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.

Girl From Nowhere
(เด็กใหม่ / Dek Mai / New Girl)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10 (both seasons combined – S1: 7.5 / S2: 6.5)

It seems like I’ve officially jinxed myself into pulling every single double-season show that’s on my list, lol. There’s not even that many, but my Spin-the-Wheel app just keeps picking them out one by one. Anyways, in the case of this drama it wasn’t that big of a deal since the episodes were quite short (under an hour each), and the series as a whole was episodic rather than that it had an extensive storyline that spanned two seasons. I was very excited when this show popped up on my app because this is actually THE FIRST THAI DRAMA I’ve ever watched. There’s only a couple on my list, so the fact that I was able to pull this one feels quite special, in a way. Although I had a certain idea of what to prepare myself for when I started this series, I went into it with an open mind and was surprised to say it was quite different from what I’d expected.
I am very excited to share my thoughts on this.

First of all, I’d like to give a general trigger warning – I’m honestly surprised they didn’t give one before every single episode – because this series contains graphic depictions of bullying, violence, self-harm, physical and psychological torture, murder, rape, and (sexual) assault.

Girl From Nowhere is a GMM25/Netflix Thai drama with two seasons of thirteen and eight episodes, respectively. The length of the episodes varies from between 38 to 50 minutes. I personally watched it on Netflix, but you can also watch it on KissKH. The series is structured like an anthology, reminiscent of Black Mirror, in which all the episodes are standalone stories that don’t necessarily refer to each other. The only consistent element throughout is Nanno (played by Chicha Amattayakul), an enigmatic teenage girl who transfers to a new school every episode to expose all sorts of corruptions, not just within the schools and their education systems, but also among the teachers and students themselves. To be more specific, these corruptions stretch from systematic issues (eg. schools that either heavily restrict their students in their freedom or encourage them to go to extreme lengths to secure their own success) to personal qualms (eg. teachers and students that get pushed to the edge after acting on their feelings of lust, jealousy and greed).

Just to clarify before I start, when I went into this show I didn’t know it would be episodic. From the short clips I’d seen of it before, I thought Nanno would just be attending one single school and create chaos and drama among different groups of people there. I didn’t know there would be a fantastical element, either, so it ended up exceeding my expectations in several ways.
While I was watching this, I was strangely reminded of The School Nurse Files, both because of the wild and bizarre nature of some episodes, and because it uses the backdrop of a high school to amplify the level of teenage drama. It’s often said that teenagers aren’t fully capable to make big decisions in life and love because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, and with that in mind I did find some depictions of student characters going to extreme lengths in terms of romance and popularity quite staggering.
To me, one of the most interesting things about this drama is that it plays around with morality issues, and sometimes leaves you wondering if it was really necessary for Nanno to get involved and go so far in pushing people over the edge.

Just like with The School Nurse Files, I actually consulted some other reviews to see if they shared my sentiments and/or offered any insights that I might have overlooked. Since some episodes actually blurred the lines between what was real and what wasn’t, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any major symbolism. On the other hand, I sat through this show with a mindset that allowed me to take in all the absurdity and craziness without ending up with a genuinely frustrated “WTF” feeling. While I definitely found myself thinking “what the helly did I just watch” several times, I’m glad to say I was able to appreciate the bizarre nature of the show as a whole. No matter how weird and surreal things got, there was a lesson to be found in each and every story, even if the episode didn’t end with a satisfying conclusion.

Since Nanno is the only consistent character in the series (with the exception of Yuri in season two), I’d like to first give my analysis on her and then elaborate on her actions throughout the episodes.

When I say that Nanno is an enigmatic girl, I don’t just mean that she acts mysterious: she is an actual enigma. We don’t get to know anything about her, where she’s from, what her intentions are, or even who she really is. She just appears ‘from nowhere’ as the new girl at a new school and typically leaves behind a trail of destruction in her wake. In some cases, just showing her face is enough to draw the attention of a male and the jealousy of a female student. In other cases, she actively approaches someone and provokes them by planting a seed of doubt, jealousy or greed in them, as if to see just how far they’ll go. She goes back and forth between helping, provoking, seducing, and punishing, and never lets you know her next move. All in all, it seems like it’s her intention to bring out the worst in people by playing on their weaknesses and insecurities, only to sit back and watch the chaos unfold with a sinister excitement that often comes out in almost robotic bouts of manical laughter.
For people who are used to main characters that they can (learn to) relate to and empathize with, Nanno is definitely a very unconventional protagonist. While she does expose corrupted school systems and teaches bad people a lesson, she doesn’t seem to have any conscience whatsoever with regards to who gets involved in her schemes, and tends to go very far in her punishments. It doesn’t seem like she’s there to help anyone out, as she even goes so far as to provoke timid people that probably wouldn’t have acted out if it weren’t for her push, however slight it might be.
What also surprised me (and threw me off in some cases) was that Nanno doesn’t shy away from getting caught in the crossfire herself, either. While in most episodes she takes the position of a bystander that subtly edges someone on, there are also instances where she lets herself get murdered, raped and disfigured in order to prove a point and record evidence – it went pretty far in some cases.
The only intriguing thing about these horrible scenes was that, much to the horror of her assailants, Nanno always appears back at school in perfectly good health the next day, even after being murdered or beaten bloody. Practically speaking, if she was a normal human being, of course this wouldn’t be possible. Even if she regained consciousness and got her injuries treated, you’d think that there would at least be scars or some sort of proof that she was physically harmed. And that’s when the question of Nanno’s immortality comes in.

The first time Nanno shows uncommon abilities is when in Apologies (S1E2), new versions of her keep popping up next to her assailants while they’re burying her, almost like a ghost that’s haunting them. Since this is the first ‘surreal’ event in the series, I wasn’t really sure what to make of it and if I should even take it at face-value. It could just be a visualization of how much the reality of their deeds haunted her assailants. Then, of course, Nanno appears back at school the next day, which might suggest her immortality but still doesn’t explain whether or not those different versions of her were real or not.
This element is confirmed in Liberation (S2E6), when she actually shows different versions of herself to the whole class and teaching staff and even has them operate individually for everyone to see. While the first time there was still the mystery of whether it really happened or not, the second time it’s not even disguised as a possible hallucination anymore, and it actually proves that Nanno isn’t human to a full room of people.
Apart from creating multiple versions of herself, Nanno is also able to spawn just about anywhere, in any random place, and seems to possess all the necessary information about her targets before she even gets to know them personally. We never see her on her way somewhere outside of the school, she’s just suddenly there. Throughout season 1, we get more and more hints that she’s not normal, but it still remains very much a mystery what exactly her deal is.
From the way Nanno keeps showing up unscathed after everything that’s done to her, it almost seems like, whenever she’s physically incapacitated, a new version of her just spawns to take her place. The fact that multiple versions of her are able to appear simultaneously should at least mean that it’s not just one and the same Nanno that undergoes all the physical damage that’s inflicted on her throughout the series. It might even be possible that every single episode deals with its own Nanno, in a multiverse kind of way. That would at least explain why there’s no mention of her between different schools – because surely people would’ve shared their crazy experiences online and figured out the same girl was reported in different places.
Apart from her respawning tendencies, Nanno also seems to be able to have some sort of supernatural abilities. In Wonderwall (S1E6/7), a female student discovers that everything she writes on a certain bathroom stall wall comes true, and all hell breaks loose when the entire school finds out and starts using it as well. I think this was the first episode that actually felt fictional to me, especially with how it ended. While it’s never explained how this even worked, we are just led to believe that Nanno had something to do with it, as she also comes to taunt the student with her misuse of the wall’s power in the end.
In BFF (S1E12/13), a group of ex-classmates ends up gruesomely slaughtering each other for an antidote, only to wake up and find that it wasn’t real and they’re all still alive, even though the syringe is still there.
In JennyX (S2E7), Nanno takes over someone’s life, with no one being able to see she’s not actually the same person. There is no explanation for how she’s able to pull these things off, but it does hint at the fact that she must possess some sort of magical powers. Honestly, these episodes reminded me of that reality-bending device from the Black Mirror episode Bête Noire (S7E1). Maybe Nanno had one of those too, lol.
One thing I’ll say about these more surreal-feeling episodes is that I definitely preferred it when they kept things as more of a mystery. In that sense, I felt like season 1 was much more intriguing than season 2, where Nanno’s superhuman-ness almost became like a running gag and they didn’t even try to be mysterious about it anymore.

Once I started thinking that Nanno might not be human, my mind immediately went to a more metaphorical explanation of her character. It occurred to me that, rather than an actual person, she might be some sort of human-shaped manifestation of people’s darkest emotions. Maybe she is just that little voice in someone’s head that goes: “Do it”, and her disguise as a high school girl is only meant to help her blend in unnoticed and to give her targets something physical to rage at and put all the blame on. Whenever people point their fingers at her, she just shrugs and says: “I only helped you get what you wanted. The repercussions are all on you”, which could also simply be the voice of reason that people get after realizing the full extent of what they’ve gotten themselves into.
The final shot of season 2 is narrated by Nanno’s voice saying: “It’s a world with absolute freedom in which people will take rights into their own hands. Will the world even need me after this?” Doesn’t that just mean that people will continue to choose to be evil, even after a mirror has been held up to them?
Despite my own ideas, I am aware of the common theory that Nanno is actually the Devil’s daughter, and I agree that this would explain her behavior in a couple of specific episodes when faced with the bond between a child and their parent. It comes out most clearly in Lost & Found (S1E8), the only episode in season 1 where Nanno genuinely seems to empathize with her target. She recognizes the void the boy feels because of his father’s absence and eventually manages to bring them back together. This episode stood out to me because it was the first time that Nanno showed compassion and didn’t seem like her usual sadistic self. In Yuri (S2E4), she has a strangely melancholic look in her eye as she watches Yuri and her mom’s interactions. Finally, in The Judgement (S2E8), Nanno finds herself interfering with a heartbreaking confrontation between a mother and a daughter as well. These might all hint to the fact that, besides using such sadistic methods to exploit people’s bad sides and push them over the edge, Nanno secretly misses a parental figure herself – maybe she’s just filling up her loneliness by flaunting around and punishing mortals to keep herself entertained because Daddy Devil never has time for her.
If this would be the case, I can’t deny that I would find that a bit of an anti-climax. I actually love the fact that we never get to find out what exactly Nanno is and why she’s doing what she’s doing. What kept the show so intriguing and interesting to me was the mystery element of it all, and that’s why I didn’t even find it necessary to redeem Nanno or give her some sense of humanity. I liked going back and forth between appreciating her and despising her and being able to form my own theories and opinions about her, so I didn’t really want that filled in for me. This is also part of the reason I liked season 2 less than season 1, because even though the truth is never fully filled in until the end, season 2 definitely reveals more explicit information. With the introduction of Yuri, Nanno actually starts explaining her actions more often, and I honestly found that kind of a pity because it felt like she lost some of the invincibility and confidence she’d had throughout season 1. It reminded of how I feel whenever The Doctor from Doctor Who says he doesn’t know something. When a main character is introduced with so much self-assurance that they never even feel the need to spell out their intentions, it just feels weird to suddenly see them in a position where they need to explain or seem unsure of themselves.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about every single episode, so I’m going to pick out a couple that stood out to me for a specific reason.
In Trophy (S1E3), Nanno enters a school that blatantly rewards students for excelling in a specific field. She sets her sights on Mew (Chonnikan Netjui), a girl who feels inferior for not excelling at anything in particular, and encourages her to copy and edit something from online and just make sure she doesn’t get caught. Instead of getting in the middle of things herself, here Nanno takes the role of a supporting character, a bystander who just encourages her classmate, who washes her hands of Mew as soon as her lie drives her into a corner.
What I liked about this episode was the plot twist at the end, that it was never about Mew’s personal deception as much as it was about the corrupted nature of the school. Even after Mew gets publicly exposed for not actually being good at art, the school covers it up, seemingly unbothered by whether or not their students’ talents are legit, as long as their creations benefit the school’s reputation. This changed my entire view on the story, including Nanno’s intention. While at first it seemed like she just wanted to push Mew over the edge by letting her indulge in her fake success, maybe Nanno actually wanted to expose the true core of the problem – the school itself – which had driven its students to become so desperate to prove themselves, even if that didn’t lead to a clear solution. In the end, Nanno only exposes the true nature of the school, but isn’t able to stop the school from letting its students get away with forgery and plagiarism. I don’t know if it was just me, but she didn’t seem as satisfied at the end of this episode. I wonder if she actually meant to accomplish more but ended up accepting that some things were just too corrupt to change.

One episode that frustrated the heck out of me for being unfair was Social Love (S1E5). So far I’d always accepted Nanno’s actions to at least a certain extent, but here I really didn’t understand what her intention was. She ‘accidentally’ gets herself paired up with a popular boy named Hann (Tatchapol Thitiapichai), which leads them to become the most admired couple in school (ship name: ‘Hanno’) and actively goes along with the act while knowing that Hann already has a girlfriend, Yui (Chanicha Boonpanuvichit).
What made me empathize with Yui the most was that she was the first character to actually get mad at her boyfriend instead of Nanno. She kept telling Hann to own up to his lies and quit the act, and couldn’t bring herself to physically harm Nanno when push came to shove. It was so cruel that she kept being punished for Hann’s cowardice. He kept urging her to do things that would discredit Nanno, and then stood back when the entire school started ostracizing her. Heck, she even got the shit beaten out of her and all this guy could say was: “It’s Nanno’s fault, she needs to go for this to be over.” He never took any responsibility for his own contribution to the situation and continued to put Yui in danger, all to protect his own popularity. I felt so bad for Yui, she deserved so much better. #JusticeForYui.

Another episode that made a big impression on me was the two-parter Wonderwall (S1E6/7). I thought it put a lot of things into perspective. In this story, Nanno evokes the jealousy of a female student named Bam (Morakot Liu). When Bam vents out her frustrations towards Nanno on the wall of a bathroom stall, she discovers that everything she writes on there (at least, all the hateful things) end up coming true. If she writes that someone is a stinkface, that person’s face starts to stink, if she writes that someone is a stupid dog, that person starts acting like a dog, if she writes that someone should kill themselves…
Honestly, while of course it’s mean to write such things where everyone can see them, I think writing things down is a way more acceptable way of venting than physically acting on harmful feelings. In my opinion, after getting a taste of the power her written words held, Bam became fully aware of the harm that she did, especially when the power of the ‘wonderwall’ became known to the entire school and created absolute chaos. I’m just saying that I could relate to how guilty she felt. No matter how good her intentions were to tell that bullied girl about it, she never foresaw that it would escalate like that. I guess the moral of this story was that the oppressed won’t hold back once they get a chance to overthrow their oppressors, even in a seemingly innocent school setting.
I actually empathized with Bam a lot. Maybe not to the same extent as Yui in Social Love, but I did appreciate her confessing to Nanno that everything was her fault and that she was sorry for cursing her as well. As such, I found it quite cruel that she ended up in freaking Borderland after writing that she wanted everyone to disappear. I get that Nanno wasn’t as forgiving, but I personally would’ve let her go after she apologized so sincerely. Bam acted in the heat of the moment without any real intention to hurt anyone, and ended up facing consequences she never wished for. Wasn’t that enough punishment?

One of my favorite episodes was Liberation (S2E6). Besides the fact that the black-and-white effect only emphasized the grim and restricted nature of the school even more, I also thought it was really powerful that everyone stayed black and white even after they got out, as if to show that their experience at that school was a stain that they’d never be able to fully wash off. I also appreciated that this was the first time Nanno ever helped an entire class stand up for and regain their freedom.

Looking at overarching themes and elements, I think we can categorize Nanno’s behavior based on specific episodes. In The Ugly Truth (S1E1), Lost & Found (S1E8), True Love (S2E2) and Liberation (S2E6), she comes out as a kind of moral crusader, either by punishing a wrongdoer for their misdeeds or by helping people that needed to come to terms with their own loneliness. Even in Pregnant (S2E1), where Nanno punishes playboy Nanai (Teeradon Supapunpinyo) for carelessly impregnating girls by getting him pregnant in return, it felt like a proper punishment because he actually came to reflect on his actions and ended up loving and keeping his baby. As I mentioned before, although I didn’t personally need Nanno to be humanized, these episodes were definitely interesting in the sense that they revealed a deeper layer to her character, a different look in her eye that we usually didn’t get to see.
It also occurred to me that, in all the cases where Nanno actually did ‘the right thing’, she’d end the episode with a little triumphant ‘my work here is done’ stretch, whereas in other cases she’d just walk off or disappear without showing a clear reaction to her accomplishments.

In contrast to this side of her, BFF (S1E12/13), Minnie and the Four Bodies (S2E3) and SOTUS (S2E5) evoked a brutal and unforgiving side from her. I have to admit that I found these episodes, specifically the last two, quite hard to watch. I personally think that the best lesson for a wrongdoer is to be made aware of the consequences of their actions and learn how to be a better person while carrying the guilt of their past misdeeds. The fact that Nanno retaliated against these students in tenfold, by submitting them to excessive physical and psychological torture actually made me feel like she was stooping to their level and showing that she was just as bad as them. I honestly didn’t feel like there was a valuable lesson in these harsh punishments whatsoever, it just made the episodes needlessly cruel and hard to watch.
On a side note, it was interesting to see the recurring element of Nanno’s immortality in the way she allegedly retained the same appearance for decades, and that she would actually come back to haunt and punish people after several years had passed. It also seemed like she saved the cruelest payback punishments for people that had personally harmed her.

