I finally decided to start on the Korean drama "Ghost", which aired this summer. At first glance, the title of it can be deceiving - someone would think that it would be about ghosts (of course).
I watched the first two episodes, and from now on, I will try to give an episode-by-episode update. But here is a basic summary:
SPOILERS AHEAD ^_^
It starts off with the supposed suicide of an up-and-coming actress named Shin Hyo Jung, who jumps out of her apartment window. It is assumed that she committed suicide because she was involved in a sex scandal and basically couldn't take the talk and rumors anymore. Prior to jumping out of her window, she had also Tweeted that she was going to die anyway.
Our lead male is Kim Woo Hyun (played by actor So Ji Sub), team leader of the cyber investigation squad. We see his team try to take down illegal gambling sites, but as they try to save the data stored on the computers, a notorious hacker called Hades beats them to it and causes all the servers to self-destruct, destroying the evidence. Here's our antagonist.
Our female lead is Yoo Kang Mi (played by Lee Yeon Hee). She is also a member of the cyber investigation team. I think her role is to be a super beauty, but to be kick-ass and super intelligent. Well, she doesn't really seem super intelligent (not like our hacker, who is a ghost behind the computer... hence the title ^^;), but she doesn't seem dumb at all.
Anyway, the police are being quick to rule the actress's death a suicide. I mean, the girl jumped out the window. But our friend Hades posts a clip to the city's video board that shows the actress being pushed out the window by a guy. So.... The assumption of it being a suicide is squished pretty quickly. But since Hades put up the video, then Hades ALSO must be the killer...
The cyber investigation team analyzes the clip and concludes that it has not been edited or tampered with. They see a reflection in the window, and after increasing the quality of it, creating an outline of the face, and then trying to find a match.... They find a match. His name is Park Ki Young (played by Daniel Choi), and he apparently went to the same police academy as Woo Hyun. They were roommates, but he dropped out. So, he becomes Top Suspect #1.
Ki Young runs into Kang Mi after infiltrating the police department (he was trying to find the actress's laptop to find a certain clip), and he swears to her that he didn't kill her. He confirms that he is Hades, but he didn't kill her. He had hacked into her laptop in order to find a file called Phantom. He received an email that said that if he found it, then he would be rewarded (money, I think).
Kang Mi doesn't believe him, but allows him to find the clip in front of her. He finds the Phantom file in a file called "36.avi". The actress used steganography to hide the file... hiding a message in another file or writing. So, Ki Young finds it and extracts it. They expected to find a list of sexual favors or clients or something to do with the sex scandal... but he finds another video.
We find out later that the video is of a man being poisoned and killed. And then men around him are just watching. One of them stands up. It's our main guy... WOO HYUN.
O_O So our main guy who's supposed to be a good guy is actually a bad guy??? *mind blown*
Anyway, Woo Hyun and Ki Young meet at a factory to discuss this. Ki Young chews out Woo Hyun, asking what he was doing just sitting there and watching the man die. Woo Hyun basically says he regrets it and wants to turn things around. He tells Ki Young to go and leave the country and live peacefully, because if he sticks around, he'd be charged for murder. *cue bromance*
The rest of the police figure out that Ki Young is with Woo Hyun, so they head to the factory.... only to see it get blown up. Oh no! One body is totally charred and completely dead, the other is still.... really ugly, but hey, he's moving and alive! So they rush him to the hospital.
At the hospital, they identify him as Woo Hyun, by his ID. His body is so deformed, that they can only go by the ID. However......
Back at the police station, Kang Mi sees Woo Hyun's badge by his computer. Then she remembers Ki Young wearing his own fake badge, with the name "Kim Woo Hyun"....
O_O....
Kang Mi goes to confirm that the Woo Hyun at the hospital is actually Ki Young (much to the resentment of the disgruntled nurse, who says to leave the patient alone because he needs to be stable). She takes his fingerprints. Tries to match it up with Woo Hyun's.... and it's negative. That patient is NOT Woo Hyun.
So Kang Mi freaks out and asks Ki Young/Woo Hyun all these questions, and he basically says that someone else was in that factory. He tried to kill him. And that Woo Hyun wanted to change everything around. And after thinking about it, Kang Mi decides to help him.
After a few scenes of Kang Mi sneaking around, switching dental files, and disguising herself as someone working on Woo Hyun's autopsy, it is confirmed that the charred dead body IS Ki Young. And the patient in the hospital is team leader Woo Hyun. The identity of Woo Hyun lives.
But that's not all. Ki Young/Woo Hyun's body has been discombobulated in such as way that extensive surgery and rehabilitation is needed. It really is a miracle that he lived. A year passes by, and we see a man at "Ki Young"'s grave.
It's the real Ki Young. With - after extensive surgeries - the face of the late Woo Hyun. Ki Young lives with Woo Hyun's identity and, with Kang Mi's help, swears to find the killer that did this to them.
I am extremely pleased with how this drama starts off. It's intense and suspenseful. And I can't believe all the things that happened in the first two episodes. I haven't really come across a Korean suspense drama that really sucks you in so quickly. It had me yelling at my computer. It had me have that feeling of "OMG what's going to happen next??", which I hadn't felt since Bloody Monday or Maou.
I'm just worried about 2 things: 1.) It'll end up stupid (like some unnecessary romance or political inter-department drama), or 2.) They won't be able to keep up this pace for 20 episodes.
But for now I am very pleased, and I can't wait to watch the rest of this series!
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