The Guest: Episode 10

by odilettante

Park Il-do: man, myth, or legend? That’s the question our trio attempt to answer as they track down more information about this mysterious and terrifying spirit. Hwa-pyung also realizes his family has some skeletons in the closet and has to come to terms with what it means to see his father after all these years.

 
EPISODE 10 RECAP

Twenty years ago in the forest, a mysterious person sees Priest Choi hang himself. This person then buries the priest who died still clutching the ring.

In the present day, Hwa-pyung ponders his father’s ring. His parents had matching wedding rings and while his mother’s ring had already been in his possession, his father’s ring was found with Priest Choi’s body. It all seems to mean his father and Priest Choi are somehow connected.

He calls his grandfather, wanting to know more about his father, Yoon Geun-ho. Grandpa is reluctant to explain, but eventually tells Hwa-pyung that after Geun-ho disappeared that night twenty years ago, they eventually found him living in Seoul.

He refused to return to his hometown, although Grandpa could see signs he visited his wife’s and mother’s graves. But even that stopped a couple of years ago.

Hwa-pyung waits at the police station for Kil-young. He needs her help to track down his father so he can figure out happened the night Priest Choi died.

Even though there’s no address for Geun-ho, Kil-young manages to follow up with a few recent reports of assault on Geun-ho’s records. One was at a church, where he and the deacon fought after Geun-ho refused to stop talking about the devil. It turns out that Geun-ho has indiscriminately visited a lot of churches in the area.

The deacon directs Kil-young to an employment agency. She and Hwa-pyung wait outside, and Hwa-pyung can’t stop fidgeting in nervousness, knowing he might soon see his father — a man he hasn’t seen in twenty years. Hwa-pyung spots someone he thinks might be his father and follows him inside — but it’s not Geun-ho.

Hwa-pyung apologizes and turns to leave, but crashes into a tattered man who grumbles about his spilt coffee. It’s Geun-ho, who doesn’t recognize Hwa-pyung, and instead gets into an argument with the employment agency manager, complaining that he hasn’t a job in a while.

When Hwa-pyung recognizes the man, he calls out to his father. Realizing his son is standing there, Geun-ho’s eyes grow wide in terror and he pushes everyone out of the way to run from the agency. Hwa-pyung hurries after his father, grabbing his arm.

Geun-ho recoils in terror and whips out a knife in defense, slashing Hwa-pyung’s arm. He calls Hwa-pyung “Park Il-do” as he laments that he’s spent the last twenty years hiding from him. Hwa-pyung stares, stunned, as Geun-ho runs away, yelling that Hwa-pyung is not his son and is actually the devil trying to kill him.

Kil-young calls Yoon to tell him what happened, and Yoon’s first reaction is to ask if Hwa-pyung is okay. Aw. He’s not — and it’s not just because of the knife wound on his arm, but there’s also a shell-shocked look in his eyes.

She tells him where Geun-ho is living, and Yoon visits him. Geun-ho is wary and paranoid, refusing to let Yoon in — despite the fact Yoon shows his rosary with the crucifix (proving he’s not possessed). When Yoon mentions he’s here because of Park Il-do, Geun-ho tries to slam the door in his face.

But Yoon catches the door and enters Geun-ho’s tiny room. Geun-ho brandishes his knife, jabbering that Yoon was sent by Park Il-do to kill him since he knows Park Il-do already possessed a priest. Yoon says that he’s there because of that priest, who was his brother.

He shows Geun-ho the ring that was in his brother’s belongings, and Geun-ho — now seeming to trust Yoon — explains that he helped kill Priest Choi.

Flashback to that night twenty years ago, when Geun-ho tried to strangle his own son, but Grandpa intervened, allowing Hwa-pyung to run away. Geun-ho ran around the area, searching for his son — who he called “Park Il-do” — moving to the side of the road when a police car sped by, lights flashing and siren blaring.

He saw Priest Choi on the road, and recognizing him as the priest that had been at his house earlier, asked the priest if he’d seen Hwa-pyung. But the possessed priest just staggered past him. Geun-ho followed the priest into the forest and found him dangling from the tree.

Geun-ho tried to support the priest’s body, preventing Priest Choi from hanging himself. Geun-ho screamed for help until he was too weak to hold up the priest any longer. When he let go from exhaustion, Priest Choi started to flail and suffocate, and Geun-ho once more tried to hold the priest.

As he did, Priest Choi gripped Geun-ho’s hand, breaking his ring finger. When Geun-ho let go in pain, Priest Choi kept hold of the ring. Without Geun-ho supporting him, Priest Choi died.

Yoon tries to compose himself as he listens to Geun-ho explain how his brother died, and asks what his brother’s last words were. Geun-ho reveals that Priest Choi said it was Geun-ho’s turn next, and to run away from his son. Then Priest Choi stabbed out his right eye with his own thumb.

