Forest of Secrets: Episode 4

by Laica

With each dark secret Shi-mok discovers, the forest around him grows thicker and more dangerous, and the pool of people he can trust becomes smaller. But the upside of having so many villains is that they all have their own agendas, and they’re as wary of each other as they are of Shi-mok. Here’s hoping he can stay ahead of their tricks and use that to his advantage.

 
EPISODE 4 RECAP

At the revelation that CEO Park’s blackmailer was Eun-soo, Shi-mok presses the cafe employee for details. All the man recalls is that Eun-soo was insistent and that the conversation grew heated, after which CEO Park angrily left.

The employee doesn’t remember whether Eun-soo immediately followed him. Shi-mok thinks about Eun-soo’s innocent act from earlier, and then goes to CEO Park’s house to measure the window, estimating the killer’s height at around 170cm.

Yeo-jin’s team leader bows to Yongsan Police Station Chief KIM WOO-KYUN and leaves his office looking disturbed, although we don’t hear what they discussed. An alert soon comes in about a child molester on the loose, and the whole team mobilizes, including Yeo-jin, at her team leader’s go-ahead.

They chase the fugitive through alleyways and down streets. He outruns all of them except for Yeo-jin, who pulls his hair and kicks him in the shin, only to be punched in the face. New recruit Soon-chang takes the culprit out with a flying kick, and they cuff him.

Afterward, Yeo-jin sits alone in the back of an ambulance dabbing her bloodied lip. Her team leader pulls her aside for a chat, telling her grumpily that she’s off probation. He says that the chief is pissed about the police getting blamed for the prosecution’s mistake, and that their team had better catch the real murderer first.

He asks her about Shi-mok specifically, and to make sure that Yeo-jin shares whatever Shi-mok learns with the police. Remembering Shi-mok’s warning of corruption high up in the police, Yeo-jin asks if this is the chief’s request. Her team leader blusters that the chief doesn’t even know Yeo-jin exists, adding that she should report directly to him whenever Shi-mok tells her something.

Yeo-jin says he’d better promise to keep her on as a detective if she solves this case, and he protests that it’s a difficult job for a woman, she’ll have a hard time getting married (ugh), and she can do much better with her education.

To that, Yeo-jin simply says that they need someone like her on their team, the way a soccer team needs a striker. She salutes him and vows to be a detective until she retires. Once she leaves, the team leader reports to Chief Kim, who reports to Deputy Chief Lee.

Deputy Chief Lee meets with Section Chief KANG (Shi-mok’s direct superior, who called him to the Chinese restaurant) and tells him that the chief prosecutor doesn’t see the use of having an audit right now—two months isn’t that long. Section Chief Kang isn’t happy, but he agrees that he can wait until then (to be rid of Shi-mok, is the unspoken implication).

A new comment regarding Shi-mok is gaining attention online, by the student from the earlier post who had his finger broken. He was a new student at the time and was being bullied, but after Shi-mok attacked him, the bullies shifted their attention to Shi-mok instead. The commenter thinks Shi-mok did it on purpose to help him, and says that Shi-mok might be violent, but he isn’t cruel.

Shi-mok’s chief clerk reads this out loud in between fending off calls from reporters, but Shi-mok doesn’t respond. He’s remembering Young Il-jae’s arrest three years ago, which happened in front of his wife and daughter, Eun-soo.

The old man had declared the charges a setup, and Section Chief Kang had just promised to reveal the truth as Shi-mok and the rest of his team searched the house. Young Il-jae asked them how they could do this to their mentor before collapsing onto the floor.

In the present, Shi-mok wonders where Eun-soo was at the time of CEO Park’s murder. He asks his staff who picked up his call on the day of the incident. Junior Clerk Shin replies that she was alone in the office then, but Shi-mok says that he remembers that it was Eun-soo.

At that moment, Eun-soo herself enters the office with a box in her hands, but Shi-mok cuts off the chief clerk before he can ask where she was that day.

His staff open the box, thinking it’s another present, but it’s a box of yeot (taffy), with a note inside that says, Eat yeot, you psycho. (The expression has the vernacular meaning of flipping someone off.) Eun-soo asks if Shi-mok found out anything about the call made from their Civil Affairs Office, and when he says no, she smiles and says that she hasn’t either.