Another couple of episodes, like Trap (S1E9), Thank You Teacher (S1E10) and The Rank (S1E11), left me hanging with a question mark regarding what exactly Nanno meant to accomplish.
While I usually love scenarios in which a group of people is confined to a room and people’s true colors come out through tensions and heated arguments (my mind immediately went to the Doctor Who episode Midnight, one of my all-time favorites), in hindsight I really didn’t understand the message Trap was meant to convey. The switch from a suspense story about a serial killer on the loose to a detective about who killed Koh (Awat Ratanapintha) to a moral lesson about how people can be manipulated to lie from a young age on was a bit confusing to me. It made me wonder what the real message of the story was, and what Nanno actually meant to accomplish here.
In Thank You Teacher, I honestly don’t feel like Nanno did anything, except trigger Teacher Aum (Claudia Chakrabandhu Na Ayudhya)’s trauma because she happened to look like the student her husband cheated on her with. The revelation that Teacher Aum even killed her own child and had been hallucinating the entire time was also very unexpected and dramatic. The only lesson I learned from this episode is that it’s important to seek psychological help, and I’d at least expected Nanno to do a bit more than just sit around and watch how Teacher Aum’s mental health deteriorated every day.
The Rank reminded me a bit of the Black Mirror episode Nosedive (another favorite) and was honestly one of the more absurdly comical episodes to me because it was so ridiculous and over the top. As aggressive as it got, the idea that it was based on was actually ridiculous. Of course, just like with Trophy, it all came down to the school being incredibly toxic as they raised girls to only care about how they looked to the outside world, but in contrast to Mew, Ying (Apasiri Kittithanon) never saw this corruption for what it was and continued to beg for her crown until the very end. I’m also quite sceptical regarding the fact that the token ‘fat’ girl ended up winning after getting a complete Birth of a Beauty-style makeover that made her skinny and pretty. This episode also didn’t really have a satisfying ending, and really just ended with the exposal of the true damage that the school inflicted on its students’ minds.

Honestly, I think there’s something to say about every single episode and they all left an impression on me, beit in a positive or a negative way. The main conclusion that we can come to is that there is a lot of fluctuation in Nanno’s behavior and it’s always unpredictable what she’ll do and who she’ll target. As I mentioned earlier, I preferred season 1 to season 2 because I liked the mysterious element for what it was, without needing an explanation and I actually was a bit disappointed with the turn that season 2 took.

When they first teased The Girl With the Red Ribbon in Pregnant (S2E1) and then in True Love, I was actually expecting a nemesis to show up, someone who somehow knew what Nanno was and tried to warn people about her. I thought it would be kind of cool to give Nanno an opponent who was her equal in strength but had the opposite intentions. However, when the true nature of The Girl came to light, I can’t deny I was a bit disappointed.
Yuri (Chanya McClory) is one of Nanno’s previous targets. In Yuri, she’s introduced as a poor student who clings to the toxic friendship of her two influential friends, even if they treat her like their servant. When Nanno offers to help her expose these friends, Yuri turns on all of them, revealing an unexpected sadistic side that ends up killing everyone in the room, including herself. However, we are provided a key piece of information on Nanno’s powers when Yuri is revived after ingesting some of Nanno’s blood, allowing her to become something similar to her.

To be completely honest, I didn’t really like Yuri’s character. She was basically a less patient and more bloodthirsty version of Nanno, and I didn’t feel like she had anything new or interesting to offer. She was very blatant and vocal in her approach, and just kept trying to one-up Nanno in beating her to punishing certain people. While Nanno had her occasional shifts in sentiment, Yuri was just straight-out cruel, and that made her a bit one-dimensional in my opinion. She just wanted to kill people, whereas Nanno’s intentions, however vague, seemed more layered. I also didn’t like how Yuri made Nanno look weak by drawing more literal explanations out of her and pointing out to her that she was losing her touch. It was kind of a pity that a new recurring character like her, who was teased in such a promising way, basically turned out to be nothing more than a copycat.
Apart from the introduction to Yuri, I found the increasing addition of senseless violence in season 2 a bit off-putting. Seriously, I don’t think there was a single episode that didn’t include anyone bleeding or being beaten the shit out of. In contrast to the changes of focus in the season 1 episodes, I had a harder time watching season 2 because it seemed to focus purely on inflicting physical pain while that shouldn’t have been the main point. There was no need to kill Minnie or Mr. Lucky, or to give Junko (Ploy Sornarin) Nanno’s blood to strengthen her desire to kill even more.

In conclusion, while Nanno remains, so does the question regarding her innate evilness. Before she dies for the last time, we see that she actually gets a scar that doesn’t heal, after which Yuri suggests that she’s becoming more and more mortal. While she still respawns after her death in The Judgement, Nanno doesn’t seem to intend to take any action against her new bloodthirsty copycats and accepts the fact that evil will continue to spread, either with or without her influence.
As a whole, while I appreciated the moral questions this series posed, I can’t deny that it lowered my faith in humanity to the pits of Hell, lol. The rare depictions of a good deed were like a drop in a desert of despair. It’s definitely not a ‘fun’ show to watch. Nanno brings out the darkest sides of people, even in cases where this could’ve easily been avoided. In terms of reflection and redemption, it leaves a lot to be desired. Be that as it may, it definitely makes you think, and I found myself strongly confronted with my own views on right and wrong. As I said before, there is a lesson to be learned from each and every episode, and sometimes that lesson lies in the bigger picture rather than in how Nanno deals with certain people and situations. In that sense, I found it an incredibly interesting show to watch.

I just want to make a couple more remarks on certain elements of the show that deserve a shoutout.
First of all, the strong messages that it conveys are only amplified by the amazing cinematography. Every episode was a movie in itself, and it was cool to see how much detail and attention went into framing every single story. From the shot angles to the transitions to the changes in color and perspective, they did an incredible job. Even if the content of the episodes was sometimes painful to watch, the aesthetic of how it was visualized definitely made up for it.
Personally, I also appreciated that, despite the arthouse style of the series, they kept a lot of graphic details out of shot. Don’t get me wrong, there was still a lot of blood and the images of Nanno’s eyeballs rolling over the floor and Junko pulling out a girl’s entrails are imprinted on my brain forever, but I was happy that we didn’t get to see any nakedness and genitals during rape scenes and that the majority of the murder scenes where filmed from one angle. I don’t know if this was a good thing or not, but Nanno’s death scenes kind of de-sensitized me at some point because I knew she would turn out fine.
Apart from how high-quality the series looked in terms of cinematography, the acting was just as next level. I just want to give a standing ovation to every single actor that appeared in this. What I really appreciated was that, in contrast to for example Korean shows that focus a lot on beauty in their casting choices, these actors actually looked like they belonged in their respective settings. The student characters looked like regular students, pimples and braces and frizzy hairstyles included. Everyone went the extra mile in their acting, which was amazing to see. Even in episodes that were more fictional and absurd than others, everyone went for it as if they experienced it in real life. Every single actor’s performance had me sitting on the edge of my seat and managed to evoke an emotional response from me, which doesn’t always happen.

Before I move on to my (very short) cast comments, I just want to make one final remark on the opening sequences for each season and the posters. The opening sequence for the first season features a figure in black that looks like Nanno getting ready. She pulls up her socks, puts on her jacket, buttons her sleeves and cuts the hair hanging in front of her face up to just above her eyes, creating her iconic hairdo. Since this clip initially shows her all in black with her face covered, I can’t help but wonder if this was maybe her getting ready to step out for the first time after coming out of the darkness – the place she was born from.
The opening sequence for season 2 focusses on the bond between Nanno and Yuri. It shows Nanno literally walking backwards and looking over her shoulder, almost as to retrace her steps to go back to where she ‘merged’ with Yuri: the bathtub that they both emerged from in the Yuri episode. It also clearly shows the two girls in a shared red garment that seems to symbolize the blood that they now share. I thought this was a really aesthetic and cool way to depict the origin of their bond, and it makes a lot more sense when you know how they relate to each other.
Speaking of this symbolism, I actually find it quite interesting that, while the poster for the first season makes sense because it centers on Nanno, the poster for the second season actually depicts a more ‘mainstream’ kind of image that features a couple of main characters from specific episodes of the season. Besides Nanno and Yuri, we also see Nanai, Minnie, Kaye and Jane. It may be a really trivial thing to think about, but I just wonder why they chose to put different characters instead of simply an image of Nanno and Yuri, like from the opening sequence of season 2?

To match the effect of the poster for the first season, I think it would’ve been a bit more impactful if they’d chosen a different, slightly more mysterious image for the second season as well. In a way, the fact that the second season’s poster differs from the first season’s is also fitting since, at least in my opinion, there was a distinct difference in tone between the two seasons as well, but I just wondered why they chose for this image. Also, if they were going to depict specific characters, why not Junko? She’s the person who is enabled by Yuri to continue her cruel legacy, after all? Guess we’ll never know.

For my cast comments, I’m just going to cover the two recurring characters. I’d like to emphasize that I was blown away by every single actor in this show, but since this is my first time covering Thai actors, I’m afraid I won’t have anything more inspiring to say about everyone than “they were amazing”, lol.

Chicha Amatayakul really knocked it out of the park as Nanno. Of course it’s easy to say that no other actor could have possibly pulled off a role as well, but she just ticked it all the boxes that were needed to create all those different sides and layers to Nanno. Her natural beauty and cute smile could go from innocent to genuinely creepy, and her typical smirk and fierce gaze never ceased to make an impact.
The weird thing about Nanno is that, no matter how evil she got, I just ended up loving her as a character, and couldn’t help but enjoy when she showed her sinister excitement again. The one thing that did occasionally put me off a bit was her manical laughter because it sounded kind of forced at times, but on the other hand the unnatural sound of it also contributed to her weirdness.
This woman – apparently she’s only one year younger than me?! – had to act out so many disturbing scenes. She had to exude confidence during physically intimate scenes and repeatedly immerse herself in fake blood and bruised face make-up, jumping off of things and lying down on all sorts of surfaces. She must have gone through rollercoaster after rollercoaster while filming this, and still managed to put out an incredible performance. I would say I’ll definitely remember her, but I think that speaks for itself because it’ll actually be quite difficult to forget her face after this, lol. Anyways, it would be cool to see her in another Thai drama sometime! See if I can get used to seeing her as someone other than Nanno, haha.

I’ve seen a lot of comments sharing my dislike of Yuri’s character, but I just want to clarify that that had nothing to do with Chanya McClory’s performance. She was really good, and I’m glad that I got to see her transformation from her poor past self to Yuri the Menace, lol. On a more serious note, I read that she actually discovered that she had a brainstem tumor right before the second season came out, which means that she has fought through that while filming this as well. If anything, that just makes me appreciate her performance even more. Again, the fact that I wasn’t too impressed with Yuri’s character was in no way related to my opinion about the actress’ performance, because just like every other actor in this show she really poured her all into it. I guess it just goes to show that even the most poor and desperate person can succumb to the darkness once they’re exposed to it, and she did great in portraying that transition. I hope I’ll get to see more of her acting in the future!

Well, that’s it for this review. I have definitely been sleeping on Thai dramas, because dang, these people can deliver! I don’t even have a proper excuse for never watching any before, but I’ll definitely be adding more to my list from now on. By the way, in contrast to how long it took me to write the actors’ names out in this review (some took me three checks 😭), I really appreciated that they gave all the characters such short and memorable nicknames. It’s so much easier to remember ‘Oh’ and ‘Bam’ than ‘Sattawat Phupha’ and ‘Wiphada Cheunchom’. No disrespect to Thai names, but I’m new to them so it’s definitely something to get used to. 🙏🏻

In conclusion, I’ll just say that this series is a very unique little gem. It’ll make you uncomfortable in every single way, but it will also make you laugh out loud and gasp for breath with its unpredictable twists and gutwrenching scenarios. I think the main lesson to draw from this series as a whole is that evil doesn’t have to be born, but it can spread like wildfire once someone lights even the smallest of candles. In this day and age it’s more important than ever to remind kind and compassionate and not give in to instinctive hatred – that’ll only makes things worse for everyone. The idea that even the most innocent person can be persuaded into the darkness with a single bite of chocolate is quite scary, and this show will definitely keep haunting me for a while. On the other hand, it was really intriguing and it put a lot of things into perspective as well regarding certain issues of morality. Besides the many profane and graphic aspects of the show, it highlights many sociological issues such as sexism, beauty standards, social media, social class differences and capitalism. It places the seemingly mundane issues of teenagers within a bigger picture of social pressure, with quite the disturbing outcome. After all, if people willingly start choosing to act on their darkest thoughts from an early age on, how will that impact the future of this world?

I swear to God, if my Spin-the-Wheel app picks out another double-season show, I’m gonna be mimicking Nanno’s manical laughter, lol. We’ll find out soon!

Oh, and remember to keep an eye out for this girl.

Bye-bee! x

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.

Missing: The Other Side (S2)
(미씽: 그들이 있었다 / Missing: Geudeuli Itseodda / Missing: They Were There)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

Hello everybody, and welcome to my review of the second season of Missing: The Other Side. You can find my review of the first season here. Despite my week-long holiday in-between and the fact that this season was slightly longer than the first one, I was able to go through it quite quickly. As I thought, it was a good idea to watch it in one go, since there were a lot of references to the events of the first season. It was also a good idea to split the reviews for each season, because altogether it would’ve become an incredibly lengthy monster review that no one would probably take the time to read, lol. In any case, I really enjoyed the journey on which this whole series took me, and the way it consistently touched me from start to finish will definitely stay with me. I’d just like to thank my Spin the Wheel app for picking this show out for me now, because otherwise it would’ve probably taken me a very long time to get to it.

Since I already spent such a long review on the first season, for this one I’ll try to remain a bit more concise (although I can’t guarantee anything, knowing myself). The premise of the full story is that there are two men, Kim Wook and Jang Pan Seok, who for some reason are able to see and enter specific ghost villages that are invisible to the regular eye. These villages house ghosts of people whose bodies haven’t been found yet. Through communicating with these ghosts, Wook and Pan Seok set out to assist the police units in charge of missing persons cases in order to locate the bodies. Once found, the ghosts are able to pass on by disappearing from their village.
In season one, Wook and Pan Seok deal with the ghosts in Duon Village, a place in the countryside, while simultaneously dealing with their own losses – Wook’s mother who disappeared and Pan Seok’s young daughter who got kidnapped. At the end of season one, after the two help locate pretty much every single ghost in Duon Village, it is hinted that there might be another ghost village, one where Pan Seok’s daughter may have resided before she was found. The second season deals with this village, hidden in an abandoned industrial complex. Wook and Pan Seok set out to deal with a whole new community of villagers, including a shocking number of young children, and a new overarching case that ties in with the events of season one.

Let’s just start like we always do. Missing: The Other Side (S2) is a tvN K-Drama with fourteen episodes of about an hour long. I watched the full series here. The story takes places two years after the events of season one. After locating the bodies of all the villagers from Duon Village, Kim Wook (Go Soo) and Jang Pan Seok (Heo Joon Ho) haven’t been able to see any ghosts ever since. Together with Lee Jong Ah (Ahn So Hee), they now continue Wook’s original business of catching scammers and frauds, occasionally assisted by officer Shin Joon Ho (Song Joon Cheol/Ha Joon) and detective Baek Il Doo (Ji Dae Han) from the missing persons police unit.
However, their newly acquired ‘peaceful’ life is disrupted when a ghost suddenly appears in front of Wook and leads him to another ghost village, referred to as Industrial Complex 3. This ghost, a young man named Oh Il Yong (played by Kim Dong Hwi) is somehow able to leave the village, although he still can’t physically do anything when he’s outside. When other ghosts try to escape, they just respawn at the big tree that forms the entrance to the village (like the basement room in Thomas’ café in season one). When Wook and Pan Seok enter the village for the first time, they are shocked to see an entire school of children there. It doesn’t take long for some kids to spot Pan Seok and inform him that his daughter Hyun Ji used to be there as well.
At hearing this, Pan Seok immediately forms a strong connection with this new village and ends up spending a lot of time there. Even without Hyun Ji present, he can’t let go of the fact that she was there for fifteen years. He decides to stay there and gather as much information as he can to visualize how Hyun Ji lived in this village all this time.
The appointed ‘leader’ of Industrial Complex 3 is a middle-aged woman called Kang Eun Shil (played by Lee Jung Eun), nicknamed Captain Kang as she used to command a fishing boat. She runs a supermarket right across from the big tree and is always the first one to welcome new arrivals and put them at ease. Having lost her own husband and son while she was still alive, she is an incredibly warm and motherly figure to everyone in the village, especially to the younger people and children.
As Wook and Pan Seok get acquainted with all these new people, Il Yong leads them to a new case involving a drug dealing gang, which turns out to be connected to Lee Dong Min (Lee Yoon Jae), one of the main culprits from the first season, who’s still in jail. Whilst they unravel Il Yong’s involvement with this gang, Wook and Pan Seok set out to find the bodies of all the ghosts from this newfound village.

