[Drama 2018-2019] Children of Nobody/Red Moon, Blue Sun, 붉은달 푸른해

[ktcjdrama]

2 hours ago, thistle said:

 

Although I've enjoyed this series, I'm kinda ready for it to be over.  It breaks my heart too much.

That's how I've been feeling too since the last episode... not sure about wanting a season 2 now... I just hope there will be a good wrap up of the story and the message clearly conveyed, so I won't feel a need for season 2. 

 

Reading the recent posts made me mourn for the death of LEH again... why can't he be given a chance to heal...  

[thistle]

26 minutes ago, ktcjdrama said:

Reading the recent posts made me mourn for the death of LEH again... why can't he be given a chance to heal...  

 

I also think that was the most heartbreaking thing.  Everyone else, especially the children, has a chance at the future despite the things that have happened but LEH has had no chance in life at all--not ever in the past and now there will never be any in the future.  It is beyond sad.

[cyan5tarlight]

Ah, hello @kumakumo, wasn't expecting to see you here! Thanks for the awesome analysis! Honestly, the whole thing was extremely interesting and well-written, and I agree with basically all of it, especially the reason why Eunho decided to kill Wookyung. Just taking into account the info that we have available to us right now, it makes far too much sense that YTJ was using Eunho, and realizing that his brother was doing to him emotionally what the director was doing to him physically was probably one of the things that started Eunho down the self-destructive path to choosing to commit suicide by cop. T_T Everyone he ever thought loved him, everyone he ever trusted in his life ended up betraying and using him in the end. That knowledge would be enough to destroy any person, tbh. I just... I wish Wookyung could have got to him sooner. That she could have shown him enough true compassion and unselfish kindness to give him enough strength to break away from his abusers and discover a better way to live before his pain ended up consuming him.

 

 

@liddi, @bedifferent I don't think you have to worry about the narrative being reluctant to condemn Eunho's actions and paint him as this complete and total victim regardless of how the finale turns out, though. I think they've made it quite clear that whatever sad circumstances led to his ultimate fate, whatever forces that persuaded him that this was the right course of action to take, it was still ultimately Eunho's choice to commit those murders, and it was still wrong for him to do so. I do think, however, that by showing the perpetrator of these murders to be such a pitiable and sympathetic person with understandable motives, they create cognitive dissonance in the viewer, and force us all to reexamine our own beliefs and biases. What he did was wrong, will always be wrong, but we can't bring ourselves hate the man himself for doing what he did because we understand why he did it, you know? Ultimately, he was just a child in pain, and all he could see were other children in pain. I think that's a way more nuanced course of action to take than just painting all of Red Cry with broad brushstrokes of "All these people are just straight-up psychopaths, end of story." Bitna's mom. The doctor. All the other people that make up the group. They're all varying shades of grey, none of them utterly beyond sympathy or redemption. Regardless of whether YTJ turns out to be on the lighter side or almost black remains to be seen, but whatever course of action the show decides to take, that it took the time to be this varied in its approaches to the different members of the Red Cry organization shows a level of sophistication that most shows wouldn't take. That's just my two cents on the matter, tho.

 

 

@thistleI understand your feelings about not believing that Eunho could be the murderer. Ultimately, though, they've explicitly shown us that he was responsible for the deaths of Hana's mom, Sora's dad, and the head director, so unless the narrative was flat-out lying to us in the flashbacks pertaining to Hana's mom and Sora's dad, I think it's pretty safe to say that he did indeed kill those individuals. Now, I'm not convinced he was responsible for killing Hana's father (remember, he didn't confess to it!), and he definitely wasn't the one to beat up Jiheon or kill Siwan's dad, so I do think that there was at least one another individual in charge of killing people in a more violent fashion, and Eunho wasn't responsible for everything. So there is that at least.

 

 

12 hours ago, kumakumo said:

It's no wonder he's only comfortable with kids. They're probably the only ones he can count on to not betray him.

  

In the end, I think EH is going to end up becoming an example of a victim of the abuse trifecta: sexual, physical, and emotional. 

 

Quote

I also think that was the most heartbreaking thing.  Everyone else, especially the children, has a chance at the future despite the things that have happened but LEH has had no chance in life at all--not ever in the past and now there will never be any in the future.  It is beyond sad.

 

God, you all are bound and determined to utterly shatter my heart over this poor character all over again, aren't you. Urge to write... fix-it fic... rising...!

[bebebisous33]

@kumakumo Welcome to this forum and thread! 