Shi-mok notices that Eun-soo’s height in flats is equal to Clerk Shin’s in heels. He asks Clerk Shin her height, and she says it’s 170 cm (but only during the day, ha). After the prosecutors leave, the clerks look at all the comments that have been posted by people claiming that they, too, were assaulted by Shi-mok, as they wonder what kind of person he really is.

Shi-mok visits Young Il-jae in the hospital. The old man looks away from Shi-mok and directs his comments to him through his wife, but he seems pleased enough to see him. They exchange pleasantries until Shi-mok asks if Eun-soo’s boyfriend visits often, which wipes the smile from Young Il-jae’s face.

Noticing the chill in the atmosphere, Shi-mok asks if he’s brought up an offensive topic. Eun-soo’s mother says no and thanks him for taking the blame instead of Eun-soo, though Shi-mok reiterates that he was simply telling the truth.

He asks Young Il-jae what he thinks of the case; after all, his daughter was directly related to the suspect. At this, Young Il-jae gives him a displeased look and asks what he means. Watching him carefully, Shi-mok clarifies that Eun-soo was the trial prosecutor in the case, and apologizes for his wording—he’d thought that she would have discussed the trial with her father.

Shi-mok tells Young Il-jae that CEO Park was quite close to his superiors, including the future chief prosecutor. The old man suddenly says he’s tired and lies down, but before Shi-mok can leave, Young Il-jae says that everything they’re saying on TV about Shi-mok being a psycho is nonsense—as the one who passed Shi-mok through, he says he would have noticed if that were the case.

Eun-soo’s mother catches up with Shi-mok in the hospital hallway and asks him to look after her immature daughter. Shi-mok says that Eun-soo is doing well, and her mother smiles and says not to mind her husband’s mood—it’s because talking about Hyun-chul reminded him of the past. Turns out that “Hyun-chul” is the name of Eun-soo’s ex-boyfriend who used to come over a lot to fix computers and things for the family.

Shi-mok asks if Hyun-chul was good at fixing TVs too, and specifically asks if he was tall. Confused, Eun-soo’s mother laughs off these questions before saying that Hyun-chul was a mama’s boy, and that the couple broke up because his parents were opposed to the match. She takes Shi-mok’s arm and hints that she would prefer a man that’s in the same career as Eun-soo.

Oblivious to Shi-mok’s discomfort as he takes his leave, she returns to her husband’s side and informs him that it seems the young man is interested in their daughter. Young Il-jae dismisses the idea, but says even if it were true, he’d be against it.

Shi-mok thinks to himself that Young Il-jae had known from the beginning who orchestrated his downfall by luring him with 800 million won. A flashback shows Young Il-jae arriving at the police station to be investigated, followed shortly by Deputy Chief Lee and his father-in-law. Shi-mok adds that Young Il-jae must have known that the money came from CEO Park, so it’s strange for him to play dumb if only his enemies stand to be harmed by this case.

In the present, a hospital gurney is rushed past Shi-mok with a doctor crouched over his patient, desperately trying to revive her using CPR. Shi-mok watches as the woman’s arm goes limp, signaling death, and he watches the doctor’s disappointed reaction curiously. Though, as always, Shi-mok remains detached.

Back to his deductions, which are intercut with flashbacks: Shi-mok deduces that Young Il-jae wasn’t surprised because he’d already heard those details from Eun-soo, but wonders how Eun-soo knew that CEO Park funded the operation to get rid of her father. He ponders what else father and daughter shared, as a man comes up to him and asks desperately about a patient that just passed by. “She died,” says Shi-mok bluntly.

Dong-jae raids some disreputable bars and threatens the madams with criminal charges if they don’t tell him where he can find KWON MIN-AH, the girl Shi-mok saw at the hotel. At the memory of Deputy Chief Lee’s betrayal, he vows that he won’t be taken for a fool.

Shi-mok enters his office to find Yeo-jin curled up on a chair, sound asleep. He clears his throat awkwardly and reaches toward her shoulder, but stops short of touching her. He leaves her to rest and works quietly at his desk. (Why do I find this so unutterably cute?)