I just want to say right off the bat that I was slightly thrown off by the opening sequence to this season, because it specifically depicted the disappearance of children under a very mellow and hopeful soundtrack. Overall, the fact that this season predominantly focused on finding missing children and dealt with a considerable level of child abuse and suffering left me quite distraught. It occasionally got a bit too much for my heart to take, and I won’t deny that I’ve cried multiple times while watching this. It was definitely on another level than season one.
Also, the general focus seemed to have been a bit different in this season, as it centered more on people that had already been missing for a longer period of time rather than people that were currently missing and investigated by the missing persons unit. In this season, it was mostly Wook and Pan Seok bringing a missing person to Joon Ho’s attention and having him pick it up at his police unit instead of the other way around. As such, I was initially a bit worried that this would be a continuous case-by-case story where they just covered a new person in each episode. Although that’s kind of how it started in the first couple of episodes, I’m really glad they strayed from that as soon as the connecting story of the drug gang came into play. In the end, I was just as touched, heartbroken and flabbergasted by the plot twists and cliffhangers as I was in the first season, so props for the writers to pull off another very successfully written season.

Just like in my previous review, I’d like to start by giving a brief summary of the overarching storyline of the drug gang that plays out while Wook and Pan Seok look for the villagers’ bodies, because this ties in to Lee Dong Min, Choiseung Construction and other specific events from the first season. Basically, the drug squad police unit now led by Captain Lee Man Sik (Kim Jae Cheol), who was in charge of the missing persons unit in season one, is currently in charge of tracking down a drug deal gang that doesn’t only illegally deal drugs but also for some reason kidnaps and murders people, which brings them back into cooperating with the missing persons unit. The ring leader of this gang calls himself ‘Goliath’, and while the police have confirmed his existence through the dark web, they keep being one step behind in the drug gang’s schemes, which keep leading to new innocent victims, mostly young women.
For some reason, Il Yong keeps hovering around these drug dealers, suggesting that he knows them and/or that they had something to do with his death. The person he specifically identifies as his killer is Kim Pil Joong (Jung Yoon Jae), who at some point is thought to be Goliath himself. However, it turns out that there are even more people behind him, like the mysterious ‘Steve’ – later identified as Noh Yoon Goo (played by Kim Tae Woo).
I just wanted to introduce this plot in advance before I move on to my character analyses to make it easier to refer back to.

Since I’ve already written elaborate character analyses on the main recurring characters in my first season review, I’d just like to write a bit about how their dynamics developed in season two and address some new plot tools that were added to flesh out their personalities even more.
As we know, Wook’s mother disappeared when he was seven. In season one, he finds out she was murdered, meets her ghost in Duon Village and helps locate her body in the final episode so she can finally move on. Now, two years later, Wook doesn’t have a real job anymore and just goes around catching bad guys together with Pan Seok and Jong Ah. He and Pan Seok also live at Jong Ah’s place since they can’t afford something for themselves. In the first episode, Wook heroically manages to track down a voice phishing scammer and is awarded a Brave Citizen award. This is where he meets Il Yong for the first time, although he doesn’t realize he’s a ghost yet at that point.
Besides re-awakening Wook’s ability to see ghosts and find a new ghost village, this season adds one more storyline that significantly contributes to Wook’s character development. One of the women that gets kidnapped by Goliath’s drug gang early on in the story is Moon Se Yeong (Im Seon Woo), a single mother. Her teenage daughter, Moon Bo Ra (played by Choi Myung Bin), one day appears in front of Wook’s apartment, claiming that Wook is her dad. As it happens, Wook used to date her mother Se Yeong back in the day, but he keeps denying that he’s her father because “he’s never been married”. Of course, this is kind of a vague argument because we all know marriage isn’t a condition to have a child – it would’ve been clearer if he’d just said “we never slept together” or something. I have to admit I didn’t really understand why they had to keep this so vague until the end, even in the conversations between Wook and Se Yeong. I guess it’s because they had to wait until the end for Bo Ra to finally accept that he wasn’t her real father but that he still came to care for her like one, but I honestly don’t think it would’ve made a difference if they’d at least made it clear to the viewers that he wasn’t her biological dad. I don’t think it was something that needed to be kept ambiguous to that extent. Anyways, even though it turns out that Wook isn’t her dad, his acquaintance with Bo Ra and reunion with Se Yeong does contribute significantly to his character development. You could say that he actually learns how to be a dad without being one. I loved how, in the final episode, he told Bo Ra that there are father-daughter relationships like theirs everywhere, like with Pan Seok and Jong Ah. I just thought this was cool since I literally described the relationship between those two as a father-daughter bond in the first season.
While Wook starts off with the same vibe as in season one, quite careless and free, he definitely matured even more after meeting Bo Ra and keeping her safe, both while her mother was missing and after she was found, and that was cool to see. It honestly made me feel like he came to understand Pan Seok’s fatherly sentiments towards the kids in Industrial Complex 3 a bit better as well.

Speaking of Pan Seok, I definitely felt like he became more sentimental in this season. Of course, as if finding out what happened to his daughter and locating her body after looking for her for fifteen years wasn’t enough, he’s now actually able to see the place where she stayed during all those years. In a way, it was really sad that the wasn’t able to find it before, while she was still there, but he takes all the gratitude and closure he can from what everyone in the village can tell him about her, and she even left a letter for him. I have to admit I was a bit worried at first when he kept insisting to stay at the village more than returning home, because I didn’t know if it was a good thing that he would start spending more time with ghosts than with the living, but in the end it all turned out okay. Additionally, he was already used to spending more time with ghosts during his entire time living by Duon Village, so I guess my worries were invalid, lol. Nevertheless, he still definitely kept me on my toes in terms of naivety. In hindsight, most situations that initially made me go “are you kidding me?!?!” luckily turned out to be staged and/or part of a plan, but I definitely didn’t think it was wise to drink any kind of beverage when he visited that poison lady’s house, for example. Apart from the new things he found out about Hyun Ji, I didn’t feel like there was that much additional development to Pan Seok’s character. Which is fine, of course, since we already got to see so much of him in season one and he just remained to be the soft goofy old man we knew and loved.

Now that I think about it, we definitely found out more about Wook’s past than Pan Seok’s in this season. Not only did we get a glimpse into his dating history and that Se Yeong was his first love, but we also found out that Noh Yoon Goo was the one that actually killed his mother. I actually gasped out loud when they suddenly revealed that and literally showed the footage of him killing both Wook’s mother and Detective Park. The fact that he was revealed to be the henchman that killed those people for Lee Dong Min was wild. It made the connection to the first season much more tangible and I thought that was pretty cool. Aside from that, it was nice that they kept adding to Wook’s character and development with news pieces of information instead of just letting him stay the same after getting to know him throughout season one.

If Jong Ah wasn’t already my favorite supporting character in the first season, she definitely stepped up her game in this one. I loved how she came to join Wook and Pan Seok in their quest to find those missing bodies, even when she couldn’t see the ghosts herself. I also really loved the bond she built up with Bo Ra when she came to stay at their place. Despite her initial disapproval of the idea that Wook had a daughter (her crush on him was definitely more apparent in this season), she became such a great eonni to Bo Ra, and it was nice to see how the young girl started opening up to her more and more as well.
One other thing I appreciated was the consistency in Jong Ah’s personality. I still remember how thoughtful she was for making those new flyers and banners of Hyun Ji for Pan Seok in season one. If that didn’t already warm my heart, her literally building an entire café at the industrial complex and gathering her friends to set up a full-fledged campaign to find all those missing children, even putting their pictures on the cupholders and everything, definitely did. Honestly, I loved how she just refused to stay behind and kept thinking of ways to help despite not being able to see the ghosts herself. Her growth throughout this season really touched me, and I thought it was all the more fair when the last episode revealed that she also became able to see ghosts. She opened up her mind and helped out so much, it almost felt like a reward that would allow her to keep helping out even more.

In this season, we are introduced to two friends of Jong Ah who end up helping her out at the café that becomes their new headquarters to locate the missing people from Industrial Complex 3. These friends are Geun Hyung (Lee Kyo Yeob) and Seul Gi (I can’t find this actress credited on any of my source websites, but I’m guessing from the ending credits – yes, I went there – that she might be called Lee Hye Ryung). We first meet these two when Jong Ah visits her hometown in one of the first episodes. This particular trip ends in a tragedy since the friend whose wedding she was going to attend ended up as one of the victims of the drug gang, wedding dress and all. After this, when Jong Ah sets up the Chamjoeun café, she asks Geun Hyung and Seul Gi to come work there and help her promote those missing people. They two of them are kept in the dark about the whole ghost business, of course, but it was still nice that Jong Ah found some allies who agreed to help her in such an important cause. I also liked getting some insight into Jong Ah’s personal life and family history through seeing her meet her childhood friends and visit her parents.

After the events of season one, I was really glad to see Shin Joon Ho so fresh-faced and cheerful again. We all know he really went through it, so it was refreshing to see him suddenly be much more animated and smiley in this season. Of course, the edginess was still there when he visited Lee Dong Min in prison and stuff, but all in all I think he processed everything very well. It was cool to see how he now immediately took up Wook’s requests and actively promoted the missing persons cases while working around the fact that the clues he got came directly from ghosts.
I remember saying that I loved how he came full-circle with detective Baek at the end of the first season, and now that we actually got to see him work together at the missing persons unit, everything just seemed to fall into place. He and detective Baek became such a fun duo together and it was great to now have that origin story of how far they came after initially dismissing each other’s sentiment so much. Honestly, I didn’t even realize how much Joon Ho had grown on me until the part where he got stabbed and I was like “NONONONONONO”. I actually panicked there for a second! I really liked how he cleaned up in this season and became an even stronger ally in helping out Wook and Pan Seok and becoming more friendly and supportive towards them.

One thing that I also picked up on in season one but that struck me again in this season, was the nature of the relationships between Wook, Pan Seok and Joon Ho. Even though they went through so much, both individually and together, and saw each other through a lot of heartbreaking and traumatic events, for some reason I still wouldn’t define them as ‘friends’. I don’t know if it’s because they’re all manly men who don’t need to express how much they actually care for each other, but I can’t help but feel that they consistently remained more like partners in crime than actual buddies. I think this is quite a unique aspect of the series as a whole. These men came into each other’s lives under the weirdest of circumstances and ended up helping each other out with the most personal and emotional stuff, and it still feels like they’re more like allies and work partners than chums. Honestly, when Wook gave Joon Ho that hug towards the end, even I was like ‘oh, wow’, haha. I feel like the growth that these men went through, also in relation to each other, is one of the greatest aspects of this series. The way they keep it so mature and professional while always having each other’s backs and even crying along with each other when the occasion arises brings a really unique heartwarming depth to their dynamic. I really loved that.

Now that I’ve covered the main recurring characters, let’s move on to the new people that this season introduced to us, starting with the living ones – I’ll save the sob stories until the end.
I quite liked the introduction of Bo Ra and Se Yeong. It was nice to get some more insight in Wook’s past, but they also ended up being really nice supporting characters that contributed to Wook’s growth. When they showed how Se Yeong was being held captive, I honestly already abandoned all hope that she was going to be found since that had never happened before. I did wonder why her kidnapper was keeping her alive for so long and kept telling her that she’d put them both in danger if she escaped, but I just assumed she would end up being another unfortunate victim. After the first season, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d ended up killing her even after her desperate escape attempts and established attachment to her daughter. That’s why it came as such a surprise when they managed to rescue her in time and she was happily reunited with Bo Ra.
I was really interested to hear more about Se Yeong’s past relationship with Wook. Not just because of the “is he Bo Ra’s dad or not” question, but also because we haven’t actually seen Wook involved in any romantic relationship before, be it in the past or in the present. In terms of his character development I was quite interested to find out what he would be like in such a dynamic. From the way they spoke with each other, I thought they were really sweet. Despite the fact that they must’ve broken up on bad terms, they actually still acted kind of shy with each other, which was cute to see. It was also nice that Se Yeong just went along with the new relationship between Wook and Bo Ra and didn’t even seem to care that he wasn’t her real dad. I feel like she ended up instilling some new sense of responsibility in Wook without even meaning to, and I really liked seeing that.
Se Yeong’s dynamic with Bo Ra was also really heartwarming. We’re introduced to them after she’s been kidnapped, so all we initially hear about her is that she’s a sloppy single mom that goes out every night and neglects her daughter. Bo Ra still seemed very attached to her, so I was hoping to see them reunite and interact at some point. I remember how sad I felt that we only got to see a couple of flashbacks of Joon Ho and Yeo Na when the latter was still alive, so I knew it was going to be hard to only get to know Se Yeong and Bo Ra separately from each other as well. Luckily, that didn’t happen this time and mother and daughter were happily reunited.
I really liked Bo Ra. She was such a mature kid for her age. It was so brave of her to just go out to seek help when her mom disappeared, first with the police station and then with Wook, after recognizing him both from her mom’s picture and from the Brave Citizen award ceremony on TV. There are many movies and series that depict someone introducing themselves to a parent they’ve never met before, but I gotta say Bo Ra didn’t seem to be that nervous at all. She just walked up to him like “Hi, dad”, lol.
I also appreciated how smart she was, both when Noh Yoon Goo suddenly came up to her and introduced himself as a friend of her dad’s and when she confronted Wook with the fact that she knew he, Pan Seok and Jong Ah were somehow finding missing people and offered to help. Even after finding out that Wook wasn’t her real dad, she stayed so calm and mature. Their hug after he told her he’d still be her father was really sweet. She was a nice new addition to the cast of characters, one that was both linked to one of the covered cases and Wook’s character development.

Even though they did bring back two guys from Lee Dong Min’s gang in season one – Jang Do Ri (Yoo Il Han) and Mangchi (Park Won Seok) – we got a whole new set of bad guys this season. I actually liked that they linked this gang to Lee Dong Min to establish the history of his crimes even more, instead of just creating a whole new separate gang that had nothing to do with the events of the first season. I just love it when you think something is over and done with, and then the show suddenly provides you with a new piece of unexpected information that contributes even more to the story as a whole.
Noh Yoon Goo, who is only introduced in the final six episodes of the season, is revealed to have been working for Lee Dong Min for many years. I found it kind of interesting that he, with his flair and presence, was actually someone who did another person’s bidding, calling someone else “hyungnim” and doing their dirty chores for them. He talks about his history with Lee Dong Min in some detail at some point, saying that he came from nothing and started working in construction at sites that were owned by Choiseung Construction, and that Lee Dong Min sought him out and brought him up as one of his henchmen. It’s even revealed that Noh Yoon Goo was the real culprit behind the murders on Wook’s mother and detective Park – we even get to see him kill them through flashbacks.
I would’ve liked seeing Noh Yoon Goo and Lee Dong Min interact a bit more in person. They had one phone call, but we only hear Noh Yoon Goo’s side of the conversation. At some point, it seems like Lee Dong Min changed his mind about something and Noh Yoon Goo ends up bribing another prisoner to kill him in his cell. When asked by Jang Do Ri why he did that, he just says that he’s a changed man now and that he’s not desperate enough anymore to “start a fire at an orphanage for chump change” – suggesting that he was also responsible for setting those orphanages on fire. In the end, he definitely worked his way up as a more intimidating enemy than Lee Dong Min. I mean, if you look at how easy it was to track down and arrest Lee Dong Min in season one, Noh Yoon Goo had nothing on him.
I’ll say a bit more about the open ending of this season at the end of my review, but one thing that kind of bummed me out was that Noh Yoon Goo was introduced so late into the series. Although we got some solid information on how he knew Lee Dong Min, there was still so much to find out about him. I was really hoping we’d get to at least see a final confrontation after Wook would find out that he was the one who killed his mother. Honestly, for someone who was just walking out in the open and doing some casual sightseeing, Noh Yoon Goo remained a very mysterious person right until the end.
I also would’ve liked to get a bit more conclusive info on Kim Pil Joong. Despite the fact that he was introduced as a cold-blooded killer who betrayed his friend, he did end up making sure Noh Yoon Goo wouldn’t get his hands on Il Yong’s body. It explained all the more how confused he was to see Il Yong in the village, because of course he knew he was still alive. It would’ve been nice to get a bit more insight in the friendship between him and Il Yong and how exactly he turned on him. In hindsight I felt like they could’ve done more with his character, just like how they kept Sang Cheol in the village for a while longer to gradually reveal his innately good nature. It’s kind of ironic to say, but in Pil Joong’s case it was actually kind of a bummer that he was found so quickly – they just had him and I feel like he could’ve told them way more. Not gonna lie, I would’ve liked seeing him and Il Yong rekindle things in the village some more before he disappeared, so at least Il Yong would’ve known it was never Pil Joong’s intention to kill him.