Over lunch with the trio, Yoon tells them what he learned from Hwa-pyung’s father. Hwa-pyung would rather drink than eat, and as he slams back another bottle of soju, he complains that he wasn’t even possessed by Park Il-do when his father tried to kill him, and that his father just wanted an excuse to run away.

But Yoon pulls out some battered notebooks that are Geun-ho’s research about Park Il-do. For the past twenty years, Geun-ho has searched the country, trying to find out who Park Il-do was before he became a spirit — but there has been no one called Park Il-do. Geun-ho believes Park Il-do never existed as a human.

Kil-young still thinks that Park Il-do must have been human once, since he has a human name. She asks Hwa-pyung if he remembers anything from his childhood, but he says it was a taboo name, so no one really mentioned it. Very drunk now, Hwa-pyung rails against his father wasting all that time searching for a person who never existed.

Yoon defends Geun-ho, pointing out that his actions were because he thought his son was possessed by Park Il-do. But Hwa-pyung can’t stop thinking about how his father tried to kill him twenty years ago. Yoon has nothing to say to that, and Hwa-pyung drunkenly staggers out of the restaurant.

Yoon helps Hwa-pyung home, and as Hwa-pyung collapses on the sofa, Yoon chides him for not even having water in his fridge. Yoon tells him he should take better care of himself, especially since he lives alone, but Hwa-pyung just passes out, drunk.

He wakes up in his bed, alone in his home. Next to him is a large bottle of water and a bag from the convenience store. Hwa-pyung realizes that Yoon — despite having taken a vow of poverty as a priest — has thoughtfully bought some food for him.

As he gulps down the water (not in a possessed way, just a hungover way), he stares at his parents’ wedding rings and his mother’s memorial table, which is still set up. Hwa-pyung remembers being a child and feeling so happy with his parents — until that night his father tried to kill him.

Kil-young and Yoon head to Hwa-pyung’s hometown to find out more information about Park Il-do, but no one wants to talk to them. Finally one old lady tells them they should ask the strange old man who lives alone on the hill.

Looking around the man’s home, they realize he’s Hwa-pyung’s grandfather. Yoon suggests to Kil-young that they not mention Hwa-pyung. Grandpa greets them and offers them a drink, delighted for the company as he complains his grandson never visits enough.

Kil-young asks him about Park Il-do, and Grandpa’s pleasant demeanor disappears as he orders them out of the house. But Kil-young pleads with him, saying no one else will talk to them. Grandpa is still angry as he tries to get them to leave, but Yoon suddenly says that he’s the brother of the priest who exorcised his grandson. So much for not mentioning Hwa-pyung.

Knowing there’s a personal reason Yoon is looking for Park Il-do, Grandpa is more willing to talk about it. Yoon explains that they just want to know if Park Il-do ever existed as a person.

Grandpa says that sixty years ago, when he was a boy, he was there when the villagers tried to kill the first man possessed by Park Il-do.

The man wasn’t from the area, but when he arrived at their village, he killed people until the villagers tried to kill him, at which point he stabbed out his own eye and jumped in the water. But that man floated in the water, staring at them for three days, not dying.

Yoon wonders if that man was the first person to be possessed by Park Il-do, and Grandpa pulls out a box, admitting he’s tried to find more about Park Il-do.

He tracked down the family of the man in the water, but in the end it was pointless, since even with all that effort, Grandpa couldn’t save his family. He hands over his research to Yoon. Kil-young and Yoon drive to the hometown of Lee Chul-yong, the man from sixty years ago.

On the way, Yoon muses that the more he hears about Hwa-pyung’s childhood, the more he feels guilty about originally assuming Hwa-pyung didn’t suffer as much as they did. Kil-young wonders why Park Il-do would kill so many people, and Yoon points out that evil doesn’t always need a reason — it’s enough just to enjoy watching people suffer.

They find an old man in the village who remembers Lee Chul-yong. He was a boy back then, but saw the man scratching his neck and talking to himself, saying he was Park Il-do. Kil-young asks about the family, and the old man says after Lee Chul-yong died in the sea, they quietly left the village.

But he does remember the son, who was about his age: Lee Sang-chul. The old man muses that he was asked these same questions twenty years ago, when a man said that his son was possessed by Park Il-do.

Geun-ho lurks near a construction site until all the workers have left, then he grabs the foreman, accusing him for being the reason the employment agency won’t give him any more jobs. Annoyed, the foreman shakes Geun-ho off and shoves him to the ground. Just as he’s about to kick Geun-ho, Hwa-pyung arrives and pulls the man back, violently pushing him away from his father.

Hwa-pyung says he’s Geun-ho’s son, and that the foreman better not mess with his father again. The foreman, scared by the look in Hwa-pyung’s eyes, scurries away. Geun-ho also tries to run away, convinced that Hwa-pyung is still possessed by Park Il-do, despite Hwa-pyung’s frustrated declaration that he’s not possessed.