A few hours pass and Yeo-jin wakes up, moaning and stretching as if she’s in her own home. Shi-mok gets up and sits across from her, asking, “Do you have a boyfriend?” Haha.

Surprised, she asks why, and he puts the case to her: If she were engaged and someone ruined her family and caused them to break up, would her ex hate that person enough to commit murder? Yeo-jin points out that the ex would hate them even more for exposing his pathetic materialism, because if his fiancée was going through such a hard time, he should have stayed by her side, not broken up with her.

So then Shi-mok asks: If this hypothetical ex isn’t materialistic, might he hate the person who ruined her family enough to suggest to the woman that they get rid of that person together? Ever the heart of the operation, Yeo-jin says that if he really loved her, he wouldn’t want to involve her in murder.

“So, you’re saying this emotion called love can lead people to commit murder on behalf of others?” asks Shi-mok. Yeo-jin scoffs and asks why he’s asking her—would he be able to do that for the woman he loved? “You know, the women you dated… Your first love? You… had one, right?” she asks slowly. He blinks at her slowly and doesn’t answer. Hee.

Shifting uncomfortably, Yeo-jin asks if he found out who made the call from Civil Affairs. He says he’s not sure, but she points out that it must be someone from Western Seoul Prosecutor’s Office. Shi-mok says that making the phone call doesn’t necessarily make that person a suspect. Huh, is he covering for Eun-soo?

Yeo-jin tells him her TV broke down recently, and when the tech came to fix it, she realized it’s quite easy—you just need to remove and replace the card in the cable box. She went to CEO Park’s house and checked the cable card, and it didn’t have a single fingerprint on it.

CEO Park’s mother told her that she watched a morning drama the day of the incident, so Yeo-jin surmises that the culprit entered, messed with the card, wiped it clean while CEO Park was sleeping in, and then hid in a closet until he heard that Kang Jin-sub was nearby.

Yeo-jin says that there are a lot of peculiar aspects to this case, which she just doesn’t understand. Mostly, she says she can’t understand the motive with how carefully the criminal erased any trace of evidence, and the lengths he went through to set up Kang Jin-sub as the suspect—why not just stab CEO Park and leave? She adds that if the culprit needed someone to take the fall that badly, a Chinese food deliveryman would have been far easier to set up.

Shi-mok points out that the plotter(s) needed someone with a criminal record. Yeo-jin says that they therefore had to have access to people’s criminal histories, so it’s either police or prosecutors, but it’s still ridiculous unless they were trying to get rid of both CEO Park and Kang Jin-sub. But then Yeo-jin reflects that after Kang Jin-sub’s suicide, they’re probably regretting involving him in the plot.

“Or they might be happy,” counters Shi-mok, remembering how Eun-soo mentioned Kang Jin-sub’s previous suicide attempts in her statement to the press. He wonders aloud if the traces of blood they found on the fence might have been left there on purpose, and whether both CEO Park and Kang Jin-sub’s deaths were simply tools to serve a larger plan.

A full staff meeting has been called, and as Shi-mok exits his office with Yeo-jin, he spots Eun-soo walking ahead of them. He deliberately says, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Yeo-jin laughs, confused, and then deduces aloud that he means the caller from Civil Affairs was a woman. Eun-soo stops dead for a moment, which Shi-mok takes note of.

The meeting is basically just Deputy Chief Lee rallying the troops to make himself look good (and subtly blaming Shi-mok for the current situation). Eun-soo is distracted by the thought that Shi-mok suspects her and soon leaves, and Dong-jae, after taking a phone call, also heads out.

Shi-mok witnesses the latter and follows Dong-jae out, earning dirty looks from his colleagues. Meanwhile, Eun-soo searches Shi-mok’s empty office and goes back to the lobby after coming up empty. There, she watches as first Dong-jae and then Shi-mok exit the building.

Dong-jae goes to a room salon and tells the hostess to get Min-ah. She says she’ll call her, but Dong-jae grabs her arm and orders her to make the call in front of him. She tells him with fake sweetness that she doesn’t have her phone, just managing to extricate herself from his sleazy clutches.