Before I move on to my character analyses of the Industrial Complex 3 ghosts, I first wanted to comment on some general similarities to the first season. Not that it really bothered me or anything, but I did find it interesting that they repeated the event of a new ghost appearing just when Wook discovered the new village (Yeo Na in season one, Alice in season two), and how this new ghost became a key character throughout the story. Secondly, I also thought it was typical that they introduced at least one “bad” ghost that still bothered people in the village. Seriously, the fact that they sent a child rapist to the village that happened to have the most children in it was pretty sickening, but I thought the way they dealt with him was actually quite similar to how they dealt with Woo Il Seok in the first season. Having said that, the similarities mostly lay in the way and timing of their introductions, because their stories were definitely very different from the ones in season one. I just wanted to make note of it, since it wouldn’t have surprised me if they purposefully reused some tactics from the previous season. In fact, that would actually be a logical thing to do, since the ghost villages essentially all worked the same way.
One thing that did strike me was that, at some point, whenever someone died, they just immediately ended up at Industrial Complex 3. Like, it almost became a running gag and I was a bit worried that it might end up de-sensitizing me to the impact of their deaths: after all, they just ended up at the village and could be further questioned from there. Especially seeing how for example Thomas got separated from his comrades and Alice got separated from her mother in death, it would’ve made sense if some people got sent to different villages. In that sense, I found it a bit typical that every next now dead person just arrived at Industrial Complex 3. Despite this, I really appreciated that the writers found new and innovative ways to deal with the ghosts, like making Pil Joong disappear almost as soon as he arrived, and introducing ghosts that were either able to leave the village or forced to stay even after their body was found. I really liked that it wasn’t just a repetition of the first season but that they raised more questions that only added to the depth of the world they created. I’ll keep saying it, but the writing of this show is without a doubt one of its greatest assets. They used the second season to both flesh out what we’ve already seen and to open up new loopholes and possibilities to elaborate on.

Let’s start talking about the residents of Industrial Complex 3, starting with Captain Kang.
In terms of the similarities I just mentioned, I really wondered what kind of “leader” Captain Kang would be, and how much she would differ from Thomas. I’m really glad that they managed to flesh her out as such a strong individual character that I just couldn’t help but love. Just like with Thomas, there was a moment at the beginning where I feared she might have had some shady intentions – Lotso the Bear traumatized us all – but she really turned out to be the warmest and most empathic person ever. Her own story only came out in the final episodes, but it already became clear what kind of person she was through everything that led up to that. She literally treated everyone in the village as her own children, and despite getting used to everything after spending forty (!) years there, she would still tear up at the thought that all these children could’ve grown up to be such wonderful adults. The scene at the sports field day when she got emotional as she visualized the kids at the age they would’ve been if they hadn’t ended up at the village actually broke me. The way she and Mr. Jung talked about them as “pretty flowers whose stems had been cut too soon” was heartbreaking.
I also thought it was so touching that she actually kept a whole archive of important artefacts that former villagers had left behind, and that the objects they’d given her didn’t disappear with them when they were found. It meant so much to Pan Seok to have something tangible that Hyun Ji had left behind for him. I thought it was a really nice touch that they added in something that remained after the ghosts left the village, so that the remaining residents still had something solid to remember them by.
Through Captain Kang’s own story, we find out that she drowned at sea five years after she buried her own husband and son, who also died during a fishing accident. She always assumed her body had to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea, and so she also told Wook and Pan Seok not to bother looking for her. When it was revealed that her leg started acting up each time her death anniversary came around, I assumed that meant that something may have been sticking into it in the water or something. Until those two old friends of her were introduced and they revealed that she was the only one of her crew that disappeared from that boat, I didn’t even expect there to have been a different truth behind her death. As it was revealed that not every single ghost had lost their life because of murder, I also thought that maybe Captain Kang really did just get unlucky. Her own acceptance of this truth and the fact that she’d probably stay in the village forever due to the alleged location of her body only made it all the more painful when it was revealed that her old friend had actually killed her for her insurance money and stored her body in the freezer of her old warehouse, which he took over after her death. The discovery of her body literally sent chills down my spine. The realization that she’d just been sitting there propped up against the wall, completely frozen, for forty years was horrible. Her response to finding this out and the frustration at still not being able to leave the village really gave me goosebumps.

Speaking of this, I really wonder why she, and Thomas for that matter, weren’t able to leave the village after they were found. Season one starts off with Thomas back in Duon Village, talking about the living people that helped them to what’s later revealed to be Il Yong. I actually thought he left at the end of season one, since they found the bodies of his comrades and also suggested that he must be among them as well. I saw some comments online from people speculating that people like him and Captain Kang, the established ‘admins’ of their villages, might not be able to leave since they’ve somehow been assigned the role to welcome new arrivals for all eternity. The only difference here is that, while this would make sense for Thomas as he was the first one to arrive in Duon Village hundreds of years ago, I’m not actually sure if Captain Kang was the first one to arrive in Industrial Complex 3, and if it really didn’t exist before she came there, much later than Thomas. While Wook and Pan Seok did promise her to find out the reason why she couldn’t leave, this season also left us hanging on that question. It ends with her welcoming yet another new arrival, seemingly accepting that she has no other choice but be there for every new poor soul that ends up there.
I just felt so bad for Captain Kang, because it seemed like, even though she acted just like Thomas in how she’d accepted her role and made peace with the thought that she’d stay behind forever, when push came to shove she still had hope that she would be allowed to move on as well. The way she screamed into the void about the unfairness of being forced to stay behind in the village after what was done to her, even after her killer had confessed and her body had been found was incredibly heartfelt. For what it’s worth, I really hope they manage to find out a way to help her move on, because this was actually cruel.

On a side note, I actually didn’t fully understand the testimony Captain Kang’s killer’s wife gave at the police station. The only things they made clear was that her husband had killed Captain Kang on the boat during that storm and somehow ended up putting her in that freezer. His wife never knew about this, but slowly started going crazy after allegedly being haunted by Captain Kang’s ghost.
In her testimony, she says the following:

“I did it. I never even dreamed she was in that freezer. If I’d known, when I found her with the leg caught in the net, I wouldn’t have untangled her and let her drown. I thought my husband had pushed her into the sea. I hoped she’d move on without losing any limbs.”

What I get from this is that the wife found Captain Kang’s body in the water with her leg stuck in a net, and that she untangled her so she could at least sink without any inconveniences to her limbs. Saying that she was under the impression that her husband had pushed her into the water would suggest that she was aware of the fact that her husband killed Captain Kang. This would at least explain why she started hallucinating that Captain Kang was haunting her, because why would she be haunted if she didn’t even know about her murder? She just didn’t know that her husband put her body in the freezer afterwards.
All in all, I found it quite a roundabout way of admitting to what exactly she’d done, especially since she started out with “I did it”. I guess she just meant that she was the one who ‘killed her’ by letting her drown, and regretted that after finding out her husband had stored her body. Still, I had to read through this several times to analyze her testimony. I feel like this series occasionally tends to hint at things and revealing certain truths in a very vague and roundabout way.

The first really mysterious ghost we meet in this season is Oh Il Yong, who for some reason is the only resident of Industrial Complex 3 that’s able to leave and enter the outside world. Initially, Captain Kang is the only one who knows about this, and they have this silent agreement that he will check up on the relatives of the villagers so that Captain Kang can let them know that their families are doing okay without raising suspicion, attributing it to the fact that ‘she has her sources’. As she’s been in the village for so long and is such a trusted figure to the villagers, no one would think to doubt her, and that would be her way of covering for Il Yong.
I have to say that, for someone that finally managed to track down one of the living people able to help him that Thomas talked about, Il Yong definitely remained very vague and suspicious for quite some time. I actually agreed with Wook when he complained to Captain Kang that Il Yong had the tendency to just appear at random places but never explain anything. To be fair, I can imagine that Il Yong was probably caught off guard when he met Wook after screaming into a void for three years and he might have been struck in a “now that I found someone, I don’t actually know what to ask of him” kind of situation.
From the way Il Yong kept lingering around Pil Joong and the other drug gang members, I already had a feeling that he might have been involved with that gang himself before he died. It could be that he was kidnapped and killed himself, but seeing as he was dressed the same way as them, I thought it was more likely that he was a part of that gang and tried to get out of it or something. Turns out I was right, but they still did a really great job at supporting his decisions. Same as with last season, I loved that even when my hunch about something was right, the way they revealed it still managed to touch me in some way.
In the end, I really couldn’t bring myself to blame Il Yong. He showed his true nature in his response to realizing he gave drugs to a father who went on to kill his own kid in a blind rage. The fact that his mention of “I can still see his face” turned out to refer to the crying kid was so painful. Being confronted with the destroying consequences of his first ever job, he immediately wanted out and ended up getting stabbed by his trusted friend. He was still so young and his heart was in the right place. He got involved with the wrong people because of his underprivileged background and immediately came to regret it. He ended up in the village while carrying the guilt of causing an innocent child’s death, and this information only supported all the more how kind and brotherly he acted towards all the young children that ended up there. I loved how literally his clothing style and his personality started to become lighter and brighter as soon as he and Wook cleared the air and started working together more amiably.
With regards to the continuous genius of the cliffhangers that this series uses, I’ll just say that the revelation that he was actually alive and being nursed by that mysterious woman Wook kept seeing in his dream really got me. As much as his comatose state explained the fact that he was still able to visit the outside world, I actually didn’t see that coming. It immediately reminded me of Kim So Hyun’s character from Let’s Fight Ghost, who was able to help the male lead with solving crimes as a ghost while her real body was actually in a coma the whole time. I remember that the girl in that show didn’t retain any memories of her time as a ghost when she woke up, so I’m glad at least Il Yong ended up remembering it in the end.

In both Captain Kang and Il Yong’s cases, I was actually not prepared for the discovery of their bodies. In Il Yong’s case it wasn’t immediately clear that he survived (🤜🏻that bloody cliffhanger🤛🏻), so when he suddenly disappeared I was more in denial than distraught. While Captain Kang was crying her eyes out over his abrupt disappearance I was just sitting there like “huh?!” Like, I was convinced he couldn’t have just died, he was established as a way more important character than that.
I had the same when they found Captain Kang’s body in that freezer and they didn’t even show her disappearing in the village. I thought there was no way there were just going to let her leave like that, without a proper send-off. Regardless, I still gasped when she was revealed to be still there. Honestly, this series was so good at never letting me know its next move, my goodness.

I think it’s safe to say that the school was a very prominent place in Industrial Complex 3. It’s where a lot of scenes took place, as many of the depicted events involved activities with the children and taking them on field trips. It’s no wonder that most of the adults that arrived at the village ended up working at the school.
The first person we meet, who’s also the first missing persons case that gets solved in the story, is Yang Eun Hee (Kwon Ah Reum), a young woman who was killed by her jealous boyfriend twenty years prior. It was really touching how they revealed that Pan Seok knew her mother from when they were both looking for their missing children in the past.
After Eun Hee is found, the two people that remain in charge of the children are Jung Young Jin (played by Jung Eun Pyo) and Ahn Hye Joo (played by Yoon Ji Won). Mr. Jung, a former Korean literature professor, is initially very hesitant about the truth behind his death. He has told Captain Kang that he took his own life so his wife could get a pension, and that he’s too ashamed to be found. There were several moments where I found his behavior a bit suspicious, but he was alright. When he wasn’t working at the school he was usually tending to his garden or helping Captain Kang out with chores at the supermarket. The way he ultimately revealed that he had lied about his death and that his son had accidentally killed him was so well played out. He had been acting like such a calm and patient man that I assumed he’d made his peace with staying at the village forever, just like Captain Kang, so it was a pretty big shift for him when he finally asked Pan Seok to search for his body in the end. Seriously, it didn’t even matter who it was, every single time they found a body that was hidden out of sight somewhere, it gave me goosebumps. Even if some discoveries and disappearances from the village hit me harder than others, the underlying notion that those bodies had been there for so long, just dismissed even by their own family members in some cases, was absolutely horrific. It never ceased to give me chills.

Hye Joo was a young woman who used to be an art therapist. I’m not entirely sure how long she’d been in the village, and it was only ever revealed that she had an elderly father left that Il Yong occasionally checked up on. She’s one of the only ghosts that doesn’t end up being covered in this season. Since I’d assumed they would locate every single person in the final episode like they’d done in season one, this actually came as a surprise to me. I’d expected her to also get her own arc of how she died and get closure by being found. I liked Hye Joo, she was really nice and it would’ve been interesting to get a bit more background information on her.

If there’s one character that unexpectedly grew on me, it was Go Sang Cheol (played by Nam Hyun Woo). Sang Cheol is initially introduced as Se Yeong’s kidnapper, and a part of Goliath’s drug gang. It’s only after he is killed by one of his gang mates and ends up at Industrial Complex 3 that we find out he was actually an undercover police officer from the drug squad who infiltrated Goliath’s gang. He’d been instructed to kidnap and kill Se Yeong but ended up keeping her away from him. Despite initially appearing very guarded and grumpy, it’s quickly revealed that he’s quite the crybaby and kind of a tsundere. In the village, he takes on the role of sports coach at the school. Being surrounded by the children and the warmth from the villagers, Sang Cheol gradually becomes more amiable with everyone and even starts patrolling around the village, keeping true to his original job.
I really loved the way he bloomed into being such a sweetheart. I think he particularly became more expressive in his more sensitive feelings through Ro Ha’s arc, which I’ll talk about after this. I’m not gonna lie, even though we saw him get killed and knew what happened to him, it still gave me goosebumps when Joon Ho found him behind that wall in that abandoned house, accompanied by Noh Yoon Goo’s secret stash of drugs. The fact that they actually went through the effort to hide him there and build a whole freaking wall to hide from sight, bro. We’d already seen how he looked when he got killed, but the shot of his face in the plastic bag peeking out from that hole in the wall was actually chilling. I’m not even lying when I say that I was sad to see him go. They were sitting around the campfire after the field day, all cozy and all. He really grew on me as a character and I would’ve liked to have him stay in the village a bit longer, since he also actively started helping out with the safety of the village and became like a hyung figure to Il Yong.
Also, something that specifically touched me in Sang Cheol’s case was Captain Lee’s attachment to him. Captain Lee, the head of the drug squad team, was the one who’d brought him into the undercover case and was constantly worried about what had happened to him. I can’t really put my finger on it, but the way he genuinely cried when Sang Cheol’s body was found and kneeled down when he informed his parents of their youngest son’s death was heartbreaking on a different level. I actually felt bad for him, thinking of how guilty he must have felt bringing Sang Cheol into that job. There was something really admirable about the responsibility he felt for his death. It was quite touching to see this side of Captain Lee, I’m glad they brought him back and gave him more to deal with in this season.

I hope you’ve prepared your heartstrings, because I’m now moving on to the main child characters from the village. Even if they ended up not locating every single child, I thought it was a really nice gesture that Jong Ah at least set up that campaign to raise awareness and direct attention to all the children that were missing. I don’t know if all those children were in Industrial Complex 3, but it was suggested that this village was assigned to mostly fragile and defenseless people – which leaves me with the question how freaking Choi Yeong Bae ended up there, but alright.
The first child to be investigated and found by Wook and Pan Seok is Lee Ro Ha (Kim Ha Eon). He always appeared as a cheerful kid with a talent for drawing. Before they actually start investigating his disappearance, Hye Joo is able to give Pan Seok a nudge in the right direction by showing him some drawings that Ro Ha made after he just arrived, which ultimately lead them to the location of his body. This happened around the time that the annual sports field day approached, and Ro Ha became visibly anxious with regards to his running ability. He kept getting upset for not being able to run faster and became really insecure about not being able to win the race. While Sang Cheol was encouraging him in the village, Wook and Pan Seok were out to figure out what had happened to him.
This particular story also put things in perspective for me regarding the fact that not everyone ended up in the village because of murder. As it turns out, after Ro Ha’s father (Son Kwang Eob) had been sent to prison for ‘accidental homicide’, Ro Ha and his mother ended up homeless, and when his mom collapsed at some point, she was taken away in an ambulance that left Ro Ha behind. While running after the vehicle to catch up to his mom, Ro Ha ended up falling off a mountain cliff.
Just like how Captain Kang’s leg kept acting up because it had gotten stuck in a net, I just had a hunch that Ro Ha’s obsession with running faster must have had some additional meaning, but it still gutted me that it was because he never got over not being able to run fast enough to reach his mom. By the way, am I the only one who finds it really weird that the ambulance didn’t take him with them? Maybe he arrived just when they took her away or something? I just can’t imagine they would’ve left him there if he’d been sitting and crying by his mother’s side when they came to get her. Anyways, I just had this feeling that they would probably find his body as he was crossing the finish line of the sports field day. It was just such a typical euphoric moment for it to happen and I could already picture how it would happen. In the end, it happened exactly as I’d imagined. And I still cried my eyes out. I really can’t get over the way they frame these moments so that, even when you know what’s going to happen, it still punches you in the heart. I think that Ro Ha’s disappearance from the village was the first scene where I didn’t just tear up but actually had tears rolling down my cheeks. His little euphoric face as he was catching his breath after just winning the race 😭😭😭.
Also, can I just say how bad I felt for Ro Ha’s dad? I don’t know exactly what he did to get sent to jail, but from the way he acted I really don’t think he was that bad of a man. The first thing he did after being released was go home to his family only to find out that 1. his wife had been admitted at a psychiatric ward and 2. his son, who he hadn’t seen since he was eight years old, was missing. The scene where the dad broke down at the site where they found Ro Ha’s remains and they showed him his little shoe was gut-wrencing. Ro Ha would’ve been in high school if he was still alive. Excuse me, I got something in my eye again.

