Other than Shimok I don't trust the other prosecutors. I like the composition on the police side.

I don't like he chooses someone because he's his colleague.
When they were choosing the third member, ShiMok pointed out he could be involved in sort some of scandal but Woo just dismissed it.
I mean, he's been good reading DongJae (well, isn't he easy to read) but why is he trusting a guy like Kim SaHyun that shouts all around "I'm not trust worthy".
So, I'm with you. Don't like him.

DJ is capable enough to gain progress on cases but not competent enough to cause derailments / cover ups.

I was also shocked by his reaction. It was as if he had skipped a breath just by remembering.

I'm honestly more curious about the non-alcohol drinking prosecutor's death case. More so with all the hints in ep4, too. Feels like there's a whole lot more people and connections involved to it, I wonder how that arc plays out.

I agree with you. Woo is intrigued by ShiMok. I think he brought him in to his own purpose, but now he's finding out that he can't be "lead". As you said, he looks at him in astonishment every time ShiMok is ShiMok.

Perfect characterization of Kim SaHyun.

I didn’t think the Woo was affectionate towards ShiMok. I interpreted his smile when he saw the reports in the morning as self satisfaction that as expected he has a very competent staff person. He seemed like the cat that got the cream or the guy with the sharp knife (ShiMok) that he can wield.

I tune out during the corporate stuff.

The Yeon-jae stuff will be something to be used by the police to highlight the corruption on the prosecution side.

Agreed. The police council members are picked more thoughtfully. Chief Choi seemed to be the shrewder between our chiefs. Note that Shimok was initially picked by the police as an adviser. The prosecution team just snatched him as a permanent member because of this.

One of the issues with the prosecutors is cronyism - that they're a highly-educated elite who all went to the same schools and go to the same clubs and all know the same people. It's a web of influence that leads to corruption even without the people involved consciously realising it. He chose Kim Sa-hyun because choosing your school chum is the kind of thing you do in this situation. He will in return then choose you.

Oh I actually thought he was referring to LCJ and Eun-soo but you could be right. For the life me, I can’t count how many times SM went against higher than him xD

That makes so much sense! I thought since he was talking about the cop who commited "suicide", SDJ was referring to Young Eun soo and Lee Chang Joon since they (sadly) died.

Right! What happened with those? Admittedly, the two are not working closely this season yet. 😔

Right? Our leads started in teams that have equal parts mentors and rivals, and they have progressed in their fields gaining people on their side.

That's why we like him. He needs to check the facts himself and not rely on reports given to him. But the suicide re-enactment was a little too much given that Writer-nim is not conscious of happy endings..

Maybe Shi-mok was trying to test how much weight the shower could bear, or whether it was possible for someone of the dead cop's height to hang himself in that position. I think he discovered something but isn't certain enough about it to tell anyone. Obviously he needs to work with the cops to get the full picture, instead of arguing with them in a conference room... sigh...

This was a callback to the knife scene in S1, except there Yeo-Jin was around to make sure he didn't make the wrong moves. I really appreciate how, through these minor scenes, the two seasons are being cross-referenced, and how character growth is being shown!

There was a similar foreshadowing in S1, too.

I get the same sense too with all the foreshadowing. I would be seriously uoset if it was either of the two. SDJ is growing on me this season, but my money is on him being the most likely candidate

I'm feeling that too. This writer does not hesitate to go that route. But if we're going to have more seasons, killing either of them isn't ideal xD

Yes that was uncomfortable. But it would be too obvious for a smart writer to kill off either of them after this dialogue. Some major character will die, I agree, but I'm confident there's a twist coming. SDJ is too much of a self-preservationist to get into a mess like this, and HYJ has HSM's back, so all is good on both fronts, IMO.

saw theory from kfans something might happen to dongjae..because in one of teasers, there this scene of dongjae's car and there are few police with torchlight around it

Hanjo will probably get interesting once we know what the bro looks like and if Dad is alive or not.

That tension in the council was so palpable you want to know more!

I really wished he wouldn’t fall for Oh’s manipulation, but he did.

True!! And rewatching makes you discover new layer of the conversations.

I was like nooo when he put too much wasabi. His face trying to swallow that thing had me in stitches 😂

For all we know, she might be totally 100% behind this ><

They should make Rom com movie as a Stranger spinoff with our characters just being adorable doing mundane everyday things. Imagine CSW BDN and LJH in a rom com 😍

I’ll do my best!! Hahaha

Are the police and prosecutors there to keep each other in check? I'm thinking of the film 1984: The Day Will Come where the police kill a student while they are interrogating him and the prosecutor refuses to waiver the autopsy, and so the cover-up of the death of the student is exposed. In so many of these dramas, police and prosecution are constantly at odds with each other. Both are as prone to corruption as each other too. The powers of the prosecutor in SK seem similar to those of the prosecutor in France.