He reminds his father that Park Il-do moved from him to Priest Choi, but Geun-ho insists that Park Il-do was not in Priest Choi — it was just another spirit, controlled by Park Il-do. The night Priest Choi died, the spirit inside him said he was called by Park Il-do, who was still in Geun-ho’s home.

Hwa-pyung is shocked to hear this, as his father continues to insist that Park Il-do never left Hwa-pyung. As his father runs away, Hwa-pyung calls Yoon, letting him know that his brother was never possessed by Park Il-do.

But Hwa-pyung regained sight in his right eye after the priests’ visit, so Park Il-do had to move to someone. The only other people that were there were his father and his grandfather.

Hwa-pyung goes to his father’s home. Geun-ho, terrified, refuses to open the door, insisting that if Hwa-pyung keeps finding him, he’ll die. Geun-ho holds out his knife, declaring he’d rather kill himself than let Park Il-do kill him. But Hwa-pyung just wants to know if there was anyone else there when the two priests visited that day.

A flashback shows that only Grandpa and Geun-ho were there. After the priests left, they were sitting with the sick Hwa-pyung when Grandpa asked to speak to Geun-ho privately. He told Geun-ho that Hwa-pyung was possessed by a powerful spirit that can only be destroyed if they kill the boy.

Except, at that moment in the present day, Grandpa is telling Yoon and Kil-young that he went to visit a friend after the priests left, and that it was only Geun-ho and Hwa-pyung together that night.

Hwa-pyung calls his grandfather, demanding to know if he really ordered his father to kill him. Grandpa plays dumb, asking where Geun-ho is. The phone loses connection.

Kil-young and Yoon drive back to the city, but they can’t get in contact with Hwa-pyung because his phone is turned off, which worries Yoon. But Hwa-pyung is sitting outside Yoon’s home, unable to stop thinking about what happened twenty years ago. The only people there that night were his father and grandfather, so where could have Park Il-do have gone?

Yoon’s surprised, since Grandpa told them he was visiting a friend and wasn’t there, and Hwa-pyung realizes that one of his family members is lying — and the lying one might be possessed by Park Il-do.

Geun-ho calls Grandpa on the landline, demanding to know why he stopped Geun-ho from killing Hwa-pyung that night, despite being the one who ordered him to do it in the first place. Grandpa continues to ask where Geun-ho is, but Geun-ho hangs up instead of answering.

Yoon visits Priest Yang, wondering if he remembers anything strange about Geun-ho or Grandpa that day. Priest Yang doesn’t recall anything odd, but it was twenty years ago, and he hasn’t been back since that night. He warns Yoon not to trust anyone who was there — the possessed person could be Geun-ho, Grandpa, or even Priest Yang or Hwa-pyung.

Yoon’s surprised that Hwa-pyung could still be possessed by Park Il-do, but Priest Yang points out that once a demon gets someone in its sights, it doesn’t stop focusing on that person until it takes his soul. He warns Yoon to be careful.

Hwa-pyung hurries to his grandfather’s house, but Grandpa isn’t there, and he left his cell phone behind so Hwa-pyung is unable to contact him. Hwa-pyung asks a neighboring farmer where Grandpa might be, and the farmer tells him that Grandpa regularly goes to the bus station.

That surprises Hwa-pyung, since he knows his grandfather can’t go on long bus rides since he gets sick. But the man reveals that Grandpa regularly goes on bus trips that take him out of town.

Returning to his grandfather’s home, Hwa-pyung rifles through Grandpa’s belongings until he comes across a box filled with used bus tickets to the city.

Geun-ho cautiously leaves the dilapidated inn he lives in and warily makes his way down the alley. He’s shocked to see his father suddenly turn the corner and appear before him. Grandpa ominously tells Geun-ho that he shouldn’t have said anything.

As Hwa-pyung reels from the discovery that Grandpa has been lying to him about his inability to ride a bus, Geun-ho calls Hwa-pyung, asking to meet because he’s figured out who Park Il-do is.

Meanwhile, Kil-young has been trying to track down Lee Sang-chul, and finally finds him. She asks him about his father, mentioning that he was possessed by Park Il-do. Sang-chul says he saw Park Il-do — the real Park Il-do, the living person before he became an evil spirit.

Hwa-pyung returns to the city and goes to his father’s home. Geun-ho drags him inside, and Hwa-pyung is shocked by the religious paraphernalia littering the walls. Now that Geun-ho knows that Hwa-pyung isn’t possessed, he’s happy to see his grown son — but he’s also apologetic, since he’s avoided his family for so long.

