Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

He is Psychometric
(사이코메트리 그녀석 / Saikometeuri Geunyeoseok)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hi everyone! We have already reached the second month of 2023 and I’m back with a new review. This one has been on my list for a while for reasons I don’t even remember, except that the theme sounded interesting, I guess? Anyways, I feel like this isn’t a particularly known or hyped drama (I’ve never really seen or heard much about it), so it was nice exploring an underdog series in-between new and more hyped recent releases! I have some mixed things to say about it, both positive and slightly less so, but I can say all in all that I found it entertaining and this won’t be a predominantly negative review. I always try to see the good in things, even if they’re not really my cup of tea and I do think that there things to say about this drama, so I’ll do my best to construct my arguments properly.
So now, without much further ado, let’s get psychometric!

He is Psychometric is a 16-episode K-Drama that focusses on the special skills of Lee An (played by GOT7’s Park Jin Young), who at a young age lost both his parents in a horrible arson explosion at the apartment complex they used to live in. For unknown reasons, after this incident, he developed psychometric powers, which means that whenever he touches something (or someone) with his bare skin, he gets a vision of certain memories surrounding that object (or person). While it started out as a very overwhelming gift that freaked him out whenever he would touch anything, he’s somehow learned how to live with it, although he’s chosen to avoid it as much as possible. He keeps his hands in his pockets while he walks, he punches in buttons with his elbows rather than with his fingers, that sort of thing. In any case, he grows up into a very carefree and easygoing person who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble, for some reason. All in all I kept referring to him as ‘a young dog’ throughout the show, that’s just the vibe he gives off. Especially when he gets the opportunity to use his skills for important things like investigations.
At the night of the arson explosion, An was saved by a teenage boy who jumped out of the building with him, risking his own life to bring him to safety. Thereafter, this boy became an older brother-figure to An, and eventually they started living together. This is Kang Seong Mo (played by Kim Kwon), who as an adult becomes a prosecutor. He has taken care of An ever since the accident, brought him to an orphanage and came back for him when he’d established his own career so he could take care of him himself. The relationship between them is really brotherly, they seem to be very fond of each other. Seong Mo also knows about An’s psychometric powers, and he encourages him to hone those skills as well.
One of their mutual friends, police detective Eun Ji Soo (played by Kim Da Som), also knows about the psychometry and even occasionally sneaks An into the forensics lab to get him to use his powers on corpses so he might get a clue about what happened to them. This is of course illegal, as An is not authorized to be involved in cases at all, let alone in this way, and truthfully he doesn’t typically come out with very useful information; An’s skills are all over the place.
On the other hand, we have Yoon Jae In (played by Shin Ye Eun). Her father used to be a security guard at the apartment complex that An lived in as a child, and after the arson explosion he was pointed out as the culprit, even though there was only indirect evidence. The only ‘proof’ was that just prior to the incident, Jae In’s dad had some beef with the ladies in whose apartment the fire was instigated, and that his security jacket was found covered in blood. Being Jae In’s single parent, he was forced to leave his young daughter behind. Luckily, Jae In was taken in by her aunt -from her mother’s side, I believe-, Oh Sook Ja (played by Kim Hyo Jin). Jae In has grown up to become very ambitious, she’s very smart and she strives to become either a prosecutor, a lawyer or a police officer. On the other hand, she keeps her family history a secret as she knows how people will start treating her once they know she’s been labelled ‘a murderer’s daughter’. Apart from the fact that the arson explosion itself killed a considerable number of people in the apartment complex, they also found the bodies of three ladies in the apartment that the fire was set in, who’d been stabbed to death prior to the instigation.
Let’s just clarify from the start that An and Jae In have met each other as kids before at the apartment complex, which I will hereafter refer to as the Yeongseong case.

After the initial flashback of the Yeongseong case, we skip to about 11 years later (I believe) when there’s been another arson instigation case in a carehome, hereafter referred to as the Hanmin case. Just like with the Yeongseong case, again a couple of ladies in a ward were stabbed in the exact same spot in the abdomen, after which the ward was set on fire. This is when we first see Ji Soo sneak An into the forensics lab to have him use some psychometry on the victims.
An and Jae In, now teenagers, meet ‘for the first time’ when Jae In mistakes An for someone who’d been spying on her while she was getting dressed in a locker room. They also find out they’re in the same class in high school, as Jae In suddenly transfers schools in the middle of term. They end up getting to know each other better while solving a little case together regarding some stolen exam papers – which turns out to be the deed of a bitter teacher (thanks to Kim Won Hae for a great guest appearance there). When this malicious teacher comes after Jae In after she’s busted him, both An and Ji Soo get in more direct contact with Jae In, and they warm up to each other. In other news, it’s revealed that Seong Mo has actually been acting as a sort of Daddy Long Legs for Jae In, so the four of them are all generally on good terms with each other.
However, then the news is revealed at their school (again, by that same teacher) that Jae In is ‘a murderer’s daughter’ and she goes into hiding, leaving An one final message (that he’s able to receive through his psychometry) that she’ll find him again and that he should hone his skills in the meantime.

They meet again another 2 years later, at a police exam. An has become determined to hone his skills to become an official ‘psychometrist’ to the police, and Jae In has actually become an officer with the highest marks of her class. However, she’s still only a probationary officer and she even lives with her aunt inside her own police station / recreational center. The only other person who works there is Nam Dae Nam (played by Park Chul Min), and they are only responsible to solve local cases in the neighborhood.
While they meet again on good terms, An and Jae In still have ways to go in terms of mutual trust. Jae In already knows about An’s psychometry skills, and even though she’s asked him before to ‘read her’ in relation to the incident her father was accused of, they haven’t held hands before. It’s like they’re waiting for some special moment.
When An joins Jae In on a neighborhood patrol one day, they incidentally find a suitcase with a body in it, which is linked to another suitcase found previously. The more they investigate, the more it seems like everything, Yeongseong, Hanmin, the suitcases, are linked to each other.

