“Revenge of Others” (3인칭 복수)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
January 9, 2023

☆☆☆☆
Ok Chan-mi (played by Shin Ye-eun)
Ji Soo-heon (played by Park Solomon)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“If everyone decides to corroborate a lie, then it becomes the truth.”

One of the characters in the K-drama “Revenge of Others” says this near the end of the series. And in many ways, it sums up the thesis of this high school revenge series, which is a murder mystery with twists and turns. And though I guessed early on who the murderer was, I didn’t anticipate the why.

The series starts off with Chan-mi on a videocall with her twin brother Chan-kyu (Kang Yeol). She is in Busan, where she resides in an orphanage. He lives in Seoul, after having been adopted by a Christian couple. Shortly after he prematurely ends their call, he apparently jumped out of a school window. Despite her pleas to investigate the case as a murder, the police rule it as suicide. Since they won’t investigate further, she decides to figure it out for herself by transferring to her brother’s high school.

Disgusted by his sin, Chan-kyu’s adoptive parents consider his death an embarrassment to them. You can already tell what kind of parents these people are. Though they may have given him a home and a new name, they had no issue separating him from his sister, who he had grown up with before he was adopted around the age of seven.

Meanwhile, Soo-heon lives alone above a MMA gym where he works part time when he’s not in school. He is the sole provider for his hospitalized mother, who has never gotten over her eldest son’s suicide. After Soo-heon is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and is given an ambiguous diagnosis of six months to who knows how long, he teams up with a friend to earn money by beating up a former classmate who raped another student.

The series is sold as revolving around his vigilante jobs for hire. But in reality, it’s about how teens band together to mete out justice after authorities fail them. As a police detective points out in the show, the teens are always one step ahead of them in figuring out what’s going on.

Soo-heon and Chan-mi’s friends, allies and enemies include Oh-sung (Chae Sang-woo), the son of the police commissioner who may or may not be involved with Chan-kyu’s death; his stepsister Ji-hyun (Lee Soo-min), who’s jealous of Soo-heon’s friendship with Chan-mi; and Oh-sung’s BFF Jae-beom (Seo Ji-hoon), the chaebol son who recently awoke from a half-year coma with little recollection of his previous high school years.

Shin Ye-eun is spectacular as Chan-mi, hitting all the right notes with just her facial expressions. (She exhibited these same skills as the frightening alpha high school bully in the hit K-drama “The Glory.”) Park Solomon is also very good as the stoic hero who may not be who he seems. Park’s “All of Us Are Dead” co-star Jin Ho-eun is wonderfully despicable as the high school rapist. I was more used to the actor playing nice guys, as he did in “Recipe for Farewell,” “Shooting Stars” and “Nevertheless.” And a special shoutout to Seo Ji-hoon, who added nuance to his layered role. He has more than lived up to his impressive 2016 debut in “Signal.”

Airdates: Twelve 60-minute episodes aired on Disney+ in South Korea from November 9 to December 14, 2022.

Spoiler Alert: Jae-beom also had a twin brother, Jae-jin, who died when he was 14. After his death, Jae-beom was psychologically scarred and developed dissociative identity disorder. He was living as both himself and Jae-jin. Jae-beom is kind and a friend to everyone. He’s also right handed. Jae-jin is volatile (and left handed, which was a clue in the death of one of his former middle school classmates). I had suspected that it was Jae-beom who had pushed Chan-kyu out the school window, because his character was too good to be true. But the introduction of his personality came as a surprise.

Oh-sung was privy to his friend’s split personalities via Jae-beom’s mother, who confided in him, but didn’t tell her own son. (Whhhyyyy would she do that? To be helpful, for sure, but it’s so gross that she withheld that information from her own child, who was legally an adult and deserved to know the truth.) He uses Jae-beom’s secrets to manipulate him, just as he had manipulated Chan-kyu after catching the latter kissing his boyfriend.

Chan-kyu had been a well-liked student, until Oh-sung forced him to bully other classmates in exchange for keeping his sexuality a secret.

Throughout the show, same-sex attraction is acknowledged as something to be hidden. Everyone has a crush on Soo-heon. And Jae-beom’s friendship with him appears to trigger Oh-sung’s raging jealousy.

All of the trauma was caused by a boy’s inability to come out. We can talk all we want about how South Korea is prejudiced towards the marginalized LGBTQ community, because it’s the truth. But it’s also an unfortunate scenario that’s all to familiar in many countries, including the United States.

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