”
And then after knocking her phone away in mid conversation, he holds a knife to her throat, and says : “From this moment on, I won’t trust anyone.”
It’s not certain how far he may have bought into the words of his dad, whether he too felt that although he loved JW, she was abandoning him. He had trusted her, but perhaps he felt betrayed by her in the same way that his father had claimed.
Conjectures
It just hit me that BHS might not have been DMS’s accomplice, but also his fan. He did whatever DMS wanted him to do, and he even kept his hair long, possibly to look like DMS. We see a flashback of BHS crying long and hard at DMS’s funeral. He seems to have been attached to DMS. While DMS kept the right thumb nails, BHS kept the left, and he retained this habit even with the murder of Park Soon Young, to signal the return of the accomplice.
BHS had not hesitated to implicate HS and Hae Su by giving them the fish keychain, so he might have idolised the father but hated the children.
If it’s true that BHS really liked DMS, then the death of DMS might have been caused by someone else. That might have been his dad, BMW with the help of Yeom Sang Cheol.
@AU0101 you have a point about Jung Mi Sook.
With Jung Mi Sook’s having run away instead of being killed, the phone conversation between BHS and Yeom Sang Cheol before the accident, is more likely in reference to JMS than to Hae Su. YSC had said that ‘she’ did not remember BHS. Since that time, then, YSC had held on to JMS. It seems that BHS had forgotten that YSC had a lot of evidence against him and should have been more careful to keep him happy and loyal.
I’m wondering how Jung Mi Seok managed to run away almost successfully twice. It’s possible that DMS never even saw JMS, or she’d likely have been killed.
And the other mystery is how she lost her memory. And also why DHS too should have no memories before age 10. It might have been the result of other traumas. It seems that HS’s mother disappeared when he was around 10 years of age. That could mean that the killings had started years previously and had continued until HS was 18 years old. There were 8 victims who’d been found. That means there could have been one killing each year, shared by DMS and BHS. So the 9th victim was an extra victim, maybe meant for BHS, but he had botched it and JMS almost got away.
@GB Insightful perspectives in your write-ups, esp. in Flower of Twists n Trauma of Betrayal!👍
The first time BHS appeared in coma on the bed, earlier in the drama (forgot which EP), told me he was connected to the murders. In EP 13, the scene where young BHS met DMS in the psychiatric hospital, it suggested to me that BHS n DMS would’ve a master n apprentice relationship. BHS is not only the accomplice but also the pupil that had surpassed his master, and killed him. JMS is prolly the witness to BHS hideous deeds. Lol. I’ve condemned the character BHS on his first appearance, hidden away in coma with life support- that looked too suspicious for me to introduce a character like dat