Okay, I’ll keep it at that for the summary and I’ll go straight on with my analysis now. I have to say from the start that I thought the build-up in this series was pretty good. How it all seems to start with the Yeongseong case but later you find out that it’s only one part of a much bigger picture and it started way before that. Honestly, it was interesting to find out that it wasn’t even ‘about’ An or Jae In, their losses were just, as cruelly as it sounds, collateral damage. The way they gradually, slowly but surely started uncovering more and more information about what everything was truly about was pretty interesting, and it definitely kept me on my toes. I like it when you start out with separate pieces of seemingly unrelated info that are then suddenly linked together. However I also found that there were some inconsistencies with the way they revealed these pieces of information, to the main leads as well as to the viewers. I mean to say that there were some pieces of information that were already hinted at or even already revealed to the viewers before the main leads knew about them, and this had a somewhat anticlimactic effect on me.
For example when An found out that Jae In was the daughter of the security guard held responsible for Yeongseong, or the fact that Seong Mo was directly involved with the fires. Of course, it’s not uncommon to reveal things to the main leads after the viewers have already been shown the truth, because then the viewers just get to emphasize deeply with the main leads. But my issue with it in this show lay more in the fact that I assumed that An was also already aware of these facts, with the evidence he got through his psychometry. I mean, he remembered Jae In from quite early on, as the girl he’d met just after he’d collected his parents’ final belongings, he even recalled an entire conversation he had with her about how her father had been falsely accused, and he’d even seen memories of her tripping as she was running after her dad as he was being dragged away. He knew the security guard, he knew his face, and he also appeared in Jae In’s memories. He’d seen her panic at being called a ‘murderer’s daughter’… I mean, you know, I thought he’d already connected the dots. Same with Seong Mo’s involvement, he’d already heard the suspect say that it wasn’t him who was responsible for Yeongseong, and that he heavily suggested it was Seong Mo. An even already confronted Seong Mo with it, told him he didn’t even believe he was fully innocent anymore. And still, when he saw that final vision of what Seong Mo did that night, he seemed so shocked? Like, I guess he’d just been holding onto the hope that it wasn’t true and having it confirmed was just that shocking, but his reaction suggested that he really didn’t see this coming at all.
In any case, there were several occasions in which An realized stuff or found out things and responded really dramatically while I was like “uhm… yeah but didn’t you already know this? This was already hinted at/partially revealed three episodes ago”.

To just get to the bottom of the story, it all started with Seong Mo and his mom Kang Eun Joo (played by Jeon Mi Seon). You can compare their story to that of ‘Room’. For those who don’t know that book/movie, look it up, it’s really intriguing. Anyways, Kang Eun Joo was locked up by a man suffering from a condition called ‘alexithymia’ which means that he doesn’t have the ability to feel any kind of sensation or emotion. This man (played by Lee Seung Joon) had become obsessed with her, and ended up imprisoning her for nine years in a basement. In this time, he even impregnated her and she gave birth to her son, Seong Mo, inside that basement. For the first nine years of his life, Seong Mo didn’t know any better. What was worse, he seemed to have inherited his father’s alexithymia, and his mom did everything she could to ensure that he wouldn’t turn out the same way. She taught him about feelings, about emotions, because alexithymia, unlike psychopathy, actually offers room for improvement – with a lot of effort you can get over it. They managed to escape after nine years, always on the run for stalker guy because he never stopped coming after them. Stalker guy calls himself Kang Geun Taek as it’s a name Eun Joo gave him when they first met.
Turns out Kang Geun Taek doesn’t have an identity, he used to be a panhandling kid and Eun Joo was the first person who gave him an identity – which is possibly why he got so attached to her. Despite his emotionlessness, Eun Joo seems to be the only person he desires to show his affection to, but his affection translates into claiming her and locking her up to ‘protect her’ from the outside world. Seong Mo’s mom was reported to have passed away in the Yeongseong fire as well, as a burned corpse carrying her ID was found in the same room as the stabbed ladies.

From the start of the series onward, we see that someone is keeping tabs on Seong Mo. There’s a guy dressed anonymously that’s constantly checking on him from a distance, and although his face isn’t revealed at first, we just get creepy vibes. From the first flashback of Seong Mo and Eun Joo at Yeongseong, I suspected that it was Seong Mo’s dad, or at least his mom’s evil boyfriend turned stalker or something. In any case, major creep vibes, especially when he’s shown going around stabbing people, all in that signature abdomen spot. The main witness of the Hanmin fire is found stabbed in the middle of nowhere, An is stabbed by him when he goes after him for stalking Seong Mo, he kidnaps and almost kills Jae In, he actually fatally stabs Ji Soo… It seems to be Kang Geun Taek’s aim to kidnap or hurt someone that Seong Mo cares about in trade of information about Eun Joo’s whereabouts.