When Wook and Pan Seok first arrive at the village, the first children to greet them are Choi Ha Yoon (Kim Seo Heon) and Lee Yeong Rim (Lee Cheon Moo). I think Ha Yoon was supposed to be the girl that came up to Pan Seok at the end of season one and told her friends that he was Hyun Ji’s father. Since Ha Yoon had been Hyun Ji’s best friend, she was able to tell Pan Seok the most of about her and even showed him Hyun Ji’s headband that she received from her; just like with Captain Kang’s archive, every item that had been given to another person in the village remained even after the giver disappeared.
Ha Yoon and Yeong Rim are two peas in a pod. Apparently, they had already been friends when they were alive and arrived at the village together. Ha Yoon is very protective of Yeong Rim, who’s a bit of a crybaby and, according to their own words “not very smart”. She has to keep reminding him of things and gets mad whenever she spots him with banana milk. Apparently, the two of them disappeared after a strange lady approached them in the playground and gave them banana milk to drink. Even though they don’t seem to remember what exactly happened after that, at least Ha Yoon had recognized the banana milk as ‘dangerous’, just as the logo of the Blue Bird Care charity, which became a big lead in their case.
Honestly, I loved these kids so much. I especially loved how smart Ha Yoon was. She actually figured out all by herself that Pan Seok wasn’t dead like them because he didn’t appear in the picture she took of him and knowingly kept it a secret because she was convinced that he would find her just like he’d found Hyun Ji. It gutted me seeing them as college students in Captain Kang’s imagination of them at the age they would be if they’d still been alive.
By the time Wook and Pan Seok start looking into Ha Yoon and Yeong Rim’s disappearances, we’d already seen several people disappear from the village, including Ro Ha, so I actually had the audacity to think that I was mentally prepared for whatever came next. Even after learning about the circumstances in which they disappeared, I thought I would be able to handle it. Boy was I wrong. The moment they found those pots buried in that lady’s greenhouse and Ha Yoon and Yeong Rim disappeared while they were happily riding the swings in the sunset, I was once again bawling like a baby.

Like I mentioned before when I was talking about the similarities between the two seasons, there was one ghost that appeared in the village right when Wook and Pan Seok first discovered it. This is a five-year old girl called Lee Alice (played by Kim Tae Yeon). I swear, I could cry just be looking at her. She was so freaking tiny 😭 I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to her. Throughout the story, we see her slowly but surely become more comfortable in the village, and it was particularly sweet to see how quickly she warmed up to ‘Uncle Wook’. Although the fact that they lost sight of her a couple of times was quite concerning, she really became the baby sweetheart of the village. I loved how she ended up staying close to Captain Kang and kept consoling her, she was such a sweetie 😭.
Although Alice’s case ultimately doesn’t get solved, we do find out that she had an abusive father, which I think explains enough. Interestingly, Il Yong ends up finding Alice’s mother (played by Filippino actress Cherish Maningat) in a different village that even Wook and Pan Seok can’t see. Il Yong manages to convey that Alice’s mother got beaten by her Korean husband because she couldn’t speak Korean fluently. What can I say, if that’s a dealbreaker for you, you probably shouldn’t marry and have a kid with a foreigner. Anyways, for some reason Alice got separated from her mother in death. I honestly found this really interesting and hoped they would elaborate on that more, but that didn’t. The husband fled away to Guam, so they couldn’t easily track him either – I can only hope his plane dropped him above that island full of prehistoric animals from Cage of Eden.
Because Alice had been introduced at such a specific time and they kept bringing her back into focus, I just assumed that they would leave her discovery for the end as one final tearjerker. Honestly, it’s because I was mentally preparing myself for Alice’s arc that I wasn’t as shocked by the unexpected discoveries of both Il Yong and Captain Kang’s body. This was another thing that they left open, and I wondered why. I was completely convinced they’d pull the same trick as in season one and just finish off all the discoveries in the final episode. I really hope they’ll still get to it and manage to bring Alice and her mother together in some way in the end. I just want this little baby to find peace 😭🙏🏻.

I’d just like to discuss a couple more side characters before I move on to my final remarks and cast comments. Of course I can’t talk about every single thing that happened here, and there are bound to be aspects that I don’t discuss, I still want to point out two villain characters that gave me proper chills.
The first one, whom I’ve already mentioned, was Choi Yeong Bae. He was a child rapist that for some reason was sent to Industrial Complex 3. Captain Kang had made sure to drop him at an island surrounded by water and hid the boat in the woods so he wouldn’t be able to get back ashore to the children, but at some point he still manages to swim to the edge of the map and respawn at the big tree. He actually ends up kidnapping and gagging Ha Yoon, after which literally everyone jumps on him.
Now it wasn’t as much his character that made an impression on me, but his wife, Jo Yoo Seon (Lee Seung Hee). Wook manages to track her down and get her side of the story. This woman actually murdered her own husband because he couldn’t even keep his hands off his own daughter. There was something so eerily powerful about the way she immediately believed Wook when he told her about her husband’s ghost and handed his ashes over to him. There’s always something to be said about reasons for murder, but I honestly found this woman so strong. She was walking around like a zombie, coughing up blood and looking like she could pass out at any moment, but as soon as a strange man approached her telling her that her husband was still harming children in the afterlife, she was like “do what you have to do”. The quiet rage of her consent really stuck with me. Like I said before, I really appreciated how this season kept finding new ways to deal with the cases of each ghost, and this one definitely jumped out to me. It just goes to show that there’s a different kind of mourning for the relatives of criminals.
The second person that made a big impression on me was Kim Geon Joo (Oh Yoon Hong), the lady who killed Ha Yoon and Yeong Rim. She might not have been as mysterious and intriguing as Kang Myung Jin from season one, but she was so. freaking. creepy. I mean, look at her in this screenshot, man.

Can we just acknowledge how fricked up this woman’s psyche was? The fact that her own mother had suffered so much that she ended up begging for death messed her up so much that she started to believe that everyone going through a heart time wanted to die. She would literally see a child cry at the side of the road for a trivial reason such as fighting with a friend, and be like “ah, they’re in pain, I should just end their life right here to ease their suffering”. Excuse me, ma’am. No matter how much you may have believed that you were ‘nursing’ or ‘helping’ people, that way of thinking is just messed up. The freaking audacity of her to be like “I saved those little children, if I hadn’t ‘helped them’, they would’ve still been in pain.” If you hadn’t ‘helped’ them, they would’ve grown into beautiful smart college students, making the world a better place. They would’ve been in the bloom of her lives. They didn’t ask you to take away their lives for them, so don’t you dare give yourself credit for that. Honestly, that pissed me off so much. The realization that she approached Yeong Rim because he had been crying about his parents getting a divorce, and Ha Yoon had probably just been there with him and ended up as collateral damage really sets my teeth on edge.
Of course, there’s something to say about her psyche, she was clearly not well and should’ve received help herself, but this honestly doesn’t make up for anything she’s done. This woman had every single drink in her fridge drugged to get rid of any kind of unwelcome visitor and she killed so many people, from children to the elderly, in her conviction that she was ‘saving’ them. It was messed up.

Now that I’ve finished my character analyses, I’d just like to make a couple of final comments before moving on to my cast comments.

First of all, to keep things happy, I just want to mention that I literally YELPED at the sight of Pan Seok’s puppies (now doggies) again and realized they had a puppy of their own 😭🙏🏻❤️. I finally remembered their names: Junggoon and Manggoon, and their little Jjamppong 🐕🐕🐕. I loved that they kept these doggies in the story and gave them their own proper houses. They may not have appeared as much throughout the story, but they still made everything better whenever they appeared on screen. I also loved that Jjamppong was able to travel to the village and interact with the ghost people. The scenes of little Alice playing with him were the cutest. Honestly, big shoutout to these pups.🫶🏻

Despite the fact that the writers of this series did another amazing job at filling in blanks and linking events together, in hindsight there’s just one tiny plothole that I noticed. I clearly remember that the children that recognized Pan Seok as Hyun Ji’s father at the end of season one came up to him in the street and disappeared through another portal, meaning that they were able to leave their village as well. Since this season established this was only possible if the person wasn’t fully dead yet, and Il Yong’s case was a very rare one that no one else had ever heard of, it seems that this may have been a slip-up, although of course I understand there was no other way for the children to catch a glimpse of Hyun Ji’s father before he ended up going to their village. They must have been from Industrial Complex 3, since that’s where Hyun Ji was, so that probably shouldn’t have been possible, especially not for a group of them. I just realized this while I was writing this review and referred back to the way they teased the second season in the first season’s finale. Anyways, again, it’s a tiny inconsistency that didn’t have any further repercussion on my experience of this show, and apart from this they really did an amazing job at clarifying and wrapping up things.

It’s time for the cast comments! I really loved seeing both the familiar faces from season one and the new faces from season two come together. Once again, I was really impressed by the overall acting performances, these actors have made me both laugh and cry out loud and I just want to make sure I credit as many of them as I can.

Can we just agree that Go Soo pulled off that long hair so well? I actually liked it more than his hair in season one, haha. I have to say Wook definitely grew on me in this season, compared to season one. I remember that I kept getting kind of annoyed in the beginning that he kept so much to himself, but he definitely opened up way more in this season and immediately consulted others when he found something out, so that was a huge improvement. I loved how natural he was with the kids, specifically Alice, and how well he ended up taking care of Bo Ra, even while knowing she wasn’t his real daughter. He actually became a dad, in one way or another, and it suited him.
This is still the only series I’ve seen of Go Soo so far, but I really hope I’ll get to see more of him. I’m glad I got introduced to him through this show!

I was more than happy to enjoy some more good guy action from Heo Joon Ho. I really hope I’ll get to see more performances of him where he isn’t a bad guy, because now that I’ve seen him as Pan Seok I don’t want to go back. 😭 I’m glad Pan Seok was able to get even more closure through discovering the village Hyun Ji stayed at, and that Industrial Complex 3 was basically like an intermediate station for him as well, despite the fact that he was still alive. I feel like he cried a LOT in this season, more than in season one, and his emotional portrayal hit me every single time. He is such a good actor, and I really can’t wait to see more dramas of him.

It was great to see Ahn So Hee back as Jong Ah again. I loved that everyone started calling her Jjonga, as kind of a fond nickname, haha. I really love that they brought her back as more than just a supporting character this time, and that her contribution to the cases just kept growing and growing. I would love to see her in a third season with the ability to see ghosts for herself, that would be such a boost for her. There’s just something about her energy and determination that is so fun to watch. Ahn So Hee really stepped up her game this season. According to MDL I have at least one more show with her in it on my list, so I’m already looking forward to seeing her again. I’m sad to say goodbye to Jong Ah (for now).

I loved seeing Ha Joon as a more cheerful Shin Joon Ho in this season. He did a really good job at turning a new leaf without losing any of the anger that still bubbled under the surface regarding what happened to Yeo Na. He actually became one of my favorite characters in this season, purely because of his new-found determination and alliance with Wook and Pan Seok. It was also great to see him be more expressive of his emotions and sentiments towards the cases he dealt with. It’s because I got to know him through the traumatic events of season one that I managed to feel so much more for his character, knowing what lay underneath. I was kind of hoping we’d get to see him visit his grandmother at some point, but I guess he really didn’t form any new ties with Choiseung Construction (which is probably for the better). It was nice to see him again, and I hope I’ll get to see him in more shows from here on out as well.

Moving on to the new cast additions, I was so excited that Lee Jung Eun was going to be in this season. She’s one of those ahjumma actresses that always manages to blow me away with her performance, no matter which show she appears in. I’ve seen her before in King of High School, Who Are You: School 2015, Oh My Ghostess, Let’s Fight Ghost, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Tomorrow With You, Fight For My Way, While You Were Sleeping, Wife I Know, The Light in Your Eyes, Our Blues, Yonder and the movie Parasite, and there’s still a whole bunch of her dramas on my list. Lee Jung Eun just has this undefinable balance between steadfast & tough and warm & motherly which was a perfect fit for Captain Kang. She’s able to express an incredible range of emotions with such natural ease that it always impresses me. I love all the layers that she managed to convey through her portrayal of Captain Kang, from the stern to the heartbroken parts. I really enjoyed her performance in this drama.

I was convinced that I knew Kim Dong Hwi from something because he looks so incredibly familiar, but it turns out I haven’t seen any dramas with him before. As a matter of fact, he’s only done five dramas so far, two of which are still in production. He has been appearing in movies since 2014, but his drama debut was in 2020, according to MDL. In any case, I really loved him as Oh Il Yong. The new sense of mystery that he brought with him immediately pulled me into the story, I loved his dynamic with Wook and how he gradually opened up more throughout the story. At the end of this season, he turned himself in after awaking from his coma and had his final conversation with Wook in jail. If there’s going to be a third season, I would really like to get a bit more backstory on him, as well as some explanation for how he was able to link minds with Wook while he was comatose. Could be that it was just the strength of his desperation to find a living person to help him, but since Wook also ended up dreaming about that merry-go-round I’m just curious to find out what that dream link is about. In any case, I thought Oh Il Yong was a really nice new character and I think Kim Dong Hwi did a really good job portraying him. He seems like a very natural actor and I hope he’ll get the chance to make more drama appearances soon.

I’ve seen Choi Myung Bin before in Tunnel, Chicago Typewriter, 100 Day Husband, Itaewon Class and Twenty-Five Twenty-One. I really liked her portrayal of Bo Ra. She exuded a very mature vibe from the start and her dynamic with both Wook and her mother was really sweet. I definitely didn’t expect Wook to be approached as a father figure, but I think the way they made him adapt to that was really natural, and I would actually love to see him spend more father-daughter time with Bo Ra. Choi Myung Bin was only fifteen years old when this show aired, which only makes me applaud her performance more. It just always impresses me when such young people are already able to convey such deep and heartfelt emotional performances. Can’t wait to see her in more things, which I will, according to MDL.

I honestly think my initial distrust for Mr. Jung came from the fact that I somehow associate Jung Eun Pyo with a scheming eunuch, lol. Not that I’ve actually seen him as a scheming eunuch before. 😂 My first memory of him was from The Moon That Embraces the Sun, where he did play a eunuch (a loyal one), but I guess through my history of historical dramas I’ve generally started associating eunuchs with being scheming. 😂 Other than that I’ve seen him in My Love From Another Star, God’s Gift: 14 Days, Fated to Love You, Kill Me, Heal Me and Café Minamdang. It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen him in a bigger role, so it was kind of a throwback seeing him in this series. I was positively surprised by his performance in this show, it was nice to see him again.

Apparently I had the exact same thing with Nam Hyun Woo as I did with Kim Dong Hwi: I was positive I recognized him from something, but according to MDL I haven’t seen him in anything before. Curious. Anyways, as I’ve already said in my review I really liked Sang Cheol, he was one of the side characters that actually grew on me and that I was sad to send off. I guess I just generally have a soft spot with tough-looking guys that are big softies on the inside, because as soon as Sang Cheol started opening up more I just melted. I loved the way he tried to comfort Ro Ha and how he cheered him on as he was reaching the finish line. His death was very tragic, just like the way he was found. Nam Hyun Woo did a really good job at portraying a character that may have experienced something miserable, but was in no way pitiable, even in death. We need more heroes without capes like Sang Cheol.

One actress that I did recognize correctly from something was Yoon Ji Won. I remember her being the copycat girl from Cheese in the Trap, who was quite a nasty piece of work. She also appeared in Fantastic, but I don’t remember many side characters from that. Luckily her portrayal of Hye Joo was much kinder. I keep repeating it, but I really wanted to get to know more about her. We didn’t even know how long she’d been at the village and how she met her end. If there’s going to be a third season (I know I keep saying it, but that’s just how much I want closure for everyone), I’d like to see the team investigate her disappearance and bring her to peace as well. I thought she was a nice new addition to the cast.

For some reason I keep mixing up Kim Tae Woo with Kim Tae Hoon, and not just because of their names. 😆 They just have the same vibe over them. In any case, I was really impressed by Kim Tae Woo’s performance as Noh Yoon Goo. I don’t think I’ve seen him in a villain role before. I’ve only seen him before in good guy roles like in God’s Gift: 14 Days, and I specifically remember how much I loved his character in Romance is a Bonus Book, which is still one of my highest-rated shows. Seeing him with his funky hairstyle, clothing and his flashy way of talking was definitely something to get used to. Noh Yoon Goo was definitely one of these villains that act all chummy and smiley before showing the monster within. It was actually chilling to see him flip a switch and just strangle that other prisoner in the bus like that without a moment’s hesitation. I guess it was all the more scary because he consistently kept his own hands clean so far, he was just flaunting about and dining at restaurants, and the finale actually revealed his criminal tendencies for the first time (apart from the flashbacks we’d seen of him from when he still worked for Lee Dong Min). Seeing Kim Tae Woo portray that kind of malice was actually very impressive, he pulled off a very intimidating villain. I always like to see actors in dramas that I haven’t seen in a while, and he was definitely one of them. Bravo!