Out in the hall, the hostess calls Min-ah to ask if she knows Dong-jae. Outside the club, Shi-mok spots Min-ah as she approaches and slowly follows her in his car.

As the hostess asks if Min-ah’s in trouble, Dong-jae suddenly comes up behind her and grabs her phone. Hearing the other woman yell, Min-ah turns around and runs. Dong-jae emerges from the club and chases her, but Shi-mok drives into his path, knocking him over.

Min-ah grabs a taxi just as Dong-jae is about to reach her, and although his underling shows up with a car, Min-ah gets away. Back inside the club, Dong-jae threatens to shut the business down if the girls don’t tell him where Min-ah lives, even though it’s clear that they don’t know. Shi-mok listens from around the corner; on his way out, he runs into another escort on her way in and asks her which car service they use.

When the car arrives, Shi-mok slips into the passenger seat and asks the driver where Min-ah lives. The man refuses to tell him and kicks him out, adding that he should pay money for Min-ah’s time if he likes her. Shi-mok chokes the driver and slams him against the outside of the car, repeating calmly, “Address. Phone number.” Whoa.

Meanwhile, Min-ah arrives home in a panic and haphazardly packs her bags. A loud knock at the door causes her to freeze, but a short while later, she comes out of her apartment building, moving cautiously. A dark figure suddenly appears and drags her into an alley, leaving behind a broken red fingernail on the ground.

A bit later, Shi-mok arrives at Min-ah’s building, and when she doesn’t answer the door, he goes around and enters through her open bathroom window. The messy apartment betrays her rapid flight, and in her closet, he discovers a high school uniform. Realizing now what CEO Park was blackmailing Deputy Chief Lee with, Shi-mok takes a picture.

Somebody picks up when Shi-mok calls Min-ah’s cell phone, but all he hears is the brief sound of pop music before they hang up. He calls again, but the phone has been turned off.

Police Chief Kim calls his buddy Deputy Chief Lee to tell him that the last person CEO Park talked to was a woman from the prosecutor’s office. They meet privately for drinks, and Chief Kim asks if he thinks it’s Eun-soo—after all, three years ago she was nothing but a child without a clue. Deputy Chief Lee replies that her father must have told her. Chief Kim asks what really happened with the 800 million won back then; was there really a delivery accident, or was Young Il-jae playing dumb?

Deputy Chief Lee says that Young Il-jae discovered the money and returned it right away, but someone else took it again that afternoon, and he doesn’t know who. Chief Kim doesn’t know whether to believe that, but says that if someone took all that money and framed Young Il-jae in front of the entire nation, they must be pretty evil. Chief Kim notes that Young Il-jae’s only child Eun-soo had the motivation to carry out murder against the architect of her father’s ruin, but the person in the black box footage was obviously a man.

Chief Kim then adds that if the Young family really got an accomplice to murder CEO Park, Deputy Chief Lee isn’t safe either—shouldn’t he arrest them on some pretext? His friend says no, remembering his father-in-law’s warning not to capture the perpetrator alive, lest they unearth the dirt that Deputy Chief Lee is trying so hard to bury.

On his way home, Shi-mok passes his middle school “friend” Jung-bon drinking in a pojangmacha, and the man waves him over. Shi-mok reluctantly joins him but refuses to drink, which annoys Jung-bon as he tells Shi-mok not to look down on him when he’s the only one who took his side.

Shi-mok thanks him, but Jung-bon says that Shi-mok’s still an unfeeling jerk for ignoring his call. Shi-mok points out that he can’t ignore a number he doesn’t know, and Jung-bon reaches for a business card, but then changes his mind and pours another drink.

Jung-bon asks why Shi-mok broke his finger when they were kids, and Shi-mok deadpans that he was being noisy. Jung-bon loses his temper and yells that being a prosecutor will be worth nothing when Shi-mok grows old and dies without anyone he loves beside him. Shi-mok gets up to leave, and Jung-bon apologizes drunkenly for being loud again.

“You weren’t being noisy,” says Shi-mok. “It all disappeared, along with everything else.” Jung-bon asks what he means, and Shi-mok replies, “You’re right. There won’t be anyone by my side. Ever.” (Oh, my heart.)