I mentioned I liked the build-up before, not just because of the well-paced revelations of all essential pieces of information, but also because it was very clearly constructed. The first half of the show really focusses on An and Jae In, about their stories, how they’ve lived after their losses, and it builds up to the point where they fall in love and start trusting each other wholly. Then, with the “shocking” revelation of Jae In’s dad being THAT security guard (even though I was more shocked about An’s response to that) and Jae In’s kidnapping, the second half of the story dives completely into the investigation of the case that envelopes all three beforementioned ones. Actually, besides Yeongseong, Hanmin and the suitcase bodies, it seems to be linked to even more: an illegally operating headhunting organization and the corruption of YSS, the construction company that used to own the Yeongseong apartment complex. Honestly, there were so many parties involved that I occasionally got a little overwhelmed whenever a new lead came into view. But it all came down to this: ever since escaping that basement, it has been Seong Mo’s sole purpose in life to make sure his mother was safe. With tools brought originally by Kang Geun Taek, he set the Yeongseong arson in motion, leaving an unidentified body behind with the hint of it being his mom’s, while in the meantime creating an opportunity for her to escape. He used the headhunting company to create fake identities for his mom, aware that in the meantime, the people those identities actually belonged to were murdered and gotten rid of in those suitcases. When Kang Geun Taek found Eun Joo again while she’s living under a different name and working at Hanmin care center, he recreates the Yeongseong fire there but Eun Joo manages to escape again. Seong Mo is aware that he’ll be punished just as much as Kang Geun Taek when the whole truth comes out, but that’s okay with him, he just wants to make sure his mom is brought to safety before that happens so she won’t have to live in fear again.

In all honesty, I was not really looking forward to writing this review because I had no idea how to start formulating stuff. There’s so much happening at the same time, I just hope what I write makes sense, lol. I just want to go into the main characters a bit more and how they acted, and then I’ll continue with some more criticisms before moving onto the cast comments and final conclusion. Please bear with me!

Okay, so let’s start with Lee An. When the entire picture of Seong Mo’s story is revealed, we realize that An really was just a victim of the whole situation. Him and his parents were never meant to get hurt, but they just happened to be at a scene where someone decided to set a big revenge plan in motion. If only they’d gotten on that elevator a little bit sooner, if only they’d decided to go out to get An a puppy 30 minutes earlier. Anyways. They got stuck inside the elevator on their way down, and while Jae In’s father was just in time to save An from the lift, the elevator cables snapped with his parents still inside and they couldn’t be reanimated anymore. An was left with literally nothing, except some trinkets that only reminded him of his loss (literally) whenever he touched them. It really must have been pure hell for him at such a young age. It’s only understandable how much he got attached to Seong Mo afterwards, he was the person who physically saved him from the apartment and risked his own life in doing so, the only person who seemed to care enough about An turning out well even though he had no personal connection to him whatsoever. Despite his traumatic backstory and the fact that he lived as a delinquent for a while, An grows up to be a very easygoing person, a little bit too much at times, you could say. He’s so carefree that he usually doesn’t stop to think twice about things that don’t really concern him, and even when he manages to ‘read’ something useful, he doesn’t even bother to remember everything he saw clearly enough. There were several instances where I got kind of frustrated with him because the viewers get to see his visions with him, and then he just doesn’t even mention half the things that were shown. Like when they were looking for a place and he got a vision of four different buildings, including a rooftop apartment and some crosses, when they went in search of it he didn’t even mention these things and then after hours he’s suddenly like, ‘wait… I actually think I saw more than this’ and I was like YES YOU DID INDEED THANK YOU. Like, he actually wasn’t really that reliable as a main character, if you look at it like that. I can imagine other people with this kind of power would want to focus on all the details of what they saw, especially when they were working with the police on a freaking serial arson / homicide case. So that’s what threw me off sometimes, the fact that we as viewers were all informed of things way before it really ‘dawned’ on An. He did mature, definitely, but kind in spite of himself? I’m not sure how to explain this. Of course the whole point of Jae In helping him hone his skills was to improve this, but I didn’t really get the feeling he actually improved that much. It’s just that, from the second half of the series on, he managed to see only specific and useful stuff, but I don’t actually believe his ‘training’ with Jae In caused that, if that makes sense.
One thing I will mention again here is the scene in which he finds out about Jae In’s connection to the security guard. As I mentioned before, I assumed he already knew about it. From all the psychometry reading info he got from Jae In, his memories of her as a kid, I just thought he remembered her. We’d also been given several flashbacks from before the Yeongseong case in which An met this security guard as a child, and I found it sometimes hard to distinguish if this was something that An also remembered, or if this was just purely meant to show the viewers how the characters had met before. So maybe I just got my facts wrong. In any case, I just thought An would have connected the dots by then. But the way he reacted when he saw Jae In’s truth, and how he suddenly became all spiteful and ‘omg it’s YOU’-ish, that really threw me off. Not only because it wasn’t a nice response, it just seemed really out of character for An to react like that. After all they’d been through together, how much he’d sworn to protect Jae In, like he already knew she was suffering because her father had been falsely accused. But now that it was connected to his own life it was suddenly different? Bit hypocritical, if you ask me. I would’ve thought he’d respond much more understandingly, but now out of the blue he was suddenly like, ‘I’ve always hated your father, I’ve always suspected him too’ and I was like??? Even Seong Mo had made it clear from the start that he ‘knew’ that Jae In’s dad was innocent, so I just assumed An was kept inside this loop as well, but now suddenly he had always suspected the security guard as well? Where did that come from? In any case, the whole scene just took a weird exaggerated turn for me. The whole thing was so melodramatic, the way he slapped her hand away, how she dramatically ‘fell’ while chasing after him… I don’t know, it just lost me there. I found this a really weird way for An to respond. I know that writing-wise, they just needed An away from Jae In for a while so that Kang Geun Taek could kidnap her, but still.
What I also found random was how in the last two episodes, An was suddenly able to feel the pain of the people that were murdered. Like, he’d ‘read’ a wall of a room in which a person was stabbed and suddenly it was like he was being stabbed himself and he even temporarily died (?!). What was that all about? Was that just him going way too deep into his psychometry? Up until then it seemed like a very detached way of gaining evidence, like he really just read the ‘memory’ of an object, but now he was suddenly able to absorb the physical pain of someone who had once been near that object? It went a little too deep for my understanding. Like, okay, when he touched this one corpse and found out this guy had died of a heart attack and he felt the repercussions of that guy’s pain while he was having the attack, it made sense because he was touching the actual body it happened to. But in that Yeongseong apartment he was actually able to feel like he was being stabbed by only touching the wall that the victims’ hands had brushed against while they fell down? I’d thought that would’ve created more physical distance from the pain. In any way, I just didn’t fully understand why he was suddenly able to feel that pain so deeply even to the point of his own heart stopping for a while. That was intense.