He tells Hwa-pyung that Park Il-do is actually Grandpa. It makes sense, since Grandpa was there when the priests visited Hwa-pyung, and was the one who told Geun-ho to kill Hwa-pyung. He also found Geun-ho despite the fact that Geun-ho was careful to not tell anyone where he lived.

Geun-ho brandishes his knife, revealing he scared Grandpa off, and now he and Hwa-pyung need to run away. Hwa-pyung stares in disbelief as Geun-ho starts to frantically pack, shoving various religious icons into his bag as he babbles that the spirits can find them no matter what.

The landlord pounds on the door, startling the two men. He tells Geun-ho that he has a phone call, and Geun-ho asks Hwa-pyung to wait while he goes to answer it.

Geun-ho limps down the hallway to the lobby phone, but there’s no answer — except for demonic chattering. Geun-ho gets a faraway look in his eyes as the possession takes hold. The landlord shouts after Geun-ho that he better pay his rent or he’ll call the police, and Geun-ho stops in his tracks, staring at a fire extinguisher as spirits chatter inside him.

As he waits in his father’s room, Hwa-pyung studies all the paraphernalia on his father’s walls. He stops when he sees the family photo with his face torn out, and he suddenly has a psychic vision of someone picking up a bloody fire extinguisher next to the landlord’s body.

A call from Kil-young seems to shake him from his trance, just as Geun-ho returns to the room. He brandishes the bloody fire extinguisher at Hwa-pyung, who ducks out of the way. In his demon voice, Geun-ho blames Hwa-pyung for killing his wife and mother. The possessed Geun-ho says Hwa-pyung should have died that night twenty years ago.

 
COMMENTS

So now we know what happened to Hwa-pyung’s father and what he’s been up to the last twenty years. I can’t really blame him, since Park Il-do is definitely terrifying, although it is ironically amusing that he’s spent all this time trying to run away from the one spirit Hwa-pyung has spent most of his life trying to find. As much as this episode seemed to crack open the secrets of Park Il-do, I still have more questions than answers. Is he a real person, or not? That is, was he at one time someone who then died and that vengeful spirit was so strong that it inhabited other people, gaining control of weaker spirits? Or is he more demon-like, having always been an angry spirit that wants to destroy and kill just for funsies? I have a feeling we’ll soon be getting some more backstory about what made Park Il-do the violent, angry spirit that he’s now become — but the show better not try to make me sympathize with him if he turns out to be a human who was wronged in some way and died because of it. There have been too many senseless deaths at the hands of Park Il-do and his minions for me to accept that this is all some bizarre supernatural attempt at revenge for when he was living.

I’m also suspicious about Grandpa. Based on what we know, it’s easy to think that he’s the one Park Il-do inhabited that night after the spirit left Hwa-pyung, but… I’m struggling to make sense of it. If Grandpa is one of Park Il-do’s vessels, why did he let Hwa-pyung live so long, if Park Il-do now keeps threatening to kill Hwa-pyung? Why this long game? Where would be the brutal satisfaction in waiting until Grandpa reached an age where death is naturally not so far off, before deciding to reveal himself — especially when Hwa-pyung is so close by? While I agree that we can’t fully trust Grandpa, I’m not so sure he’s the Park Il-do we’re looking for. Not the least because I need to know how Grandpa is connected back to Sharing Hand.

If Sharing Hand turns out to be a red herring, I’m gonna be so angry. All of these possessions lately can be connected back to it, and I refuse to accept it’s just coincidence. Which is why Priest Yang continues to ping my distrust-radar. After all, he said so himself — he was one of the people there when Hwa-pyung was possessed, and everyone there at that time can’t be trusted. Including him. I really don’t want him to turn out to be a baddie, though, if only because I desperately want Yoon to have his own trusty sidekick like Kil-young has Detective Go, and Yoon has Yook Kwang. I don’t want Grandpa to be the baddie, either. I don’t want anyone close to our trio to turn out to have been deceiving them all these years. They’ve already lost their family and have enough trust issues as it is.

At least they’ve found each other. Even though Hwa-pyung technically still has family (compared to Kil-young and Yoon’s family who were brutally murdered), he’s lived most of his life pretty isolated. When Yoon helped the very drunk Hwa-pyung home and remarked on how he needs to take better care of himself because he lives alone, my immediate reaction was that Yoon and Hwa-pyung could easily solve that problem by moving in together. After all, Hwa-pyung seems to find comfort in Yoon, since that’s the first place he went when he was reeling from the discovery that his grandfather was the one behind his father’s attempt to kill him. Besides, then we could have wacky cohabitation adventures, such as Hwa-pyung secretly hiding talismans all over and Yoon grumbling about how messy Hwa-pyung is. Of course we’d need Kil-young there, too, just to keep some order in the house (and be the blunt-yet-caring moderator of their lovers’ quarrels). Hey, I gotta keep thinking about the bright side so I don’t get overwhelmed by the dread of what might happen next to this beloved trio.

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