I read your detailed analysis with great interest and I have to say that you convinced me that LEH might have been talking about his biological brother, when CWK thought that he was talking the family Song. Your observations convinced me that Yoon had a huge influence on him and used his blood relationship as a point to join his side. LEH might have realized that YTJ did manipulate him just like the family Song but until that conversation at the police station, he was somehow convinced that his "actions" were not wrong as he did save children. Don't forget that he helped KMG in the boy A case before meeting his brother. So in my opinion, he had already started to help abused children before but Yoon might have guided him in a different direction. So in my opinion, LEH didn't just need to meet someone like his brother to become active. I agree with @liddi that LEH wasn't just a victim that's why he considered himself as dirty. The question is: who tortured and killed HN's father? Yoon or LEH... LEH was definitely a willing accomplice who had been misguided but he knew about the consequences of his actions. Brainwashing is too strong in my opinion. To conclude, he is more than a victim... he is definitely grey. By killing himself, LEH might have also tried to stop his brother from continuing his work, well aware that CWK could become his next recruit hence LEH warned her. But her words about her daughter had an effect on him. I do think that he was thinking of his brother, when he went to that lighthouse to die. He was telling him to stop. 

 

I do feel sorry for LEH because if only one good adult had been on his side... he wouldn't have ended up like that. 

[larus]

36 minutes ago, bebebisous33 said:

I do feel sorry for LEH because if only one good adult had been on his side... he wouldn't have ended up like that. 

 I do feel sorry for him, especially knowing that his biological brother was a therapist. Now the question is how broken was Yoon Tae-Joo to became a vigilante, to live this double life. It seems that he came back to Korea with a vengence himself.

 

 

[liddi]

As expected, KJH is mourning LEH's death as much as everyone on this thread...

 

 

[thistle]

5 hours ago, cyan5tarlight said:

 

@thistleI understand your feelings about not believing that Eunho could be the murderer. Ultimately, though, they've explicitly shown us that he was responsible for the deaths of Hana's mom, Sora's dad, and the head director, so unless the narrative was flat-out lying to us in the flashbacks pertaining to Hana's mom and Sora's dad, I think it's pretty safe to say that he did indeed kill those individuals. Now, I'm not convinced he was responsible for killing Hana's father (remember, he didn't confess to it!), and he definitely wasn't the one to beat up Jiheon or kill Siwan's dad, so I do think that there was at least one another individual in charge of killing people in a more violent fashion, and Eunho wasn't responsible for everything. So there is that at least.

 

Although I'm sure that you are likely correct, I'm going to hang onto my delusion to the end.  That's partly because I'm just stubborn like that  but also mostly because I really need to hold onto some hope for goodness until we see the end of Children of Nobody.  If LEH had turned completely evil, what hope would there be for anyone?  I have to wait to see how all the threads are tied together at the ending.

 

(To be fair, I was also like this when I was watching Time; I absolutely refused

Spoiler

to be convinced that the male lead was really truly dead until the ending.....and he had already been dead for several episodes.)

 

[larus]

VIXX’s N And Lee Yi Kyung Show Off Adorable Bromance Behind The Scenes Of “Children Of Nobody"

by K. Lew

VIXX’s N and Lee Yi Kyung make the cutest pair of co-stars behind the scenes of “Children of Nobody”!

The two actors are currently appearing together in MBC’s “Children of Nobody,” a mystery thriller that follows child psychologist Cha Woo Kyung (played by Kim Sun Ah) as she embarks on a journey to discover the truth behind a strange car accident through poetry.

In newly released behind-the-scenes photos, Lee Yi Kyung and N, who respectively play a detective and serial killer in the drama, show just how different their interactions are on and off-camera. Far from being enemies, the two stars are the picture of an adorable bromance as they joke around on set and even monitor their acting together.

more https://www.soompi.com/article/1292015wpp/vixxs-n-lee-yi-kyung-show-off-adorable-bromance-behind-scenes-children-nobody

[kumakumo]

15 hours ago, thistle said:

I know that facts seem otherwise but I still can't accept that LEH did the murders.  I can't.  Yes, maybe the old director but that was a crime of passion and that can happen.  But the other murders, I just can't.

I actually agree with you about LEH not committing the murders. It's never sat right with me that throughout this show we've seen that LEH really is genuinely a good person and even after his death people keep saying he doesn't seem like the type to murder. Plus, I feel like it goes against the narrative that he's been trying to push that just because you have a tragic past it doesn't mean you'll become a monster from it.

 

Fortunately, I once again have a bunch of clues that LEH may have been the accomplice/cover-up guy, but not the actual murderer lol

 

1. The previous cases were closed with the verdict that Red Cry was the culprit, not LEH specifically. The only reason LEH was deemed Red Cry was because there's undeniable evidence that he was involved in all the crimes and this was before JH realized that there were two people behind the Red Cry name. We've yet to have any solid evidence that LEH actually committed murder.