As for Jae In, I found it a bit hard to gauge her sometimes. I guess it was just part of her character to not open up to people so fast and to keep a distance, but even in her relationship to An, I couldn’t help but feel that she was a bit dry. Not just in their kissing scenes (in which An definitely took the initiative and she just kind of stood there), but also just in their chemistry in general, I didn’t really feel anything special. They were just a smile-at-each-other-while-holding-hands kind of couple. It did work out that the story had built up their relationship to that point when they were forced to really work together, because if they hadn’t completely trusted each other yet at that point, that would’ve created another problem and there was no place for that in the investigation. One thing that I liked about Jae In was how rational she remained. She was very humane in her desire to make her own way to a position of relative power in order to work against cases like the one that framed her father. I also thought it was very humane of her to be scared of her memories when giving them to An, because she actually wasn’t a 100% sure of her father’s innocence herself. For the major part she was of course, she knew her father would never do something like that, but the fact remained that she wasn’t with him at the time of the explosion, and she just didn’t trust her own memory. She even acknowledged the possibility that she’d created a protective memory of her father to get herself through the whole thing. So that was a very realistic aspect about her in my opinion. I also felt for her a lot when her father tried to commit suicide in jail, like he didn’t even want her to bother with reopening the case and clearing his name, and he was just sad that he’d caused his daughter to live like this, even though that wasn’t even his own fault. Her father was as much a collateral victim of the Yeongseong case as the people who’d passed away in the arson. All in all, I could understand Jae In’s excitement as well as her fear when she discovered An’s skills, because one part of her was very keen on figuring out the truth and uncover her own true memories about what had happened, but on the other side she was still scared of the truth, of the memories she may have buried and/or forgotten about.
Despite this realistic aspect of her character I did find that her personality fell a bit flat. She just acted a certain general way with the people she was close to, but I didn’t feel like I really got to know her all that much outside of becoming a police officer and that her dad was falsely accused of a crime. There were times when I really wished she could see An’s visions as well, because I feel like she would’ve managed to solve stuff and connect dots much faster than he would, haha.
Although I mentioned before that I didn’t really feel the chemistry between An and Jae In, I can’t deny they had some cute moments. I loved how much of a puppy An turned into whenever Jae In was near, and the way she gradually warmed up to him was nice as well.
There was this one scene when they were making music boxes for each other and they were trying to avoid touching each other’s hands but… it was so weird? Like, they were trying to make it look like they were just trying to grab a tool with one hand while being focussed on their work but their hands kind of kept hovering over the table without even reaching for something specific and I was just like, what the heck are they doing? xD The music boxes were cute though, I never knew about shops where you could make your own and now I want one too, lol.
Anyways, there was a lot of awkwardness, but they were cute, admittedly. It was also nice that they didn’t make a big fuss about their feelings for each other, neither of them went into denial and Jae In was immediately aware of the fact that An liked her, so there was no unnecessary misunderstanding there, that was very much appreciated as those kinds of misunderstandings can just really drag the build-up of a show in my experience.

Regarding Seong Mo. Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this guy. On the one hand it was like he wanted An and Jae In to solve the whole case, because he left them so many clues and he had all these things planned out about how he wanted An to ‘read’ Jae In, and how he asked Jae In to train An to hone his skills so that he could ‘read’ Seong Mo himself as well (for some reason in the beginning, Seong Mo is the only person An can’t ‘read’). In the beginning, it just seemed like he was most concerned for An’s development in his skills. But then in other ways he also didn’t want them to be involved too closely either, he didn’t like it when Ji Soo would sneak An into the forensic lab without his knowing, etcetera. But in the end he really did leave all the evidence for An to find and discover the truth by himself. He wanted An and Jae In to figure out the whole case without getting them directly involved, it seemed. When he confronted Kang Geun Taek by himself, he purposely led An and Jae In to another station to throw them off his trail, but then he ‘failed to consider’ the possibility that An would be able to see him at that other station. I don’t know, he just seemed to be really certain of himself and what he was trying to do, but then there were still holes in his plan, it seemed. There were moments where I really didn’t understand what he was trying to do, exactly.
The thing that I did start to think at some point, when it was first hinted by Kang Geun Taek that he personally hadn’t been responsible for Yeongseong, was that Seong Mo started that fire to help his mom escape and then took care of An and Jae In because he felt guilty for their losses. I mean, that was the most plausible explanation I had for his benevolent behavior towards the two of them, why else would he even take care of Jae In like that? It couldn’t possibly be just because he felt sorry for her and he knew her father but he didn’t actually have any personal connection to her besides that. So yeah, once that was established to be the truth, again, I wasn’t all that surprised. But I still didn’t understand why, even after turning himself in, he still didn’t tell the full truth about his own involvement in the fire cases. He had emphasized An honing his skills so much, only to appear before him stating that any piece of information acquired through psychometry wasn’t deemed official evidence. Okay, so then, what do you want them to do? I found him difficult to figure out even when he was being most honest to An and Jae In.
I think it was interesting how Seong Mo’s character was written the way it was. The fact that he grew up with the same condition as his father, alexithymia, but that he managed to get over it. The fact that he didn’t actually try to escape his lineage to his father. I couldn’t help but think about the father-son relationship in Come and Hug Me, in which the son did everything he could to prove that he wasn’t like his father. In this case, Seong Mo had already accepted that a part of him was like Kang Geun Taek, and that he couldn’t escape from that so he couldn’t help giving into it despite knowing that what he was doing was wrong. He even apologized to the lady before he stabbed her that night, like, how polite of him. You could say that what happened at Yeongseong was also what cured his alexithymia, since that was the first time he was able to feel fear and guilt, it was what made him decide to take care of An and Jae In.
Even after what he did, which wasn’t good at all, I kept feeling empathic towards Seong Mo. Considering what he’d been through and that he really did everything in order to protect his mother… He never did it out of a bad place, weirdly enough. He accepted his charges and the guilt for ruining the families, he lived with that sorrow and he was never planning on escaping from that. The fact that he did all that, fully prepared to face the consequences, is somehow something that I could respect? I don’t know, it feels double to say it because I can’t condone the way he did it, of course. But it came from a good and non-delusional place, unlike with Kang Geun Taek, who until the end kept repeating that he ‘had never killed anyone’. Tell that to Ji Soo, bro.