OK, I've just found an article that compares the roles of the prosecutors in various countries and the relationship to the police, in the context of SK. I'll be back with more information when I read it.

As far as I know, “real” democracy didn’t exist in Sk until 1987. After WW2 and the American occupation the country suffered from at least two military dictatorships until 1987. So if you know or have lived in a dictatorship, you know that civil rights are not precisely a priority and usually the armed forces (usually police or similar) are the ones who carry out the oppression.
We’ve seen so many dramas where a cop says “we no longer do that” like beating a prisioner to obtain a confession (as in S1).
When I was born in my country there was still a dictatorship and even now, more than 40 years later there are lots of people who would never trust the police.
This is another angle I can really understand as I’ve lived it (as coming from a family that was repressed during those old days).

This is the article. Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 88-96.
I'm going to post chunks of text. I might fall foul of everyone because there is quite a lot, but it helped me.

p. 92
In the hierarchical and investigative model, the police are subordinate to prosecutors who directly control the investigation and form a belief in guilt of the suspects before charging. The South Korean system of public prosecution is a typical example of this model. The prosecutors in South Korea, as are their counterparts in Germany, are often called a ruler of the investigation. Almost all criminal offences are investigated by the police under the supervision of the prosecutors. The relationship between the police and prosecutors, as in France and Germany, is legally structured on a hierarchical basis (Mosler, 2018).

However, the South Korean prosecution service does not have the limits to the prosecutorial involvement which have been seen in French and German proceedings. For example, the South Korean system does not have investigating judges who deal with the investigations of serious crimes as in France. Serious crimes are investigated by the police under the supervision of the prosecutors. Indeed, supervision occurs from an early stage because, as in Germany, most coercive measures can be taken only on the authority of the prosecutors. However, unlike Germany, prosecutorial discretion is not limited to the issue of evidential sufficiency.
Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 92

A South Korean prosecutor will carry out a thorough investigation until they are certain about the guilt of the suspect (Kim, 2001). The investigative role of the Korean prosecutors is similar to that of their counterparts in Japan. In both jurisdictions, prosecutors investigate a crime themselves after receiving the files from the police and before making a decision to charge (Mosler, 2018). However, there are three main differences between the Japanese and South Korean system.
Firstly, the South Korean prosecutors have the power at any stage to direct police investigations. However, their counterparts in Japan cannot intervene until the police investigation ends and the case is sent to their office. As a result, the Japanese police in general seek advice from the prosecutors (Parker, 2015). Secondly, unlike South Korea, the investigative dossiers written by the Japanese police and those written by prosecutors have the same evidentiary impact at the trial. The police interview documents as well as the prosecutorial are accepted into evidence in courts. As Johnson (2002: 126) argued, the investigation by the prosecutors is ‘to confirm the details of confessions gained by the police, filling in holes, and painting over problems, and, in the argot insiders employ, wiping police butts as necessary.’
However, in South Korea there is a significant difference in the admissibility of the investigative dossiers. Documents written by the prosecutors have much greater impact on the trial than those written by the police. Thus, unlike their counterparts in Japan, the South Korean prosecutors must interview the suspects to obtain confessions and record these in their own dossiers. As a result, this means that South Korean prosecutors concentrate on their investigative rather than the adjudicative role (Kim, 2004).
Finally, all public prosecutors' offices in South Korea, unlike other jurisdictions, have their own investigative units. Japanese prosecutors have their own investigative units but only thirteen out of fifty prosecutor's offices have the special departments for investigation (Quah, 2015). Furthermore investigations, unlike in Japan, are not limited to particular crimes such as corruption and organized crime, but instead, may be carried out for almost all kinds of offences (Mosler, 2018).
Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 88-96.

p. 93
In England and Wales, the USA, Germany, Japan, and France, the role of prosecution service is more limited to the trial process itself. Most prosecution services focus their attention on reviewing rather than repeating the police investigation. In all jurisdictions, a person under investigation generally has fundamental rights as follows: the right not to be tortured; privilege against self-incrimination; the right to counsel; the right to remain silence; the right to be informed of the reason of arrest or detention; the right to request judicial hearing for arrest or detention. These measures should “safeguard against attempts to manipulate or even falsify the results of the investigation and should at the same time enhance its reliability and comprehensiveness” (Weigend, 2012: 380). To ensure the measures to be properly defended, the prosecutors have a role as a supervisory body with a right to be informed of police actions and the power to intervene when the police overstep the boundaries of the law.
The prosecutorial role can be classified as a ‘filter’. The police, as a gate keeper, play a filtering role so that where there is insufficient evidence, the case will be discontinued by the police themselves. The prosecution act as a second filter, screening cases to ensure that there is sufficient evidence of the requisite quality but often to take a view as to whether there is sufficient public interest in pursuing the prosecution (Uglow, 2002). There are inevitable differences between jurisdictions in how this occurs, e.g. in France, it is the investigating judge rather than the prosecutor who has the filtering role in serious criminal cases and in Germany, the prosecution service acts as a key rather than supplementary filter in terms of sufficiency but does not exercise discretion in relation to the public interest.
The roles of the South Korean prosecution service do not correspond to such international standards. The wide ranging powers and functions of the South Korean prosecutor over the whole of the investigation means that they can be described as ‘investigating prosecutors’. Their role is very different from that in other representative systems. In particular, direct investigation using the prosecutors' own investigation units is a very distinctive feature.

Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 88-96.

There are weaknesses in such a system as the prosecutor's direct and extensive involvement in the investigation means that there is no independent and neutral filter to review the results of the investigation including the protection of the defendant's rights. As a result, a safeguard has disappeared from the South Korean criminal process. Research and practical experience have shown that police and prosecutors may unintentionally focus their attention on evidence which is compatible with their beliefs and ignore other evidence to the contrary (Phillips, 1981; Martin, 2001; State of Illinois, 2002; Leo and Davis, 2009). Criminal proceedings need independent monitoring to review the investigation in order to counteract this. Unlike any other jurisdiction, the South Korean system of prosecutorial investigation eliminates the separation of the functions between the investigation and prosecution and results in the loss of a safeguard and filter. As we have seen earlier, the structure of the CPS in the English system and their statutory relationship with the police provides for this filter and demonstrates its significance for a balanced criminal justice system.
In addition, the prosecutor's complete control over the investigation also means monopoly over information. The prosecutors have much easier access to information and evidence than the defendants. More importantly, they control the disclosure of such information from the beginning of the investigation. This inevitably increases the inequality of arms between the state and defendants. The principle of equality of arms is one of the important elements for a fair trial. The right to access information is one of the important elements to guarantee the equality of arms. This right implies that the defendants should have the same access to the records and other documents pertaining to the case (Gardner and Anderson, 2015).

Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 88-96.

[…]
But a prosecutor's direct involvement in the investigation leads them to focus on obtaining a conviction from the early stage of investigation process. Information which should be disclosed to the defense is withheld. The career ladder for a prosecutor in South Korea is very steep - acquittals have an adverse impact on the prosecutor's reputation. Thus career ambition can lead the prosecutors to focus too heavily on the need to achieve convictions. In this context, it is clear that the South Korean criminal justice system does not have an effective method to ensure the objectivity of the prosecutors as well as disclosure of evidence nor any appropriate mechanism to monitor prosecutorial misconduct caused by such direct involvement in the investigation.
The investigations by the prosecutors in South Korea are reviewed only internally by the superiors through the ‘Kyuljae’ system of consultation and approval. Unlike police investigations which are monitored independently by the prosecutors, the prosecutorial investigations move on to the court without an appropriate review. Additionally the decisions not to charge are taken by the prosecution service without further review. Only the prosecutors can review their actions and inspect their misconducts.
Such lack of monitoring mechanism results in lack of confidence in the prosecution service, and consequently, causes distrust in the criminal justice system. In the recent survey on the reliability of the government agencies in the criminal justice system, the reliability of the prosecution service was reported as the lowest level. 51.3 per cent of respondents stated that the operations by the public prosecution service are unreliable. Only 16.3 per cent considered the prosecution service to be trustworthy (Park et al., 2015; Mosler, 2018).

Dae-Hyun Choe, “Prosecutors’ role and their relationship with the police in South Korea: In a comparative perspective,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 55 (2018), 88-96.

I think a bill regarding warrant issued has passed in Jan 20
We would know so much about juridical system not only in SK but around the world. Who says watching kdrama is a waste of time? 😜

OMG! Separated at birth! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

That kind of language / communication is universal. Usually called politics. Hate it.

Can’t express how brilliant I think she is. Not only she studies her subject well, she has very sharp observation about social context and human psychology.

Yeojin is also shown as the foodie and taking initiative in getting Shimok food, which also highlights her go-getter personality and dogged pursuit to ensure Shimok doesn't accidentally diet, while Shimok's focus on his work makes him block out and neglect important aspects of his life...including food :3

Exactly. Seo Dong-jae is the king of weasel, but he is very much predictable in his weaselyness. And I think that fact comforted Shi-mok somewhat even when he has to work together with the exasperating man. I just hope that Dong-jae wouldn't stumble onto something too dangerous in his persistent snooping. I suddenly have a bad feeling, especially after this whole suicide case.

Tbh I found him either annoying or pathetic most of the time in Season 1. He was just so hopeless at everything, even at being bad. But this season he seems to have become Dirt-Digger Extraordinaire. And although he's as self-serving as ever, at least it hasn't been at the expense of innocent people. So far.