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