Ji Soo was, easily said, my favorite character in this show and her dying was the only thing in this series that got me in denial. I am still not okay with it and I still think it was a shock-value move and nothing more. What was the additional value of killing her off? I’m still not sure, other than that they would’ve reached a conclusion to the case much earlier. I was very curious to how Ji Soo would’ve reacted to Seong Mo admitting to his personal involvement. I also wanted to know more about how Ji Soo and Seong Mo met because I kind of shipped them. She was the typical choice to kill off, admittedly, as someone that Seong Mo also had developed a deeper connection with. Seeing him respond to her death really erased all traces of suspicion that he might not be entirely cured of his alexithymia.
Ji Soo is killed by Kang Geun Taek after confronting him and Seong Mo during their face-off, when An has basically sent her to ‘the other station’ that he read through his psychometry. Wrong place, wrong time, she was not meant to be there. And honestly, her death was also a bit lame in my opinion. She was well enough aware of how dangerous Kang Geun Taek was, that he was probably the culprit of Yeongseong and Hanmin, that he was the one who’d stabbed An before, etcetera. So then, when that smokescreen rose up and the alleged serial killer in front of her disappeared from sight, why the heck did she just keep standing there?! She was literally just waiting around for him to move through the smoke and surprise-attack her while Seong Mo was screaming at her to get out of there. I would’ve at least ran towards Seong Mo or moved to a spot without smoke to get a better image of the scene, some place from where I could’ve seen the psycho coming. So that was just super unrealistic to me. Also, even though she was stabbed in the same way as An, she literally died within minutes while An lived through the whole journey to the hospital. Why did she have to die? Can someone please answer me this? Because the only ‘good thing’ that came from her death was that her dad finally decided to come around and reveal his wrongdoings. Other than that, it had no other purpose but to instill just a little bit of extra anguish into every single character. I just really don’t agree with the decision to kill her off, even now. It was unnecessary. I really loved Ji Soo, she was so spunky and straightforward, the kind who didn’t need a man to defend her. She had so much in her, and I loved her dynamic with An, Seong Mo as well as with Dr. Hong, the forensic (played by Sa Gang) and her junior detective Lee (played by Jang Eui Soo). She was just the best person, and the best ally to have in the police force. Heck, she was even willing to reopen the Yeongseong case knowing it would discredit her own father, because she knew he’d been in the wrong. Her father, Eun Byung Ho (played by Eom Hyo Seob) was in charge of the Yeongseong case at the time and got involved in the YSS corruption case that caused him to cover up a lot and just point out Jae In’s dad as the culprit without any further investigation. She’d gone against his orders a couple of times already, but after losing her life her dad finally went, ‘Okay screw it, YSS can suck it now’ and that was the only good thing that came out of it, in my opinion. Honestly, justice for Ji Soo.

I liked that Dr. Hong, Detective Lee and Mr. Nam all ended up helping out with the investigation that An and Jae In were doing, especially Mr. Nam. He was kind of a dry humorous character before, and it was suggested that there was something blossoming between him and Jae In’s aunt, but I was kind of surprised when he fully committed to the investigation as well, that was a nice twist, especially since he’d also been demoted to probationary officer after the Yeongseong case (I believe he was working with Ji Soo’s dad at the time and also knew about some of the truth that was covered up). It was nice that they at least had all these allies that stood by them, especially since they all had connections to Ji Soo and they all wanted justice for her. T^T

One additional storyline I want to discuss briefly before moving onto my cast comments is the one about Lee Dae Bong and Kim So Hyun. Dae Bong (played by Noh Jong Hyun) has been An’s closest friend since high school, and he’s been asking him for psychometry favors mostly to find out if the girl he likes reciprocated those feelings. The girl he has liked ever since high school is So Hyun (played by Go Yoon Jung), who happened to be Jae In’s close friend until So Hyun’s father became a determining ‘witness’ into accusing Jae In’s father for the Yeongseong case. So Hyun and her dad also lived there at the time and her dad was basically coerced by YSS and other untrustworthy statements to point to him even though he didn’t actually think it was him. Anyways, throughout the story Dae Bong and So Hyun remain active as An and Jae In’s supporting figures, while they don’t actually get directly involved in the investigation. Dae Bong just continuously lends An his car, and So Hyun eventually manages to persuade her father (whom she’d cut ties with after his false statement) to revoke his initial accusation towards Jae In’s dad.
Dae Bong has been in love with So Hyun since high school, as I mentioned, even when the case An and Jae In solved involving those stolen exam papers led them to the truth of So Hyun’s teen pregnancy. So Hyun now has a young child and while she is initially a bit cautious of Dae Bong, the two grow towards each other and that was cute. Apart from that, they really didn’t have anything to do with the main story.