 

2. There are several factors about Ha Na's mother's death that don't add up. I think we all agree that by all logic, Ha Na's mom was more a victim of abuse herself than a child abuser. She grew up homeless with some kind of disability that makes her unable to speak, lived in the dog butcher's outdoor shed, likely only had children because she was raped by dog butcher, and yet still had the desire to become a good mother and the sense to escape with Ha Na when the little sister was murdered. It strikes me as odd that a women who spent her whole life living off dumpsters in the streets would all of a sudden get the idea to search for a conveniently unlocked storage room in a children's center to live in hiding with her child. We also know now that LEH's first encounter with her was on the streets, not the center. Logically speaking, as a building maintenance worker with keys to all the rooms in the building, wouldn't LEH have to have been the one to set her up in the unused storage room? Also, during the investigation they mentioned that someone went through a lot of effort to erase all traces of a child having lived in the storage room. If the mission of Red Cry was to punish child abusers, why did LEH try to hide the fact that she had a child?  Not to mention, I can't believe he would make a young child watch their parent die right in front of their eyes...

 

3.  LEH definitely didn't kill Ha Na's father. There was way too much going on that night for one person to be able to do all alone. Tae Joo probably started the fight with the father before dragging him outside to torture the exact location of the sister's skeleton out of him, which is when LEH came in to drug Ha Na before she could hear her father's screams and take her to safety. He also must have searched the house for the watch to alert the police to come since LEH is the only one of the two that witnessed Captain Hong giving it to her.

 

4. Not only did LEH not explicitly confess to Ha Na's father's murder, but he also connected his murder with the murder of Mr. Yoon when he tipped the press off about the director. Everyone knows that Mr. Yoon's murder had nothing to do with Red Cry so why would he do that? And if he wanted to make the director a scapegoat why would he only mention 1 of the Red Cry murders and leave out the child abuse part on top of that? He must have done so to give the police reason to re-examine the case, likely because there's critical evidence at that specific crime scene that can be used to incriminate his brother. Which brings me to....

 

5. The shoes! He left only two things in his room for JH to find- the envelope with the CCTV footage and the pair of shoes we assumed were his. The shoes have no blood on them and as far as I can tell the laces are not done up weirdly like the director's were, which means either LEH got his shoes dry cleaned just to leave them behind or this is an intentional clue for JH that there was another pair of shoes involved in the murder of Ha Na's father. 

 

and finally...

 

6. The poems. I'm still working on this point because several of the poems are too difficult for me to translate, but I will say that, from what I've gathered so far, when you put the lines of poetry left at the crime scenes back into the context of their original poems they tend to have a much different meaning from what they initially appeared to have. For instance, everyone assumed the Leper poem was indicating child abuse, but actually it's a very sad poem about a desperate leper that believes his only hope for a cure is to eat a baby, However, once he does so he's so horrified by the terrible act he'd done that he grieves red cries all night. I've got a suspicion that the poetry lines may not have been referring to the victims, but I'll write another post on what I mean by that later once I've finished looking at them. 

[bedifferent]

@cyan5tarlight  The show has been stressing on the word “choice”.  Do these abused children have the choice like other children? Do the parents and adults have the choice to not inflict violent?  Do they have the choice to love?  Did the abused children have the support and care to let them know they have the choice apart from the present?  Yes, ultimately it comes down to the choice to disengage and walk away from the unhealthy and violent circumstances as an adult.  Unfortunately, some adults are still struggling as broken children.  So tragic and sad.

 

For Eunho, I too wish that he knew before he died that he does belong, that’s he’s somebody. That he is loved by others besides the mother who abandoned him and the brother who abused his loyalty.

 

I still believe in what I said before about the drama ending with those involved taking the first steps in healing.  It cannot end in a hopeless cliff hanger for those lives that were lost, Eunho, the parents, little SK... did not fail to make a difference for those living.  The mistakes that were made, the misfortunes that trapped these children, their lost cannot be forgotten without impacting anyone. RC maybe resurrected or live on... to serve as a warning for us to be vigilant as a society to help these children.

[cyan5tarlight]

@kumakumo While you may certainly be right about Eunho not being the culprit... idk, I'm not convinced that that's what the show's trying to convey, especially with just one episode left. After all, what about Sora's dad? We see Eunho in the car getting him drunk, we see the match dropping onto the charcoal, and we see him get out of the car and flip his hood up. I mean, that looks like pretty damning evidence to me. We also have seen how angry he can get when he was destroying the poetry books, just as Wookyung has this festering rage hiding deep inside her that even she isn't always aware of, just waiting to be unleashed, like when she grabbed the knife in the kitchen or began repeatedly slapping Sukwoo's mom. Even if he "doesn't seem the type" to kill, you can't always judge a book by its cover. Just look at all the different perpetrators of abuse we've seen throughout the show. Did Bitna's mom seem the type to violently beat her child? Did the Head Director seem the child-molesting type?