Finally, I can’t end this cast comment section without a huge shoutout to the amazingly talented child actors that appeared in this show: little Kim Seo Heon, Lee Cheon Moo, Kim Ha Eon and Kim Tae Yeon. All of these kids were under ten years old when this show aired, and they all managed to break my heart into tiny little pieces with their heartfelt performances. Korea’s drama industry has a bright future with such talented little sweethearts. Seriously, despite being quite an emotional person I don’t usually cry that easily, but these children really managed to steal my heart. I hope they’re all growing up happy and healthy wherever they are, and that they will grow up to be as beautiful and mature as the characters they’ve portrayed in this show. 🙏🏻❤️

In conclusion, while I may be wrapping up this review as the final installment of this series since there hasn’t been any news about a possible continuation, I think we can all agree that the finale of season two HEAVILY suggested a third season. In fact, they left more things open than the first season did.
The first season ended purely with the suggestion that there was another village, and that that’s where Hyun Ji might have stayed at. This in itself could’ve just been an ending without further elaboration, apart from the confirmation that there were more ghost villages.
This season ended with the introduction of several new plotlines, and didn’t finish all of its existing ones. First of all, they didn’t end the season with locating every single villager’s body, as both Hye Joo and Alice remained together with Captain Kang. Apart from that, they also left us hanging with the promise of finding out why Captain Kang couldn’t leave the village even after she was found (just like Thomas). Noh Yoon Goo ends up escaping during his transport to jail and Wook still has to find out he’s the one who killed his mother. Then there’s the revelation that Jong Ah suddenly becomes able to see ghosts as well, and the introduction of at least two new villages. We never find out why Wook was able to dream about the room that Il Yong’s body was in through his eyes and why he started dreaming about that mysterious merry-go-round. And what about freaking Im Si Wan as a potential new village head welcoming us under said merry-go-round?
Concerning that last one, Im Si Wan’s cameo appearance might just be a tease, just like how Hotel Del Luna ended with the revelation of Lee Joong Gi as the new owner – it doesn’t necessarily indicate another season. After all, we already got enough confirmation that there are more ghost villages, through this season and Alice’s mother. Still, there’s a lot that they left us hanging on.
In my opinion, the story definitely asks for a more complete ending than this. I’ll actually be a bit mad if there really isn’t going to be a season three, because there’s no way they’re writing off Noh Yoon Goo’s escape as “oh well, sometimes people don’t get what they deserve”. I need more closure than that. There is still so much more to figure out about Noh Yoon Goo and how he ties in to everything, especially after the revelation that he’s not the real Goliath either. I am more than positive that the writers of this show are able to pull off a perfectly satisfying conclusion to this story. Let’s just keep it at that: I’ll be waiting.

I would definitely recommend this series. I think it’s important to note that, besides the chilling and heartbreaking aspects of the story, the heartwarming and touching elements are just as significant. Yes, the world is an awful place full of scumbags that feel entitled to take other people’s lives, I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But, as I mentioned before in my review of season one, it’s kind of comforting to imagine that those who met such a chilling end at least get to experience some final peace in a beautiful quiet village where everyone enjoys the small happinesses of eating a warm meal and spending time with loving, caring people. As much sadness the villages are filled with, they thrive on the temporary relief from the horrors of the outside world and create a comfortable intermediate station before the afterlife. It’s just as important to keep our eyes open to the cruelties of the world we live in as it is to acknowledge the warmth and beauty that we can find in it. I think this series mirrored this contrast very aptly by juxtaposing the awful body finds to the way the ghosts disappeared from the village. A tragic discovery versus a heartwarming depiction of closure. The beginning of a painful road of mourning versus a long-awaited chance to move on. I’ll leave it at that.

It’s never happened before that I got to watch two double-season shows in a row. I’m happy to watch whatever I can, of course, but as much as I love writing reviews, it takes a lot of time and energy to finish them, especially if the story is stretched out over multiple lengthy seasons. I know I have a couple more multi-season dramas on my list, but for now I hope my app picks out a good old single-seasoner next, lol.

Until then! Bye-bee! x

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.

Missing: The Other Side (S1)
(미씽: 그들이 있었다 / Missing: Geudeuli Itseodda / Missing: They Were There)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

‘Ello ‘ello! Welcome to a new review. Seriously, after finishing my monster review of the two seasons of Yumi’s Cells I was not prepared to immediately get another double-season show thrown at me, lol. As you can see, for this series I’ve decided to cut the review in two, so one for each season. This is because, from what I’ve read, the two seasons for this show aren’t one continuous story – they have their own plot and cast of characters. Also, looking at my work and holiday schedule for this month, it was easier for me to split the review into two separate ones. It’s probably also more easily accessible like that. Now, without further ado, let’s dive into this hidden gem of a show. When this title popped up on my Spin the Wheel app, I felt like it hadn’t actually been that long since I put it on my list. I feel like I only watched the trailer quite recently and thought it looked good. Surprisingly, I also didn’t know the majority of the actors, and it really grabbed me from the start. I’m excited to share my views on this, so let’s go.

Missing: The Other Side (S1) is an OCN K-Drama with twelve episodes of about one hour and ten minutes each. I watched it on my new go-to website KissKH.
The story begins with the introduction of several characters, starting with Kim Wook (played by Go Soo). Wook is a conman with seemingly little empathic tendencies. He and his small team, consisting of Lee Jong Ah (played by Ahn So Hee) and Kim Nam Gook (Moon Yoo Kang), solve their own little cases, Café Minamdang-style. Apart from this business where they hack and scam bad guys, Jong Ah is a proper company employee and Nam Gook runs his own pawn shop, so everyone has a cover. It’s revealed early on that Wook and Nam Gook know each other from the orphanage they grew up at together, and it’s later shown that they met Jong Ah as adults, when they helped her from getting conned. The three of them are very tight.
Next, we meet Shin Joon Ho (played by Ha Joon), a police officer in the Violent Crimes unit. Since he mainly deals with wrapping up cases such as aggravated robberies and burglaries, he never really gets too involved with the victims’ stories and is initially portrayed as quite stoic and cold-hearted. We learn that he is getting married soon, but it seems that he’s been fighting with his fiancée a lot and she stopped picking up his calls, which only contributes to his irritable behavior.
We are also introduced to Detective Baek Il Doo (played by Ji Dae Han) from the Missing Persons unit as he keeps bumping heads with Joon Ho. Since his team deals with ongoing cases that involve a lot of emotional implications for both the victims and their loved ones, Detective Baek is baffled by Joon Ho’s lack of emotional empathy towards his cases.
And then there is Jang Pan Seok (played by Heo Joon Ho), an initially quite mysterious middle-aged man who lives by himself in a rural area called Duon-ri. From the flashes we get before we are properly introduced to him, he also seems to be looking for bodies, although it isn’t immediately clear why.

Things get set in motion when Wook one day witnesses a young woman getting kidnapped, and ends up getting chased by the abductors himself. While outrunning them, he falls from a steep cliff and ends up near Duon-ri. Pan Seok finds him and brings him to his house to take care of him.
It doesn’t take long for Wook to discover a strange village near Pan Seok’s house, where a whole lot of people, including children, seem to live happily away from the city. After being initially greeted by the enigmatic café owner Thomas (played by Song Geon Hee) and getting suspicious looks from the “village mom” Kim Hyun Mi (played by Kang Mal Geum), he comes across a crying little boy called Seo Ha Neul (Jang Seon Wool, bless him). Wook’s confusion grows when he realizes he recognizes this kid from a missing poster.
It takes a while for Wook to come to terms with what’s happening, but it turns out that Duon Village – which only he and Pan Seok are able to see – houses the spirits of the dead. Specifically, people whose bodies haven’t been found yet. Pan Seok has been around Duon Village for ten years already, trying to locate the spirits’ bodies and passing anonymous evidence to the police to help them get found. While initially stubborn and unruly, Wook ends up helping him. As they gather more information from the spirits themselves to aid in their respective investigations, the two men start acting as mediums between Duon Village and the real world, passing on information from one side to the other in order to locate the spirits’ bodies and allow them to pass on.
Joon Ho starts getting involved with the Missing Persons cases as well when his own fiancée, Choi Yeo Na (played by Seo Eun Soo) turns out to be missing. Wook is put in a tight spot when he realizes that Yeo Na is the woman he witnessed getting kidnapped, and she also arrived in Duon Village as a spirit.
While dealing with all these heartbreaking cases, Wook and Pan Seok come to terms with their own family losses as well: Wook’s mother who disappeared when he was seven, and Pan Seok’s young daughter who went missing fifteen years earlier.

The way the story was built up kind of reminded me of He is Psychometric, because it starts with one incident but then throughout the story you find out it goes way back and there’s a lot more behind it than you initially expected. I personally loved the way they gradually gave away more and more information. Even when I predicted things correctly earlier on, I still liked the way they eventually revealed it through subtle hints and transitions. Admittedly, there were a few things that felt a tiny bit anticlimactic, but all in all this show had me sitting with my mouth open A LOT, lol. There was just something about the writing that worked really well and made everything fall into place in a very satisfying way.

I’d like to give a concise summary of all the storylines that play out throughout the series, because a lot happens and a lot of cases are intricately connected to each other.
It all basically comes down to two separate serial killers, Kang Myung Jin (played by Kim Sang Bo) and Lee Dong Min (played by Lee Yoon Jae). These two guys are responsible for the disappearance of several residents of Duon Village and other victims that are revealed throughout the story, such as Pan Seok’s daughter Hyun Ji (Lee Hyo Bi).
Kang Myung Jin is arrested by Detective Baek’s team fairly early on, after he is linked to the case of Kim Mi Ok, one of the spirits in the village. After Pan Seok managed to locate her body, he left a clue leading to Kang Myung Jin for the police to find, causing him to get arrested quite quickly. However, there’s something about this killer that makes Detective Baek feel like this isn’t the only crime he’s committed. I also felt like there was more to this guy, because they kept bringing him back into focus with the humming and stuff. Detective Baek is determined to get Kang Myung Jin prosecuted for everything he’s done, not just the murder of Kim Mi Ok. Ultimately, it is revealed that Kang Myung Jin has been murdering women for a very long time ever since he was a student, and unfortunately Hyun Ji was one of his victims as well.
While Detective Baek is mainly on the case of Kang Myung Jin and helping Pan Seok in whatever way possible to find a lead on his missing daughter, Joon Ho’s search for Yeo Na ultimately leads him to Lee Dong Min, a director at a construction company called Choiseung. He, along with two other directors, is entitled to part of the shares Chairwoman Han Yeo Hee (played by Jung Yeong Sook) has signed away in her will. However, his entitlement falls through when the Chairwoman suddenly finds out that her daughter Soo Yeon, who passed away 27 years earlier, gave birth to a child before she died. If there truly is a grandchild, then that child surely must become her new heir (this gave me Birth of a Beauty vibes).
Being responsible for killing the Chairwoman’s daughter in the first place – and two spirits in Duon Village who posed a risk to this coming out – Lee Dong Min goes so far as to track down every single survivor of the orphanage fire he orchestrated back in the day, including Nam Gook and Yeo Na, just in order to make sure that they are not related to the Chairwoman and won’t pose any threat to his claim to the company shares.
Honestly, this bothered me so much. The fact that he didn’t just take their DNA to check if they were the grandchild but actually killed them first and THEN compared their DNA only proved that he was a serial killer. It was so senseless. In the end he “justified” this by saying that they were “leading lives they weren’t entitled to, anyway” because they were orphans. That made me so mad. The whole stigma on orphans that seeped through this story was aggravating, to say the least.
Throughout the investigations of these killers, mostly led by Joon Ho’s search for Yeo Na and Pan Seok’s ongoing search for his daughter, we find out who all the villagers are and what happened to them, even the ones that aren’t connected to these cases. In-between the two major storylines, Pan Seok and Wook keep passing on new leads to the police that help them locate new bodies that will allow more spirits to pass on.

I just want to go over some of the main characters in a bit more detail and discuss some dynamics that I really liked before moving on to other comments regarding the series as a whole and aspects of the story that touched me in particular.
Let’s start with Kim Wook. Honestly, as much character growth as he got in the end, I thought he was a very whimsical protagonist. After his mother disappeared when he was seven, he grew up in an orphanage and learned to fend for himself, which ended up turning him into quite a selfish person. Apart from his friends whom he grew up with, he doesn’t have anyone to rely on, which makes his life very easy but also quite lonely. He simply chooses not to stop and think about it, but we later find out that he’s actually been dealing with a lot of grief and resentment regarding his mother’s disappearance. So much so, in fact, that it’s part of the reason why he’s able to see the village.
As I mentioned before, the people closest to Wook are his friends Jong Ah and Nam Gook. Jong Ah is a young woman with amazing hacking skills who even seemed to have a little crush on Wook. From the way she called him “oppa” to how her face lit up when he complimented her or told her she’d been of help to him, I think it wasn’t too much of a stretch. There wasn’t any romantic build-up or anything between them, though, so she ultimately felt more like an affectionate younger sister.
Nam Gook was another story. He was like a brother to Wook. They grew up in the same orphanage after Wook was abandoned by his mother and Nam Gook’s previous orphanage burned down in a fire. I really wished Nam Gook could’ve gotten a bit more screentime before he was taken away so tragically, but they did establish his character just enough to make his death shocking. When it happened, I was actually in denial about the fact they really just killed him off like that so soon. I thought the whole team would be in on all the action until the end.
After seeing Wook tear up when dealing with Ha Neul’s case in the first three episodes, his reaction to Nam Gook’s death was absolutely GUTTING. That’s the first time we actually see him completely break down, and this becomes the trigger for him to chase down the killer and cooporate with Joon Ho in locating Yeo Na, who was presumably done in by the same culprit.
On the other hand, from here on out I couldn’t help but get a little frustrated by Wook’s tendency to keep all the information he’d acquired to himself.
For one, if he’d told Joon Ho beforehand that he’d witnessed Yeo Na get kidnapped and that he placed a tracker on the abductors’ car because he already feared they might go after Nam Gook, they would’ve been able to proceed with the investigation much faster and maybe even prevented Nam Gook’s death. Of course, for plot purposes, they couldn’t let everything get solved within a couple of episodes, but it bugged me that I didn’t understand why Wook didn’t come out with the fact that he’d been tracking the suspects until AFTER Nam Gook died. It literally went like: “oh btw, I placed a tracker on their car” “wait, what?! are you kidding me?! pass me that info, now!” Like, even Joon Ho set his pride aside at some point to BEG him for his help since he acknowledged Wook’s contribution to certain cases. It really reminded of Café Minamdang, where two teams basically tried to solve the same case individually while they could’ve just worked together from the start. Of course, he went through a very confusing and surreal ordeal with the discovery of a spirit village only he and one other living person could see, and he also later admits that he was still way too confused to process everything properly. Still, I think he could’ve dealt with certain things way better. Even if he wasn’t able to share the testimonies of the spirits, there were enough things that he could’ve shared that would’ve sped up the investigations.
To give an example, I honestly felt like he could’ve done a much better job at easing Joon Ho into accepting that Yeo Na was dead. I get that he couldn’t exactly tell him that she was a ghost and he could talk to her, and that it would be hard to inform Joon Ho of her death after seeing him so convinced that she was still alive. But I still feel like it would’ve been better if he’d prepared the both of them for the truth a little sooner. It was heartbreaking enough to know that they wouldn’t be able to reunite and we had to wait for Joon Ho to finally figure this out about by himself.
The way Wook eventually ended up telling him the first time was the WORST. It was exactly what I dreaded would happen, that he wouldn’t find the right timing (if there was one) and end up blurting it out in order to get him to focus on saving someone else, someone who was still alive. That actually hurt, man. And then, when Joon Ho came to ask him afterwards what he’d meant by saying Yeo Na was dead, why didn’t he just tell him what he told Pan Seok, that his abductor had said he’d sent Wook after Yeo Na and then ordered his men to throw him into the sea? That was something he picked up in realtime, not in the village, and it was a direct link to what they’d done to Yeo Na. Honestly, that was probably the worst timing to suddenly bring up he’d met Yeo Na’s ghost, as it understandably aggravated Joon Ho even more. Why create more tension when he could’ve just shared some solid facts that he acquired directly from the culprits and that would’ve actually helped them speed up the search?
Honestly, it was pretty frustrating to see Wook constantly withhold evidence and information from Joon Ho about what really happened to Yeo Na. This got additionally messy when Yeo Na herself sent a scammer to Joon Ho in order to lead him back to the village where she was, because she also didn’t immediately accept the fact that she was dead. She and Wook went right past each other in their attempts to guide Joon Ho to where they needed him to be, which was pretty chaotic.
Besides this, I also didn’t really get why Wook didn’t tell Pan Seok and Thomas about the fact that Yeo Na was Joon Ho’s fiancée from the start. What use was it to keep that to himself? I kept thinking that, the more people knew about everything that was going on and how everything was connected the better, and the more they could find out together. As a viewer, it was quite annoying to see the main lead hold onto all that information without sharing it with the people that would’ve benefitted from it the most. Although again, I get that they had to fill twelve episodes and couldn’t just solve everything in one go, I wish there had been a better explanation for Wook to be so secretive about everything he found out.