To be honest, before starting on this show I’d seen a review of someone mentioning something about a major plot twist at the end that made them really like this show so I was kind of hoping for an unexpected outcome, but in hindsight everything pretty much went as I expected. I think the psychometry theme was original and well-found and they did a good job in building up the story and revealing all the necessary information at the right moments. It was wrapped up nicely without too many openings or plot holes, I think. The way everything was executed left some things to be desired, and I still don’t agree with things like Ji Soo’s death and the way that An somehow managed to anticlimax a bunch of stuff that should’ve been climaxed. It’s definitely not the best or strongest show I’ve seen, and the main couple’s chemistry was a bit meh, but what kept me in it was definitely the investigation and the story’s build-up. I was interested to find out what truly happened, even when I already got the gist of it.

It’s time for some cast comments! It was funny to see some familiar as well as unfamiliar faces in this show.

I hadn’t seen anything with Park Jin Young before. I knew his face from the teasers of Yumi’s Cells (which I haven’t seen yet), so I kind of recognized his face and I learned that he’s a member of K-Pop group GOT7, but other than that I don’t have any reference of his earlier acting performances. Through DramaWiki I learned that he played Lee Min Ho’s younger version in Legend of the Blue Sea and that he had a cameo in Melting Me Softly, but I don’t remember what cameo that was. In any case, I felt like maybe he didn’t have that much acting experience yet? It could just be me though. I wasn’t particularly bothered by his performance, I didn’t think he did a bad job or anything like that, but in some occasions I felt like he was overacting a little bit, or maybe making things more dramatic than they needed to be. I thought that he fitted An very well, though, he really managed to get that puppy energy going and the way he just kind of latched onto Jae In and didn’t even consider anyone else as a romantic interest was really cute. I liked that romance wasn’t the main topic of this show, by the way. In the beginning it really seemed to be working towards that, but I liked how they used it purely as a tool to strengthen An and Jae In’s relationship before they had to combine their strengths in the field. I think he was definitely a good fit for the role!

I’m not sure why but I occasionally got major Gong Seung Yeon vibes from Shin Ye Eun. I also haven’t seen Shin Ye Eun in anything before, although I guess I will see more of her in the future. She’s only been active as a drama actress since 2018, apparently, so she hasn’t done that much yet. She reminds me of Snow White with her white skin and jetblack hair, she’s really pretty! As I mentioned before, I really like the humane aspects of Jae In’s character, the way in which she didn’t even trust herself to prove that her father was innocent but she kept holding onto that hope. The build-up in her character was nice, how she slowly but surely opened up to An and despite their contrasting personalities they made a cute couple. I just wished there had been a little bit more chemistry in their kissing scenes. Even though romance wasn’t the biggest issue in this drama, I still would’ve liked to get some more butterflies in their scenes together. On the other hand, it was nice to see a couple able to remain so professional during the entire of the investigation, I almost forgot that they were also a couple, they just seemed like work partners. They didn’t include romance where it wasn’t needed, they didn’t create any additionally unnecessary romantic situations during the serious bits, so that was also refreshing in a way. But during the time in the first half, where it still WAS about their romance, I just would’ve liked a bit more initiative from her side instead of the occasional side glances and anticipation of what An was going to do.
Other than that I thought she was okay, and I’m just curious to other performances of her now.

Seriously, if Lee Jong Seok and Yoo In Na had a baby… I swear it would probably look like Kim Kwon. I just couldn’t stop thinking that, for some reason. He just seemed so familiar, but I don’t think I’ve actually seen him act in anything before. After checking DramaWiki, I see he was in Me Too, Flower! and Manhole, but I don’t remember him from either of these, it’s been too long. I think he got a very intricate character to portray. Someone who definitely wasn’t who he seemed to be, someone who carried a very dark past with him. He went from the friendly brother-like figure to the angsty alexithymia guy with subtlety, I think he pulled off the duality well. I just couldn’t with the dramatic shots of him, though. Like, he just always seemed to be standing on some random desolate bridge in the middle of nowhere when he made a mysterious phone call, and they did a couple of dramatic close-ups on him that I couldn’t take very seriously, but his acting was very steady. I think he did a very good job considering he was supposed to play someone who was born with alexithymia, and the emotions that he showed throughout the show still didn’t come 100% natural to him. I really liked his ‘chemistry’, if you can call it that, with Ji Soo, I would’ve liked to know more about their friendship and ideally, I would’ve liked them to end up together but I guess you can’t wish for everything. All in all, I liked his performance.
I also want to give a shoutout to Jo Byung Gyu who played teenage Seong Mo. He’s the guy that reminds me of Suda Masaki, for some reason. I know him from Who Are You – School 2015, Age of Youth 2, Radio Romance, and he also had a tiny part in Arthdal Chronicles that I somehow still remember him from. He was really good. He played Seong Mo in the time they moved to Yeongseong, the time he was still very much suffering from his alexithymia but started recovering from that after meeting An, Jae In and their respective families who all seemed to be concerned about him.

