Your Honor: Episodes 7-8

3 September 4, 2024September 4, 2024

by lovepark

A secret is revealed that changes the entire game, and those who deemed themselves players find out that they may have been pawns all along. However, things have escalated beyond what anyone could have predicted, and even if it costs them everything, neither father will back down if it means protecting their sons.

EPISODES 7-8

What if this tragedy started not as an accident but as revenge? This one question — a lingering doubt in Pan-ho’s mind — shifts the story this week from a father out to save his son to one about a broken family with opposing wills. Did Ho-young plan this attack, and if so, was the target his father, as well?

In the midst of all these schemers and chasers, there’s Ho-young, the catalyst that started this series of events, and as it turns out, the true center of this tale. While the fathers occupy themselves with their own little cat-and-mouse game, Ho-young deepened his relationship with Eun to the point where the younger woman makes herself sick with worry over him. By the time anyone else realizes what he has done, it is too late to separate them.

His son’s duplicitous actions make Pan-ho reconsider the facts, and though a part of him claims that he would never act as an accomplice to murder, his fervent denial of the truth speaks otherwise. Even entertaining the thought makes Pan-ho react violently, but all signs point towards a grim reality where Ho-young orchestrated everything for vengeance.

In truth, Pan-ho’s world turned upside down two years earlier when his wife committed suicide. While volunteering, she crossed paths with Sang-hyuk who drugged and assaulted her. However, the courts dropped all charges against him, and as a result, she took her own life. After his mother’s passing, Ho-young attempted to follow her, but Pan-ho saved him then and plans to save him now, too.

That harrowing case also happens to be the reason for Detective Jang’s vendetta against Sang-hyuk, which then becomes the defense’s argument during the trials. Following Pan-ho’s advice, Kang-heon muddies the case by getting rid of key witnesses and planting fakes, but all this effort crumbles when Prosecutor Kang reveals her hidden card: Detective Jang.

The night Pan-ho thought she perished, Detective Jang had already realized who the true hit-and-run culprit was and partnered with Prosecutor Kang. Thankfully, her team was on standby when the fake driver attacked her, and knowing that her life was in danger, they decided to pretend she died until the time was right.

Unfortunately, Detective Jang and Prosecutor Kang are not the only ones who know the truth since Kang-heon finally figures out the identity of the asthma patient, as well. However, Kang-heon cannot harm Ho-young yet since both his children’s lives are tied to the boy’s fate, so instead, he takes this knowledge to Pan-ho and asks the question our judge has been dreading: was it all intentional?

Unwilling to admit the truth, Pan-ho diverts Kang-heon’s attention by revealing his own pain wrought by Sang-hyuk’s actions and tries to convince the latter — and possibly himself — that everything was a coincidence. Ho-young happened to be on the same road as Kang-heon’s second son that morning, and it was by chance that he got close to his precious youngest daughter. When said aloud, it sounds so desperate, like a fool’s errand to hide the sun with his hands.

Pan-ho manages to buy himself some time by bargaining with Kang-heon, but that means his secondary plan with Boss Jo must be put on hold. He gets in touch with her in time before her men strike Kang-heon, but even cornered, our steely gangster remains calm, confident in his own powers. As for Pan-ho, his other lifeline (aka, the Blue House) also gets cut, leaving him marooned with no exit in sight.

Following Pan-ho’s advice, Kang-heon uses Assemblyman Jung to approach Cheong-kang and sow seeds of dissent. They convince the young man to retract his statement, and without his testimony, the prosecution falls apart. While Detective Jang and Prosecutor Kang bemoan their impending loss, the former comes to a realization that may turn the tides. If their opponents play dirty, so will she.

Detective Jang meets up with Pan-ho and offers to exchange one truth for another. If he declares Sang-hyuk guilty, then she will bury Ho-young’s crime. She needs his answer now, but unbeknownst to Detective Jang, her hasty action was the push that Pan-ho needed to gain clarity. Just when he thought he had lost, he understood after hearing her threat that he only ever had one goal: to save his son. With that in mind, Pan-ho calls Kang-heon’s secretary for a favor, and then in front of Detective Jang, he asks her for a way to smuggle his family out of the country after the trial.

Once he returns home, Pan-ho faces his son and the reality he tried to shun. He asks Ho-young why he did it when he, himself, tried so hard to save him, but Ho-young argues that Pan-ho forced him to live a life worse than death. He wanted Kang-heon to experience the same pain, admitting that he did cause the accident on purpose, and he points out that the one who truly wants to live is not him but his father. As Pan-ho hears his son’s wish, he tells him that no matter what, he will keep him alive.

Episode 7 opened with a flashback mirroring the one from last week — one of the many parallels the show likes to use — revealing an interesting similarity yet key difference between the two sons. While Sang-hyuk would kill others for his family, Ho-young would kill himself for his. Both fathers would do anything to protect their sons, and the show makes it clear that no boundaries exist that either will not cross. However, that misguided desire to save their sons is what ultimately brought upon this tragedy since Kang-heon’s inability to let his son face consequences caused the death of Ho-young’s mother, and Pan-ho’s refusal to address his son’s hurt caused him to seek revenge at the cost of his own life. The fathers have enabled their sons to wreak havoc, and even now, their lack of self-reflection and accountability continues this cycle of hurt.

All this could be stopped if Kang-heon would allow Sang-hyuk to be punished, but his own hubris would never let him bend. In the same vein, I agree somewhat with Ho-young that Pan-ho acts not to solely save his son but himself. He wishes to keep his son alive, which I would never fault a parent for, but Pan-ho’s actions have gone beyond that to an obsessive degree of control and madness. Pan-ho craves power even if he does not admit it to himself, and it’s this denial that pushed Ho-young away. Rather than admit the court is flawed and accept his own mistakes in the process, Pan-ho upholds the law as untouchable, which only signifies to Ho-young that his mother was a liar who abandoned her son. As a result, so many innocent bystanders have died and will continue to die because both fathers would rather let the world burn than lose their son.

With the reveal of Ho-young’s true intentions, his actions become more insidious, and the uneasy feeling he brought to the screen from the very beginning was deliberate. However, while I do think his relationship with Eun was premeditated, I’m still unsure of how exactly he planned the accident with Sang-hyeon. From the scene in Episode 1, it did look like an accident, but maybe that was all a lie to fool the audience along with Pan-ho. Whether or not Ho-young crashed into the motorcycle on purpose or not, his actions afterwards were still conscious choices he made to hurt Kang-heon as well as his father, and because of his selfish desire for revenge, he has caused so much loss and pain to others.

Though I sympathize with Ho-young and the trauma he must have endured, I find him deplorable as a character. His haphazard plan led to so many deaths, and while he isn’t directly responsible for them, his lack of remorse for what his overall actions cost makes him terrifying. Pan-ho claims that he would let the world collapse if he could save Ho-young, but it seems that his son is the one toppling over the tower with everyone still in it.

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1 korfan

September 5, 2024 at 1:14 AM

I may be wrong, but now I'm wondering if Ho-young crashed into the motorcycle thinking he wouldn't survive the impact along with his intended victim. Of course, this isn't what happened.

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2 miso

September 5, 2024 at 7:56 AM

The whole background turned out to be so much worse than I had expected. Sang-hyuk is disgusting but I agree that Ho-young is equally terrifying. In this whole revenge game, the innocent keep suffering. The Judge's wife, the grandma, the child and now probably Eun too.