Also, when that killer Woo Il Seok ended up in the village and started assaulting the spirits, why did Wook let him off the first time? Why did he let him roam free to keep attacking people? It’s not like he was going to lay low after Wook warned him ONCE. I guess he just wanted him to get lost until they found a way to make him disappear from the village? Still, surely it would’ve been better to look for his body in the outside world after making sure he was locked up so he couldn’t attack anyone else in the village?
By the way, I found it lowkey funny that they actually went to look for Woo Il Seok’s body to get him to disappear from the village. For most spirits it was a really special and emotional moment to be found, and they would be waved off by the rest, all: “Go safely, we’ll miss you”. But then for Woo Il Seok they were like, “let’s get this guy out of here asap cause he’s annoying”, lol.

One of the major developments in Wook’s character occurs when he finds out that Hyun Mi, the beforementioned “village mom” who was continuously suspicious of him, is actually his mother. She used to work as a housekeeper for Chairwoman Han’s daughter at the time, and she was murdered by Lee Dong Min because he thought she’d witnessed him murdering Soo Yeon, not realizing it was actually little Wook who’d seen him. Wook finds out about this when he realizes Hyun Mi is holding on to the same pendant his mother used to have, with a picture of him as a kid inside.
To be completely honest, I totally expected him to confront her with it as soon as she grabbed the pendant back from him. I would’ve probably immediately blurted something out along the lines of: “Why do you have my mom’s pendant?”. But even after figuring out she was his mom, he kept quiet about it, out of some sort of consideration. In hindsight, I feel like this silence may have been caused by the fact that he had to come to terms with the fact that the resentment he’d felt towards his mom all this time was misplaced. He’d always thought she’d abandoned him, but it turns out she was murdered and didn’t have a choice in leaving him behind. They hit a really delicate chord with that, creating all these additional feelings of regret and guilt people developed regarding the deaths of their loved ones.
I have to say I actually thought it was very realistic that, after they found out about it, Wook and Hyun Mi initially remained a little awkward around each other. It would’ve been very typical if it had been an instant emotional reunion, and so I thought it was very well-considered that they wouldn’t immediately jump into each other’s arms. Despite being reunited, the fact that Wook hadn’t seen her since he was seven hadn’t changed, so it wasn’t odd that he felt estranged from her. Hyun Mi also kept a respectable distance until he opened up to her, which was probably the best way for things to go. This made it even more touching when they did eventually give each other that long overdue hug.

All in all, I think I can redeem Wook’s actions through the fact that he grew up alone, without anyone to rely on, and even became a conman. It was in his nature to keep things to himself and not be an open book to everyone else. As a viewer, he may have been a slightly frustrating protagonist at times, but I do appreciate that they kept him true to his character. Also, as I said before, his character development was really satisfying. Although I admit I never completely warmed up to him because of how he kept his guard up until the end, I did come to feel for him, especially seeing how he responded to the cases that involved kids. The way he teared up during Ha Neul’s goodbye and when Pan Seok found out what had happened to Hyun Ji actually hit hard.

Speaking of Pan Seok, my heart actually broke for this man. He is initially depicted as quite hard to gauge – he seemed very stoic and intimidating, but on the other hand he had really silly and sensitive moments as well. The first thing I came to like about him was how he only lost his chill in reaction to super minor insults, like when Wook commented on his dog or called him “tacky”. Then he suddenly went all grim in the face and went: “wHaT dId YoU sAy”, haha, that actually cracked me up.
Other than that, it immediately becomes clear that he’s a very trusted and loved person in the village. It’s later revealed that, in the ten years after he lost his daughter and wife, he spent all that time around the village to help everyone out as much as possible, both with their new stay and by trying to find their bodies for them. He’d treated the entire village as his family, even after losing his own, and it kills me to think he might’ve also stuck around in the hope that Hyun Ji might one day come to the village. Everyone knew about his search for his daughter and wished so hard for him to find her. Even though they couldn’t physically do anything to help him, they kept thinking of ways to show their support and gratitude to him through meaningful gestures, such as feeding him a grand meal.
Honestly, I just loved how there were so many people that wanted to help Pan Seok find his daughter, from Detective Baek to the guy from the theme park she disappeared from. This man told Pan Seok he’d keep putting up the missing posters until the day he retired. It just showed so well what a kind person Pan Seok was and how much sympathy he evoked in the people around him. He was just a concerned father, determined to go through the very end to find his daughter, all the while making sure he never caused anyone any unnecessary trouble. His reaction to the new posters Jong Ah designed for him was so touching. She even made banners to hang up around the theme park. Pan Seok remained so genuinely humble and grateful for even the slightest bit of help, it really warmed my heart.

On the other hand, his desperation for help also caused Pan Seok to be quite gullible whenever someone shot him a hint about Hyun Ji’s whereabouts, which unfortunately led him to get scammed a couple of times.
I’d just like to use this opportunity to say that people who take advantage of families that are looking for their missing relatives and actually try to make money from their grief and loss are the absolute worst scum of the earth. That shit isn’t just mean, it’s inhumane. Not only are they interfering with an ongoing investigation, they are actually disregarding a human life that may have been found earlier if it weren’t for their selfish and needless interference. It’s despicable.
Pan Seok had been looking for his seven-year old daughter for an entire decade. He and his wife took her to a theme park on her birthday, he took her eyes off her for one second to buy her ice cream, and then she was gone forever. When they couldn’t find her, his wife unalived herself. Pan Seok was a desperate, grieving husband and father who NEVER stopped looking for his little girl, and even kept promising his wife that he’d bring her home one day.
It should be a crime in itself to take advantage of someone like that. Pan Seok was naive, and he admitted himself that it had happened before and that he got irrational when it came to Hyun Ji. He was just that desperate to get his hands on any kind of lead, and I can’t blame him for that.
Whenever I hear stories of people pulling things like this – because yes, they’re out there, I’ve even heard of people prank-calling the victim’s parents pretending to be their child – I get so freaking angry. You were born with a beating heart, so at least try to be a human being.
The only good thing about this part was that Jong Ah was able to track down the sucker who pulled this trick on Pan Seok and force him to return the money.

Speaking of Jong Ah, she might’ve been one of my favorite supporting characters. She was so smart and spunky at the same time. I was actually scared something might happen to her, but luckily Wook managed to locate her super fast after she got kidnapped that one time. I love how she just sank her teeth into Wook’s business and helped him so well in tracking down all the people he asked her to look up. She was such a great contribution to the cast of characters, honestly.
I loved that she basically figured out by herself that the “clients” Wook and Pan Seok kept asking her to look into were all missing people, and how she immediately believed the story about the spirit village. It was so refreshing to have such an uncomplicated, open-minded character like her. Honestly, I wanted to high-five her when she said that she was convinced that another version of her existed somewhere in an alternate universe, lol.
I really loved her dynamic with Pan Seok, in particular. I admit I actually theorized she might turn out to be Hyun Ji at first. The bond between them was built up with such a natural father-daughter dynamic, her always helping him out and him always treating her to food when she came by. Of course she couldn’t be Hyun Ji, because she ended up looking into her disappearance as well, and it would’ve been a bit of a cheesy plot twist now that I think about it, but that’s just how much I loved them as a team.

I also really liked the dynamic between Wook and Pan Seok. They started out as such an odd pair, almost like a reckless nephew and a concerned uncle, and I wouldn’t even say that they became “friends” as much as that they became true partners in crime. They just became a team that relied on each other and helped each other out without getting too emotional, and I really liked that. They even got to rely on each other when they both became unable to see the village anymore at the end, and even without access they still kept looking for all the remaining spirits’ bodies.
I don’t know why, but it actually made me emotional when Wook and Pan Seok both lost their spirit vision as soon as Hyun Ji and Hyun Mi were found. That just proved that their ties to these missing people, and the grudges they held onto regarding their disappearances were linked to their ability to see the spirits. That was an unexpectedly touching twist, and I like that it kind of “explained” why they were able to see what others couldn’t. I guess the fact that Joon Ho couldn’t see Yeo Na was because he didn’t share a similarly long grief or resentment towards her disappearance? Maybe things would’ve been different if she’d gone missing years before and he’d been looking for her for longer? Guess we’ll never know.

To talk a bit more about Joon Ho, I also really liked his character development. Besides the fact that he came full circle in the end, I also really liked the budding bromance between him and Wook. It’s not even that they really became friends throughout the story, but they definitely starting warming up to and relying on each other. I loved how, when Jong Ah was kidnapped, Joon Ho still ended up coming there despite being initially ticked off by Wook’s sudden declaration that Yeo Na was dead, and how he immediately tracked down Wook when he went to the Chairwoman’s villa. The image of him dropkicking Lee Dong Min in the head made my day, that was awesome.
What got me the most was how losing Yeo Na actually changed Joon Ho and allowed him to become much more expressive in his emotions. It’s actually so sad to realize that the only scenes they had together were flashbacks and situations where he couldn’t see her. The first time he mentions Yeo Na, he’s annoyed because she isn’t answering his calls. The fact that they parted on bad terms because of a stupid fight and never got to tell each other they didn’t mean it made it all the more painful. In his flashbacks with Yeo Na, Joon Ho seemed like a completely different person with how affectionate and dedicated he was to her. We only get to know him as stoic police officer Shin Joon Ho, so it gave his character a very reassuring layer seeing him care for his fiancée so much. He honestly showed more warmth towards Yeo Na than towards his mom, which tells you just how much he adored his bride-to-be. The flashback scene of how he proposed to her, with a quote that she loved so much, was really sweet.
Joon Ho was raised by Jo Myeong Soon (played by Kim Jung Eun), the former director of the orphanage that Lee Dong Min ended up burning down, Pureun Hessal (Blue Sunshine). She never approved of Yeo Na as his wife, and was actually quite mean to her – as I mentioned before the stigma on orphans ran through this story very strongly. In hindsight, her behavior towards Yeo Na was actually really misplaced for another reason, which made it all the more wry.
The first time I started suspecting that Joon Ho might actually be Chairwoman Han’s lost grandchild was when she was talking about her daughter and it just cut to a shot of Joon Ho walking down the hall on his way to speak with her. There was a period of time where I thought it might be either him or Wook, since they both had a link to “sunshine”: Joon Ho’s mother ran an orphanage with the word “hessal” in the name (which is what Soo Yeon called her unborn baby in her diary), and Wook was always going around telling people his mom named him so he would “brighten the world”. I thought maybe Wook had been secretly Soo Yeon’s real child and Hyun Mi just adopted him to shield him, but when it turned out that he really was the housekeeper’s child, my bets were on Joon Ho. Like I said before, even when I guessed things correctly before they were revealed to be true, I still really liked the way they revealed this. I loved how they subtly hinted at the necklace Joon Ho gave Yeo Na during their proposal, how they made Lee Dong Min squint at it a couple of times before actually revealing the connection through the Chairwoman, who recognized it as Soo Yeon’s necklace. That was really clever.

What was also clever was that the writers were very aware of all the implications of their plot twists. Instead of just revealing that Joon Ho was the long lost heir to Choiseung Construction and reuniting him with his grandmother, they actually made him realize that this meant Yeo Na got killed while he had been the actual target, causing him to crumble down with guilt even more. It happened on several occasions that the killers gaslighted people by saying: “they got killed because of you”, and at this point I really didn’t want things to get even more painful than they already were, but on the other hand it was a very realistic depiction of how everything wasn’t just “alright” in the aftermath. I’m glad Joon Ho pulled himself together after this, but it was really painful to see him and his adoptive mother cry out their regrets and feelings of guilt to one another.

Moving on to Yeo Na, I really liked her. I loved how she didn’t just wallow in self-pity after finally accepting she couldn’t go back to Joon Ho, but that she still kept thinking of ways to see him. It was cool to see how resourceful she was, for example in trying to create a smoke screen and letting up those lanterns in the hope someone would find her. I’m glad at least she and Joon Ho scolded Wook for not telling them earlier that he’d known about their relationship and kept the fact he’d been communicating with both of them this entire time. Still, she didn’t hold a grudge for long. It was nice to at least get a glimpse of how she and Joon Ho had been as a lovey-dovey couple before things went south. It was really sad to realize that she, and all those other spirits, had died for such senseless reasons – no reasons at all, if you ask me – and how they just needed to sit and wait around until they were found.
I’m not going to lie, when Thomas built her that chair to wait by the spirit portal and encouraged her to find a way out, I actually believed she would try to sneak out when a new person arrived or something. Of course this wasn’t going to work since her body was in a suitcase on the bottom of the ocean, but I still think the way they retained that sense of hope throughout the story was really touching.

I’d like to go over some supporting characters in a bit more detail now, starting with the villagers.
First of all, we need to talk about Thomas. Before we hear who Thomas really is in the final episode, he is possibly the most mysterious person in Duon Village, and the only one who’s claimed to have already been there for a hundred years. He built a café around the spirit portal, so that when people first came in, they would have to go past him and he could immediately put them at ease.
I love how they kind of played with Thomas’ credibility, like how they made you debate whether or not he really was a good person by revealing he’d actually been locking up alive people in an abandoned building in the village. I’m really glad he turned out to be a proper bean. When they finally found his body at the end and he smiled back like that, I actually found myself smiling back. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him, always looking on as everyone eventually got found, without a single hope that he himself would be located after such a long time. In the final episode, he tells Wook that his real name is Cha Gwon Mook, and that he’d been an independence fighter at the time that Korea was still one country. The fact that he was actually revealed to be a hero that fought for the country’s independence, and that he never so much as bragged about that said so much about him. He was literally the guy that everyone came to in need of help, he was always building stuff for people and just making sure everyone was at peace. When it was revealed that he had been locking up bad people that had come to the village, he literally went: “You’ve all been through so much bad stuff while you were alive. I just wanted to make sure that this place would be your safe haven”. He was the best. I really liked the way they built up his character and made the viewer wonder about his intentions before inevitably falling in love with him.

I’ve already mentioned Hyun Mi in terms of that she was Wook’s mother, but she wasn’t exactly alone in Duon Village. After she came to the village 27 years earlier, she met Detective Park Young Ho (Lee Joo Won), who’d been murdered around the same time, and they actually fell in love in the afterlife. By the time Wook discovers the village, these two have become the main couple that shelter all the children that end up there. It’s so sad to realize that Hyun Mi was so protective of the village children because she hadn’t been able to stay with her own child while she was alive.
As it turns out, she and Detective Park (who actually used to be Detective Baek’s senior) were both murdered by Lee Dong Min to cover up his murder of Soo Yeon – Hyun Mi was her housekeeper and Detective Park was in charge of her case, as he suspected she didn’t die because of an accident. Their bodies were buried together underneath a building. It was kind of bittersweet that they ended up there together and fell in love in the afterlife.
While they took care of several children, the two that were always with them were Beom Soo (Ahn Dong Yeob) and Joon Soo (Go Dong Ha). Beom Soo was a young man with a developmental disability, which meant he had the mind of a much younger kid. He is the first spirit that Wook meets in Duon Village. It’s ultimately revealed that his body was hidden after his killer hit him in a hit-and-run incident.
We never find out exactly what happened to little Joon Soo, but it is suggested that he was attacked by “a scary man” as he got particularly triggered when unfamiliar men approached him. Wook eventually managed to win his trust, after which he became a much more lively and affectionate kid.
One more resident that is introduced is a young woman named Jang Mi (played by Lee Joo Myung) who was killed by her abusive boyfriend. She’s also one of the cases that gets solved about halfway through the series, and she had a really touching goodbye, dissolving after she’d brought the other villages roses (jangmi) to remember her by.

I have one more thing to talk about with regards to Duon Village: Pan Seok’s puppies. Seriously, I got teary-eyed whenever these fluffy balls of joy came on. It broke my heart to find out that they could still see their mom even though she was dead. 😭 I don’t remember their names, but they were so freaking adorable and I couldn’t help but squeal whenever they appeared on screen.

The final character I want to mention is Mr. Wang Myung Chul (played by Kim Nak Gyeon). I haven’t mentioned him yet, but he was the gang leader that executed all of the kidnappings and murders for Lee Dong Min. I don’t even know if he was aware of the bigger picture – he did seem a bit flustered when he was questioned by the police, almost as if he didn’t actually know everything – but he was a pretty good villain character. The fact that Lee Dong Min never did anything himself but just paid other people to do his dirty work for him was very typical, and Mr. Wang also didn’t seem to have any hesitations on whether or not to get involved. He ended up getting killed while in prison, from food poisoning by the looks of it, but they never really showed how that happened exactly. I think it’s safe to say that he was silenced before he might actually give away too much about the client he worked for. That was kind of a shame, because I was curious to find out how much Mr. Wang knew. Anyways, I thought he was quite an interesting character.