I could’ve sworn I knew Kim Da Som from something else, too, but I initially mistook her for Jung Hye Sung, my bad. Anyways, turns out I really haven’t seen her in anything before. Apparently she’s a former member of SISTAR, so maybe that’s why she looks familiar. Anyway, as I mentioned, Ji Soo was my favorite character. I loved how she struggled with herself in her feelings for Seong Mo but then kicked total ass as a police detective and was just such a kind-hearted person. I was so looking forward to the moment when she’d learn about Seong Mo’s involvement, like I could even just picture her waiting for him to get out of jail, or at least meeting his mom (she didn’t even get to meet his mom whom she tried so hard to find T^T). But I guess it wasn’t to be. I will say it for the umpteenth time, but I still don’t agree with the decision to kill her off. I loved her.
Also, I was really confused for a second because when they showed that single scene of Ji Soo as a teen, I could’ve sworn it was just her, the same actress. I was wondering why she got to play her own teen version while everyone else just had a younger actor playing their younger version. Turns out it actually WAS someone else! I got completely fooled by the amazing casting of her younger self, lol. So also kudos to Choo Ye Jin for briefly confusing the heck out of me, haha.

I’ve seen Noh Jong Hyun before in Because This is My First Life, Short, and he also had a cameo in Romance is a Bonus Book. I found him a very sympathetic choice for Dae Bong, especially after seeing how he and An became friends. He may have been a bit weird and desperate in getting So Hyun’s attention, but he definitely had his heart in the right place. I would’ve liked him to get a bit more action instead of just being An’s car supplier, but I’m also glad he at least never got involved that much in the whole investigation, he really was just a supporting role and that was fine. I think it was important for An to have someone to rely on outside of all the police stuff, someone who was always there for him, who didn’t have any major issues going on besides winning the affection of the woman he’d always been in love with. So in that I really liked the uncomplicatedness of his character.

Go Yoon Jung is so pretty I can’t even. Apparently this was her first drama role, but I have seen that some of her more recent dramas are on my to watch list, so I’m looking forward to that. I liked that they didn’t give So Hyun too much involvement in the case but they did give her a chance to contribute in clearing Jae In’s father’s name, that was a nice development for her. She didn’t have that many appearances other than playing with the kids at the recreation center, so I can’t really say much more about her character, I think… I just liked that she stuck by Jae In after everything, even after her own father had done something like that to worsen Jae In’s situation. That was some solid friendship right there.

I really liked Jae In’s aunt, played by Kim Hyo Jin. She was such an eccentric lady but she never had a bad bone in her body. I loved the scene she had with Jae In in which she told her how she so naturally agreed on taking Jae In in after what happened to her father. She really cared about her, it wasn’t some opportunistic thing or whatever, I remember how panicky she was when Jae In got kidnapped, too. She fitted the role really nicely and I’m also glad she never got on Kang Geun Taek’s personal radar for being related to Jae In or something. He honestly just went after her because he found out Seong Mo had some attachment to Jae In, but anyone outside of that never got involved, and that’s a relief.

I also really liked Park Chul Min in this! I honestly believe this is the first time I’ve seen him as a sympathetic character, haha. I know him from a bunch of historical dramas such as Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds and Ruler: Master of the Mask, and from Baby-faced Beauty, School 2017 and some cameos in Revolutionary Love, I’m Not a Robot and Backstreet Rookie. He’s a familiar face but I feel like he is usually cast as ill-intended people, haha. It was very nice to see him as such a nice character in this show, and I liked that they made his role bigger by including him in the final investigation as well. It was funny seeing a dry-humor side of him!

I can’t believe I haven’t seen anything with Sa Gang in it before, either. She also looks so familiar to me, but I can’t link her to anything I’ve seen before. Anyways, it was nice to have a character like Dr. Hong until the end. I loved her friendship with Ji Soo, and the genuine grief that came over her when her friend died. I’m glad she was able to still continue to contribute to the investigation in her own way, even busting those YSS people when they wanted to bribe her with a fake corpse. It was plain-out rude to expect her to agree to someone like that after all she’d been through, after even losing her best friend to the case. Those YSS people were really delusional to think she might take money to cover something like that up. She was a very just person, and even though she kept her professional distance and also didn’t fully trust An in the beginning, she was always on the right side. I really liked her.

I also don’t know Jang Eui Soo AKA Detective Lee Seung Yong from anything, but I really liked him in this show. He was originally Ji Soo’s junior who made a couple screw-ups as Ji Soo’s dad was also asking him to report stuff his daughter was doing back to him. But after Ji Soo died it became so clear how much he cared about her, how much of a dependable figure she’d been to him, he’d respected her so much he just threw himself into all the cases she’d been working on and ended up being a really strong asset to the investigation. He was a nice character to have, it was nice to see him mature as a police detective as well.

Eom Hyo Seob and Jung Seok Yong were two other familiar faces as Ji Soo and Jae In’s dads. Just like with Park Chul Min, I have seen Eom Hyo Seob in a lot of unlikable characters before. I’ve seen him in School 2013, You Who Came From The Stars, Doctors Shopping King Louie, I’m Not a Robot and Start-Up. I’ve seen Jung Seok Yong before in I Miss You, Lookout, Room No. 9, Arthdal Chronicles and Move to Heaven. I disliked Ji Soo’s dad at first but at least he changed after his daughter passed (as he ought to!). I just wished it wouldn’t have had to come to that for him to finally admit to the mistakes he made, but at least he did come around in the end. Regarding Jae In’s dad, I was actually really curious to what he had to say, because he was never shown even uttering a word about the Yeongseong case himself. He just admitted to being the culprit because he wanted Jae In to start living her life without holding on to him. I wondered why he didn’t fight harder to prove his own innocence when he was first accused and arrested, did he just give up after seeing all the parties that were voting against him? It was really sad when he even attempted suicide. I’m just glad they managed to finally clear his name in the end and he got to come home.