Later that night, Shi-mok looks up high school uniforms online to find a match for Min-ah’s.

We find Eun-soo tucking in her father, now home from the hospital, and she wishes her parents goodnight.

And in another part of the city, Yeo-jin puts a mask on CEO Park’s mom before they go to bed, and the two women laugh together as we see a drawing of CEO Park’s mom up on the wall. In contrast, Shi-mok falls asleep at his computer.

The next morning, Shi-mok prints out a copy of the uniform picture to give to his chief clerk, but he sees him accepting an envelope of money from Dong-jae and decides against it.

Outside, Shi-mok runs into Jung-bon on his way to court, and asks how Jung-bon knew Kang Jin-sub. Jung-bon says he knew him from church and that he took the case because he trusted the man; after all, he swore on his child that he was innocent.

Jung-bon apologizes for the previous night, but Shi-mok just asks why a lawyer is looking for work here, having deduced that Jung-bon is unemployed from his hesitance to give him a business card. Jung-bon, embarrassed, just gives him his number and tells Shi-mok to let him know if he ever needs something investigated. Shi-mok nods, looking almost fond.

In his office, Dong-jae shreds all the documents he has on Min-ah. That night, a group of high school students drink and fool around in CEO Park’s empty house. One of them goes into the bathroom and screams: A dead girl lies in the bathtub, her wrists tied to the faucet.

At 2:00 a.m., Jung-bon calls Shi-mok, who’s working late in his office. Meanwhile, police officer Gun pounds on Yeo-jin’s front door, waking her up. We see the body of the girl more closely—it’s Min-ah.

 
COMMENTS

One of the things I really love about this show is how cinematic it feels, not only in its directorial style and the way the dialogue is allowed to breathe, but in the character details. Each character is given so much detail and nuance, from costume design to acting choices. For example, Yeo-jin’s scuffed sneakers and the drawings all over her walls tell us as much about her as her open, guileless way of speaking, or the way she charges head-on into whatever she decides to pursue. The same is true with Shi-mok’s spare apartment, and his deliberate way of moving through the world. He carefully considers his every word, and waits for others to reveal their hand before he decides whether to speak, and how much.

All of this tells me that Forest of Secrets didn’t actually deliver the emotionless hero it promised us in its opening scenes, and I couldn’t be happier. The fact that he is so watchful and deliberate shows that he does care at least a little regarding how he comes off to others, and I don’t think it’s just an intellectual exercise, or a strategy to survive in the corrupt environment he’s found himself in.

True, he doesn’t feel the kind of sentimentality that causes us regular humans to agonize about the opinions of strangers (Exhibit 1: His horrifying announcement to that poor man in the hospital). But his eyes change when he’s around someone he actually cares about, and I don’t think he even realizes it. He’s gotten so used to everyone treating him like a robot with no feelings and of thinking of himself that way that I doubt he even recognizes his care for others when he feels it—perhaps because it’s so muted and different from the way he experienced emotion before his surgery.

Yet although the emotions are subtle, they’re there, and I’m so glad we have Jo Seung-woo in this role, because a lesser actor wouldn’t have been able to carry off the tiny changes in expression that say so much. I find myself almost holding my breath as I watch closely for those incredible moments when that cold, stiff mask he usually wears melts away, revealing hints of what lies beneath.

There’s the curiously open, almost puzzled way he looks at Yeo-jin, who carries none of the reserve that he seems to wear instinctively, and the reluctant near-smile he gave Jung-bon when the man revealed his judgment of Kang Jin-sub’s innocence. I think Shi-mok finds both of them appealing because of how trusting they are, how willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and believe in the good in people; I think this kind of person may be the only ones he can trust.

Shi-mok himself gives me the vibe of someone who’s been hurt so deeply by others that he’s locked himself up tightly like a turtle in its shell, unwilling to even admit the possibility of caring for others, even though the return of his alarming earaches could logically mean that the other things the surgery excised will come back too. He’s clearly been treated very cruelly by most of the people in his life, and the loneliness that hangs around him like an aura just breaks my heart. I hope his reluctant acceptance of Yeo-jin and Jung-bon’s insistent presences means that he will very soon realize that his bleak prediction about the future doesn’t have to come true.

 
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