Now that I’ve completed my character analysis, I’d like to move on to some comments regarding the series as a whole and parts that particularly spoke to me or touched me.
All in all, I would say that I thought this series was just the right combination of thrilling and heartful. It kept me on the edge of my seat in anxiety and excitement, and it simultaneously kept me emotionally engaged and teary-eyed throughout.
The specific concept of focussing on victims whose bodies were never found intrigued me. As it happens, earlier this year I translated a novel about deceased people that got the chance to return to their loved ones’ side as an object, so I’d been involved with a story that dealt with death from the side of the deceased before. I guess that might have been part of the reason why this particular perspective spoke to me so much. It was such an original and interesting spin on regular detective stories, and I though they executed the interplay between the two sides very well.
In relation to this, I also think the title of the series is very fitting, as it literally tackles missing persons cases “from the other side”, the side of the victims. It might be a strangely soothing thought that victims who are still waiting to be found at least get to experience a peaceful stay at an intermediate station like Duon Village before they pass on. The writers did an excellent job at portraying such raw emotions and heartbreaking cases while retaining an indefinable sense of hope, love and acceptance. The way they wrapped up the first season was so wholesome, and I also loved how they subtly hinted to the existence of other villages and consequently a second season: in the final episode, Thomas talks about how his freedom fighter friends might have ended up in a different village than him, and the series ends with a couple of children skipping off into a different portal after identifying Pan Seok as Hyun Ji’s father, suggesting that Hyun Ji had also been at a different village during the time she’d been missing.
There were so many ugly truths and wry and senseless situations, from how Joon Ho and Yeo Na got separated to the fact that Hyun Ji had actually been buried so close to Duon Village all this time. But apart from all these unfair and painful side, there was also so much beauty and hope in it. I can’t express enough how well-balanced and well-written it was, also in how they kept explaining things and tying up loose ends in terms of the plot. They really thought of most things, which contributed greatly to the consistency and solidity of the story. I had a really good time watching it.
One more thing that I wish to applaud is that this show had the best cliffhangers. I can’t get over the way they suddenly brought in Joon Ho as a contender for being Chairwoman Han’s grandson through the mention of “hessal” from Soo Yeon’s diary, or how they revealed that Kang Myung Jin was responsible for Hyun Ji’s disappearance by overlapping the song Pan Seok used to sing to her with the tune Kang Myung Jin had been humming the entire time. I said it before, I already had the feeling that something else was up with this killer since they kept bringing him back into focus, but it was still such a good and unexpected twist.

I would like to highlight a couple of scenes that particularly shook me and/or made me cry, in chronological order.
First of all, the way Seo Ha Neul disappeared while running towards his mom, who couldn’t see him. As I said before, the fact that they started off the series by depicting a child murder was absolutely heartbreaking. The fact that his stepfather killed him for accidentally damaging his limited Gundam figure while playing with it and hid him in a freaking water tank on the roof of some building, not to mention the fact that he actually went back to the body just to get the figure parts out of his backpack because he could sell those. These depictions might have been fictional, but knowing that these things actually happen in real life as well made it incredibly painful to watch. It was heartbreaking seeing little Ha Neul go all: “Mommy! 😃😃” and run towards her while she couldn’t even see him.
Then there were Yeo Na’s attempts to let people in the outside world know where she was before she could accept that she was really dead. The way her glowing lanterns just dissolved at the edge of the barrier, and how Joon Ho couldn’t see or hear her yell at him from the hot air balloon was really sad.
The flashback of how Hyun Ji went missing was actually haunting. The fact that it was her birthday and Pan Seok literally took his eyes off her for ONE SECOND to buy her some ice cream. You could just see the guilt settle in Pan Seok at that very moment, and it made it even more devastating to know that he would soon also lose his wife and keep on searching for his little girl for fifteen more years to come.
Hyun Mi’s emotional reactions to first finding out Wook was her son (specifically the fact that she thought his presence in Duon Village meant that he was dead as well) and the way she thanked the heavens when she found out he was actually still alive.
When Joon Ho finally allowed himself to break down completely about Yeo Na in the art gallery where he proposed to her and when the notification of their wedding day popped up while he was in the middle of an interrogation. More than that, the ENTIRE scene of Joon Ho and Yeo Na sitting side by side at the edge of Duon Village on their wedding day, both bawling their eyes out while Joon Ho still couldn’t see her.
The moment Pan Seok found out what happened to Hyun Ji when Detective Baek showed him the picture of her hairband which they’d found amongst Kang Myung Jin’s “victim trophies”.
These were just a couple of instances were I actually got goosebumps by the actors’ portrayals of their characters’ emotions. I was so impressed by how genuine and raw these emotions were expressed, each and every one of these depictions hit me straight in the heart.

As I mentioned before, there were a few minor anticlimactic aspects to the show, and although they didn’t impact my general impression of the series too much, I’d still like to share them.
I have to say that I was actually a bit underwhelmed by how quickly Lee Dong Min gave himself away as the killer. We’d already seen that he was Soo Yeon’s murderer from Wook’s memory (the glasses gave him away), but given the way the series had been dealing with plot twists and cliffhangers so far, I was actually prepared for another surprise with regards to this. We didn’t actually see him kill Soo Yeon firsthand, we only saw him stand over her body, so it might’ve still turned out differently. But when Wook confronted him, he immediately went shifty-eyed and “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, which kind of made me go like: “oh, okay, so he just admitted it.” Fair enough, there were only two more episodes to go and they had to start wrapping things up, but it was still a bit anticlimactic to me how he immediately folded during his very first sit-down with Wook.
Secondly, I HATED that Kang Myung Jin unalived himself. There was still so much to uncover about his character and I hate that he got to take the easy way out like that. Pan Seok didn’t even get to find out about the fact that he’d been the bunny mascot at the theme park! I kind of wanted to know more about Kang Myung Jin’s psyche after he responded so peculiarly to the fact that he didn’t get to keep all his victims’ trophies. Ever since Crash Course in Romance, I’ve been very sensitive to killers “getting away with their actions” by unaliving themselves to escape the punishment they deserve, so the fact that they pulled this with Kang Myung Jin of all people was really dissatisfying. It definitely felt like an easy fix to wrap up things quickly in the final episode. In the end, no justice is served for either Kang Myung Jin or Lee Dong Min’s victims, and the only “peace” is found in the fact that Wook and Pan Seok manage to locate all the Duon Village residents’ bodies. Which is wholesome in its own way, but it still bugs me that they kind of rushed the ending to Hyun Ji’s case like that.

Finally, it’s time for the cast comments! As I mentioned before, this was a rare occasion where I didn’t know the majority of the actors in this show, so I’m excited to voice my first impressions on these amazing cast members.

While I have one other show with Go Soo on my watchlist, this was my first introduction to him. From MDL I can see that he’s done a bunch of movies as well. I just want to emphasize that my comments on Wook’s whimsicality and my occasional frustrations with his character stand completely separate from the actor’s performance. I was very impressed with his portrayal of Wook, and especially with how he handled his character development throughout the story. The conman that first came into Duon Village was a completely different person from the person who got reunited with his long lost mother. It was really clear to see how Wook changed seeing all this injustice and senseless killing, not only in his experience of Nam Gook’s death but also in his efforts to solve the cases of every single Duon Village resident. He was written as a very realistically flawed human being, and that’s part of the reason why I can redeem him for not knowing what to do with all the information he obtained. I really liked that he got to show so much variety in his expressions in just this role alone. I’m curious to see more of him, starting with season two.

Heo Joon Ho was one of the few actors I already knew, but I can’t even begin to express how great it was to finally see him as a good guy. After his evil roles in Master of the Mask and Come and Hug Me (his character from that show still haunts me), he really blew me away in his portrayal of Pan Seok. I loved seeing him in the role of a concerned father who would do anything to get justice for the people he cared about, be it his daughter or any of the people in the village. Honestly, I really wanted to see him in a good guy role because he’s so easily typecasted as a villain, and this show was the best choice for him to display that he is so much more than a grim face. I really loved seeing him as Pan Seok, and his emotional delivery was amazing. I can’t wait to enjoy his character some more in season two.

Apparently, Ha Joon was also in Radio Romance and Arthdal Chronicles, but I don’t really remember him from those roles. I will definitely remember him from this, though. I loved how we got to know Joon Ho and how he became more and more expressive and emotional throughout the story. He was probably one of the characters that I came to feel for the most, since he ended up shifting perspectives the most through losing his fiancée. If you think about all the shit that he went through, first losing his fiancée and then finding out he was actually connected to the reason she was killed, it honestly made sense that he would fall apart. Instead, he managed to pull himself together, transferred to the Missing Persons unit, and went on doing the exact same thing to ensure this would never happen to anyone else. Now that’s what I call character development. I’m really excited to see what he’ll bring in season two.

Seo Eun Soo also appeared in Jealousy Incarnate, Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim, Duel and Hotel Del Luna, so she was another familiar face. I feel like she pops up a lot in shows that are less hyped or mainstream, but she always delivers on her performances. I’m definitely going to remember her portrayal of Yeo Na. As I mentioned in my review, I really loved the fact that she was written as so much more than just a damsel in distress. Despite being a defenseless young woman, she was prepared to do whatever she could to get back to Joon Ho, and I also thought it was very realistic to have at least one character in the village that didn’t automatically accept the fact that she was dead. It was cool to see her come up with her own plans, even reckless ones like setting that conman free in order to give Joon Ho yet another hint of where she currently was (or thought she was). Seeing her go through all those attempts only to keep being confronted with the fact that Joon Ho couldn’t see her and there was nothing to be done made her sympathize with her a lot. It warmed my heart seeing her pass on with an accepting smile at the end. I always end up being pleasantly surprised by Seo Eun Soo’s drama appearances, and this was no exception.

Apparently Ahn So Hee used to be a member of WONDER GIRLS! I hadn’t seen her in anything before either. Jong Ah was definitely one of my favorite supporting characters, as I said. I loved how she was able to remain a funny sidekick and still contribute so much to the story. I did wonder what happened to that idol trainee that came to work for her when she took over Nam Gook’s pawn shop though, he kind of vanished into thin air at the end. I kind of hoped they might end up together, lol. Anyways, I really loved how they positioned Jong Ah’s character within all the drama that was going on, and how they made her such a relevant addition to the character cast. Ahn So Hee gave Jong Ah a really nice dash of adventure while also nailing the more emotional scenes. I saw that she’ll be in the second season as well, so I’m really excited to see her again!

Apparently I’ve seen Ji Dae Han before in Vivid Romance, Chicago Typewriter and Thirty But Seventeen, but I don’t actually remember him from those shows. Honestly, from his presence in this series I felt like he must’ve been in way more dramas, but I guess he typically does more movies. Anyways, I really enjoyed his performance as Detective Baek. It meant so much to have a loyal ally that was willing to help out Pan Seok to the best of his abilities in the police force. I really liked the dynamic these two men had, they really felt like old friends. He was such a welcome contribution to the cast of characters. I loved that, despite his grumpy demeanor, he was so invested in obtaining justice for every single victim that he became in charge of, and it actually killed him to deliver the news of Hyun Ji’s fate to Pan Seok. I did wonder if he was actually allowed to be so aggressive towards the people he interrogated. Like, of course you’d want to beat up a bad guy when he’s not talking, but I couldn’t but wonder if this was actually allowed, lol. In any case, I see that he will also return in season two, so that should be fun.

Song Geon Hee looks so familiar to me, but according to MDL I’ve only glimpsed him before as minor roles in My ID is Gangnam Beauty, Love Alarm and Arthdal Chronicles (I don’t recognize anyone from Arthdal based on their usual appearances lol). I really liked his portrayal of Thomas. It was so cool how they managed to keep him so mysterious throughout the show, even after he came clean about who he had been, which only attributed more glamor to his character. I also liked that they explained how he got the blond hair, lol. I still wonder how he got the name “Thomas”, though. It seems interesting that he ended up with such a western image after being possibly the most traditionally Korean spirit in Duon Village, even in his way of speaking. He was such a good and cool character, honestly. It might just be my interpretation, but I somehow got the feeling the writers must have really loved him as well. Honestly, it would be so great if everyone could get themselves a Thomas, a beacon of calm that would literally craft you a bicycle if you asked for one. He was the best boy. I’m really excited to see him in more shows now!

I’ve only seen Kang Mal Geum before in The Silent Sea and although I remember her character I can’t say I have a very clear memory of her performance. As such, she’s another actress that I’ll remember mostly because of her role in this show. I thought she was amazing as Hyun Mi. There’s a reason I pointed out her emotional scenes in the parts that particularly touched me: her emotional responses to first finding out Wook was her son and then realizing he was still alive were both gut-wrenching. She made such a great transition from suspicious village woman to warm mother figure. I actually really liked her mother-son chemistry with Go Soo, even in all its awkwardness. It just fitted their circumstances so well to carefully open up after first feeling kind of estranged from one another. I actually gasped out loud when she dissolved and Wook suddenly found himself unable to see the village anymore. There’s a couple more series with her on my watchlist, so I’m really curious to see her in those.

I knew I recognized Lee Joo Myung from something, she’s Seung Wan in Twenty-Five Twenty-One! It was kind of weird seeing an actor portray an adult character when you’ve only seen them as a high schooler before, and this show even came two years before that! Anyways, it was really cool seeing her in this. Jang Mi’s story was so tragic, and I appreciated that it contributed to the endless cases of hostesses or “women in lesser jobs” that get into abusive relationships because of their circumstances. I’m glad they gave her a proper arc and a proper goodbye. Honestly, there was one moment when she hugged Thomas and he flinched a little that immediately made me think they’d be a cute couple, but unfortunately she passed on soon after that so there was no chance for anything to bloom between them.

Ahn Dong Yeob is another actor that I’ve apparently seen in Thirty But Seventeen and Dali and the Cocky Prince, but I don’t remember him from those. I’ll definitely remember him as Beom Soo, though. His portrayal of this developmentally disabled boy was really heartwaming. I loved how they kept bringing him into the story and how he kept showing that he was actually much more aware of the situation than people would expect him to be. It was cool that they made him utter the license plate of the car that hit him earlier on before actually connecting that to finding his body at the end. He was such a sweet boy and I loved how he didn’t go too far in making his character a stereotype of someone with a mental disability. He made a really beautiful contribution to the cast of characters.

Out of all the bad guys, I want to make a special mention of Kim Sang Bo, who played Kang Myung Jin. I hadn’t seen him in anything before either. I don’t know what it was about him, but his acting actually gave me goosebumps. The way he would go from looking dead inside to a very subtle smirk, or how he’d switch from mindlessly humming to suddenly crying actually made me think like he had some sort of personality disorder. I was so intriguid by his character and how he’d become the psychopath that he was. I guess that’s why it bothered me even more when they just let him off himself like that at the end. Kim Sang Bo actually brought a serial killer to life that I wanted to understand better, and that says a lot. He was incredible. It’s been a while since I’ve been so genuinely intrigued in the performance of an actor I had never seen before. My compliments!

Lastly, I just want to give a big shoutout to all the amazing child actors in this show. There was Jang Seon Yool who played Seo Ha Neul (he also played the child version of Yeol in Alchemy of Souls), Go Dong Ha who played Joon Soo, and Lee Hyo Bi who played little Hyun Ji (she also played the younger version of the female leads in Thirty But Seventeen, The School Nurse Files and Dali and the Cocky Prince). These kids did such an amazing job. The fact that they were able to express such genuine emotions in a story that was so raw and heartbreaking in itself was enough to hit me in the heart. I’m telling you, South Korea’s acting industry is in good hands with this next generation of talented little actors and actresses.

To sum up my review, I’ll just say that I did not expect this story to tug at my heartstrings so much from the get-go. I’m not even lying when I say that I was already bawling my eyes out by episode three. Starting out with the case of a missing child was BRUTAL, but it did set the tone for the rest of the story in a very powerful way. I don’t think I’ve ever teared up so much throughout an entire series as I did while watching this one. They definitely did a great job at depicting heart-wrenching situations and raw grief.
Another thing that I really admired about this show was that, despite the fact that it started out a bit confusing with all the different units and they had several storylines playing out at the same time, they managed to bring everything together in such a great and wholesome way. I loved how Joon Ho ended up coming full circle, transferring to the Missing Persons unit with a newfound sentiment for the victims and their loved ones after he went through it himself. Seeing him come eye to eye with Detective Baek in contrast to how they clashed in the beginning was really touching.
I’m also surprised that they actually managed to locate every single spirit in the end. It initially felt like they were rushing it a bit by wrapping up all the remaing people in the final episode, but because the episode was so lengthy it ended up not feeling rushed at all. I actually finished the show with a smile on my face. They did such a great job at building up the dynamics between the characters and creating links between their cases that I couldn’t help but get super invested. I’ve seen comments saying that there were boring moments in-between, but I honestly can’t think of a single one. It had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and there wasn’t a dull moment whatsoever.

I honestly feel like there’s so much more to say about this show, but I’ll save that for my review of season two, which I’ll be moving onto immediately after uploading this. As I said before, after the initial dread of facing another double-seasoner I did NOT expect to be hit in the feels so much while watching this. I’ve really come to appreciate using an app to pick out my watches for me, because otherwise it would’ve probably taken me ages to get to this one. It really made a big impression on me, and I’m very excited to start on season two. I can’t wait to meet Pan Seok, Wook, Joon Ho and Jong Ah again, along with a whole new cast of characters to get attached to.

As soon as I finish my review of season two, you’ll be able to find it here.

Until then! Bye-bee! x