I’m aware that this is not a very nice segue, but speaking of suicide I want to acknowledge that actress Jeon Mi Seon, who played Seong Mo’s mom, actually took her own life only a few months after this show aired. She was only 48 years old and believed to be suffering from depression. She was such a familiar face in K-Dramas. If there’s any show in which she didn’t play a mother, it’s one of few. When I saw her appear here my first thought was also, huh? Didn’t she pass away? But He is Psychometric was actually the last series she appeared in before she took her own life. I still can’t believe we won’t get to see her kind and familiar face in anything new anymore.
The role she played in this show was very loaded. She was a woman living in constant fear, being constantly on the run, fully aware of the fact her son had the genetic tendency to commit a similar crime, even if it was out of his love for her. Everytime she appeared I just wanted her to be at ease, to live a carefree life. She was constantly on edge, jumping at her own shadows, and it was just so awful. I really felt for her character. I definitely didn’t see the whole Room situation coming, that she’d actually been locked up and raped by this guy and forced to give birth in that basement. She really was a victim, and now she had to live with all those additional lives being taken ‘for her sake’, which she never would’ve condoned if it had been up to her. It was a very dark and anxious role that I hadn’t seen of her before, but I applauded Eun Joo for being strong enough in the end to face Kang Geun Taek in trial, even though that meant being in the same room as him again.
I hope Mrs. Jeon can have some peace in her own way.

I had never imagined Lee Seung Joon to make such an intimidating criminal. And the interesting things is that even for a psychopath, there are still things to say for his character. I’ve seen this actor before in Hyde, Jekyll, Me, Descendants of the Sun, Thirty But Seventeen, and he had some cameos in The Package and Hotel Del Luna. I’m definitely going to see more shows with him as I continue with my watchlist, as well. I did recognize the actor at some point, when Kang Geun Taek’s face was finally revealed, but I still never fully recognized him because I’ve never seen him portray this kind of role before. You could say that on one hand, Kang Geun Taek was a victim himself, he grew up homeless without even a name, let alone a place he belonged, and he latched onto the first person to show him that he could also be someone worthy of a name. I still think it was creepy, because even though I didn’t really see an apparently big age difference between Kang Geun Taek and Eun Joo as adults, in that flashback of when they met for the first time Eun Joo definitely appeared to be MUCH younger than him. In his own twisted love story, he managed to tear apart so much, and there’s also something very sad and pitiable about him. With his uncured alexithymia, he just never learned to think in a different way and he just acts the way he has been treated himself, thinking that’s normal. His character was very intriguing, in a way. But he definitely deserve the sentence he was given at the end. Good performance!

I think that with this I have concluded my cast comments!

I decided not to elaborate too much on my summary and stick to some specific points of critisms in my analysis because I thought this series was pretty intricate. I am aware I left out several side characters and other events that were all related to the investigation but it would have just been too much to describe. My cast comments section might be longer than my actual review this time, but I think I’ve made my thoughts and feelings clear enough.
All in all, I would say that it was an entertaining watch. It wasn’t badly written, per se, I thought the way they gradually brought up the iceberg that was the core of everything was very well done. I guess my main issue just lay with the credibility of An in his journey to hone his psychometry skills. There was a lot of ambiguity about his skills, like why for example he was suddenly able to feel the victims’ pain while, to my idea, the psychometry was meant as a purely objective form of gaining intel. When you touch an object, you shouldn’t be able to feel the physical pain of another person who touched that object before. I just thought that went a bit too far. I thought it was nice to make use of psychometry to enable a ‘statement’ from a ‘silent witness’. I recently heard about a terrible case from the 80s in which a young woman was assaulted and murdered in her own room, and that there was a plush toy on her bed, exactly like a silent witness. If psychometry would have existed and if it could have been used the way An used it, then that plush toy would have undoubtedly provided an immensely important although horrifying story. I’m not saying that I believe psychometry exists, but I can definitely see how it could come in handy.
The concept of psychometry to aid in investigations was original enough, but at the end of the day I still can’t help but feel like An may not have been the right person to use his powers for that. We’ve seen how diving deeper into cases caused him physical harm, and I just kept thinking about how innocent he was, as a person. I just felt like he wasn’t ready to take on these aspects of his skills. While I agreed with Jae In when she announced at the end that he shouldn’t take on any more homicide cases, I did also like that she still encouraged him when he discovered a new case in the final episode (which was basically about busting a medical error at a hospital, I believe). It was nice to see she still supported him and didn’t tell him not to use psychometry ever again, but she did care enough about him that she didn’t want to expose him to any more really serious cases like Kang Geun Taek.
So yeah, I did like it enough to sit through it, it was definitely very thrilling and it built up the suspense nicely. It’s not the best I’ve seen, but I think they did a well enough job with the writing. Apart from, you know, the things that I’ve mentioned.

Okay, so now I’m going back to another more recent Netflix release which I’m very much looking forward to! Watching dramas is my most relaxing way of passing the time, especially since I’m in a very stressed position with work right now I enjoy spending my free hours and weekends not having to worry about all of that. I hope my next watch will be very soothing as well, I have my expectations. Until then!

Bye-bee!
xx