Insider: Episodes 7-8

by solstices

Our hero’s enemies are hot on his tail, and they’ll stop at nothing to bring him down. Still, that doesn’t faze him, and a trip out of prison yields him the answer he’s been looking for — but with it comes a shocking revelation that shakes him to his core.

 
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP

Yo-han sniffs around Shinseondong, trying to figure out who the elusive members are. He approaches the inmate that works as a delivery helper for Shinseondong, except the old man coldly rebuffs him, claiming to despise gamblers. He’s CHAIRMAN DO (Moon Sung-geun), and there’s history between him and Soo-yeon, but he’s since cast her aside.

Soo-yeon finally discovers the whereabouts of the little boy she’s been tracking down. His name is WOO MIN-HO (Kim Min-seung), and he’s at an orphanage — except Jae-sun is currently volunteering there. Worse yet, Jae-sun has put a tail on her, so she can’t do much to help Yo-han for the time being.

That means it’s up to Yo-han to make the moves, and he sneaks into the warden’s office to steal his computer. With the help of Seung-hwan, he decodes the accounts and discovers a series of suspicious deposits.

Yo-han realizes that the deposit dates coincide with major events in the political and corporate world; the warden has been receiving slush funds, then paying an inmate to do the dirty work.

Using this information as leverage, Yo-han convinces Chairman Do to give the job to him instead. Chairman Do relents, and tells him that he just has to make a delivery. With that, Yo-han obtains a temporary leave permit, and he’s back in the outside world.

Yo-han follows his instructions dutifully, picking up an envelope and bringing it to the delivery point. Except that puts him face-to-face with the gambling den owner JO HAE-DO (Han Jae-young), who’s still hungry for revenge.

Chairman Do left out an important piece of information — it isn’t a mere delivery, but an exchange. His underlings drag out a beaten-up lawyer for Yo-han to collect, but Hae-do is out for Yo-han’s blood.

Thankfully, the lawyer helps Yo-han by distracting Hae-do, and they escape. Yo-han hands the injured lawyer over to Soo-yeon, who has managed to shake her tail. In exchange, she passes him information on Min-ho, along with a fake police ID.

Yo-han locates Min-ho at the orphanage, but Hae-do shows up yet again, having slipped a tracker into Yo-han’s pocket. Groan. They fight, and Yo-han yells for Min-ho to run away — except the little boy returns with a fire extinguisher that he uses to knock Hae-do out cold.

The pair run to the parking lot, and Min-ho plaintively asks Yo-han to save his dad. He reveals that the person who kidnapped him and his dad, and who killed Yo-han’s grandmother, are one and the same.

Yo-han manages to shake Hae-do’s pursuit with a folded card to the eye, but their escape is soon thwarted by a car — one that drives right over Min-ho. Oh god.

Out steps YANG HWA (Jung Man-shik), the older brother of Chairman Yang and the true leader of Doo-chul’s Bugyeongpa gang. He’s here to claim the envelope, and when Soo-yeon shows up just in time for Yo-han to scramble into her car, Hwa climbs onto its hood and starts battering against the windshield.

Soo-yeon manages to shake him off (quite literally), but Jae-sun is hot on her heels. He forces her to pull over, thinking he’s caught Yo-han on an illegal trip out of prison — but it’s Ro-sa sitting in the passenger seat. Phew!

Yo-han makes his way back to prison, where Chairman Do rebukes him for getting Soo-yeon involved and antagonizing Jae-sun. Not all is lost, though; Min-ho’s been taken to the hospital, and Soo-yeon’s found out that the injured lawyer is GU BON-CHUL (Hong Seo-joon), one of Chairman Do’s men.

Soo-yeon finally gives Yo-han (and us) the full rundown on the evil Yang brothers — having started out as fraudsters, then gangsters, they set up a company called The Skin Nation to establish legitimacy. Their avarice eventually led to a forceful takeover of Chairman Do’s casino, which was a front for money laundering.

As long as their pockets could continue being filled, the powerful people nicknamed the “Deep Pockets” didn’t care. Not only did they toss Chairman Do in jail once he was no longer useful, but they also bought over the prosecutors to protect the Yang brothers. Greed knows no bounds, huh?

Determined to take Yo-han down by any means necessary, Jae-sun requests for visitations with the inmates surrounding him. All of them turn him down, but it catches the attention of Tae-hoon, who offers up information in exchange for ruining Yo-han’s life.

With that, Jae-sun launches a search and seizure on the prison, hoping to catch the gamblers red-handed. Still, he’s no match for the level-headed Seung-hwan, who evacuates the VIPs and burns the evidence in the nick of time.

Unfortunately, traces of scorched cards and charred chips remain, and that’s enough to justify an overhaul of the prison staff. Under the new warden’s directions, our main crew is evicted from the infirmary and sent back to regular cells.

That means Yo-han returns to Doo-chul’s cell, and his old cellmates are still seething over his betrayal. They move to attack, but Sun-oh’s training pays off — Yo-han holds his own despite being sorely outnumbered.

Henchman Gil-sang attempts to take Yo-han’s life with a sharpened toothbrush, but Yo-han’s quick reflexes means that the weapon finds its mark in Doo-chul’s neck instead. The other minions all pin the murder on Yo-han, though, which gives the new warden an excuse to transfer Yo-han to Jangsong prison (thus isolating him from his current gambling network).

Yo-han seeks help from Chairman Do, who offers to get Jae-sun and the murder charge off his back — but only if Yo-han kills someone for him once he’s released. Ever principled, Yo-han scoffs and walks out.

Yo-han can’t just shelve his revenge plan, though. Especially not when he’s discovered a new, shocking piece of information — Min-ho gave him the login credentials to his private social media account, and on it is a video of the masked murderer that killed Yo-han’s grandmother.

Except the man removes his mask to reveal his face, and ohmygod. It’s Sun-oh?! Nooooo. There has to be a twist somewhere, right? Right??

Yo-han is as devastated by this turn of events as I am, and it makes him recall a past memory. He’d found Sun-oh gazing somberly at the moon one night, and when Sun-oh explained that he’d never had the chance to prepare a memorial service for his late father, Yo-han took it upon himself to put together a makeshift one.

He patiently guided a clueless Sun-oh through the motions, and oh, the look in Sun-oh’s eyes — I’m tearing up. Show, why would you tear apart the bromance like this!

Perhaps it’s unfounded faith due to how invested I’ve gotten in Sun-oh’s character, but I hope there’s more to this reveal than what it appears to be. Sun-oh had to claw his way up from rock bottom, which means there must have been plenty to exploit that could force him into doing someone else’s bidding.

Time and time again we’ve had the rug pulled out from under us, with intimidating antagonists turning out to be mere small fry compared to the bigwigs pulling the strings behind them. The web of the powerful extends further and deeper than what’s visible on the surface, and so I’m reserving judgment until the fog of mystery clears up a little more.

 
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