 

I also don't think making him a culprit makes him any less the genuinely kind, sweet, gentle person we saw interact with the kids all throughout the rest of the show. While the saying "cool motive, still murder" is always applicable to situations like this because the person is still dead regardless of the intent, I still think that motive still does play a role in how culpable someone is for the crimes they commit. A destitute person who steals a loaf of bread to feed their starving child is different than someone who steals designer makeup because they just want it, you know? Yes, they both stole, but the reasoning behind the crime makes one person understandable while the other just comes out looking like an entitled @$$hole. Eunho killed because he was a traumatized, deeply broken individual who just wanted to save the children he loved so much who were suffering, and because of his own past (and possibly because of outside influence *side-eyes YTJ some more*), he could literally see no other way to spare them a lifetime of pain than to cut off that source of pain at the root, because if he didn't act, who would? Compare that with someone like the director, who killed someone in a fit of violent passion over money and then expected someone else to take the fall for him. Murder is still wrong, regardless, but hopefully this shows how someone like Eunho can still come out of it as sympathetic to the general audience while someone like the director notably does not.

 

And I wouldn't say him being at least one of the culprits would go against what the show's trying to convey. It's true that if you have a tragic past, it's not a given that it's going to change and warp you into an extremist yourself, but at the same time, I think that's the struggle that Wookyung is going through, not Eunho. I think that Eunho is the show's cautionary tale figure, while Wookyung is what can happen if someone in that position has the support around them to lift themselves out of that cycle and find a better way. (Doesn't mean I'm not still bitter about him not getting the chance to heal and have a future, though, they could have at least let him live, dammit.) I mean, why else would Eunho have been so clearly rattled by Wookyung's declaration that he was a murderer if he hadn't actually killed anyone after all?

 

Those were confirmed to be the director's shoes in Eunho's room, though, if I'm not mistaken? I think Sooyoung confirmed it when she was talking to Jiheon. I mean, there were no traces of blood OR dirt on them when they were analyzed, and even if Eunho wasn't the one to kill Hana's father, he still would have gotten his shoes filthy tramping around the farm. Even if he washed them, there should still be traces. Plus, it doesn't really make sense for Eunho and his accomplice to play musical chairs with three pairs of shoes. How would that have gone down, anyway? "Hey bro, I need your shoes, gotta put them in the director's closet, you'll just need to walk home barefoot." "K." Of course, I could be wrong about this particular point, but still, I'm dubious.

 

While I also am totally not surprised to hear that the lines of the poems have a completely different meaning in the original context, it was actually speculated before the big reveal by another poster who I think studies criminal profiling that the person leaving the poetry has a high-school level education at best, because they don't have a deeper understanding of the poems they use and aren't trained to analyze them; they simply take out snippets that seem applicable at first glance and apply them to their own life and circumstances at will. Lo and behold, what is Eunho? A blue-collar worker with no higher education, who is only familiar with so much poetry because his abuser had him read it to him constantly. What a coincidence.

 

I also think that in this point in time, revealing that Eunho wasn't at least partially responsible would make me feel... betrayed. Not by the character, but by the narrative itself. I don't mind if something a character says turns out to be untrue or not, because it was my decision to interpret their words the way I did, and if the show hadn't shown us flashbacks and just shown us Eunho talking with Wookyung in the car while he was confessing, I'd be right there with the rest of you guys in going "Yeah, he's 100% totally innocent, he's covering for someone else for sure." But they did show us flashbacks, and when the narrative explicitly sets up a plotline on screen, and then goes, "Well, actually, no, that didn't happen, even though we showed it to you and you had no reason to suspect that may have been anything other than what actually happened," I get annoyed. Because at that point, it's not foreshadowing, it's straight up lying to your audience for simple shock value. It's bad writing. With the dog butcher, I do think they're setting up that Eunho didn't kill him, because of the fact that we did not hear him confess to it, and we see him not wearing his good person mask at some points during the flashback, but with Hana's mom and Sora's dad? I will call bull$h!t if they psyche us out with those incidents, because they showed them to us on screen. I do definitely think Eunho's taking the fall for someone, though, and is letting people believe that he killed more people than he did or was the sole perpetrator of the crimes.

 

But again, this could all be rendered moot by the next episode, who knows. I honestly think I'll be dead by Wednesday, regardless of what actually ends up happening, lol.

[liddi]

@kumakumo Thank you for your fascinating analysis, which makes for a very compelling argument for LEH not doing any killings. Definitely interested to hear your theories about the different meaning of the poems.

 

Some thoughts about the points you raised...

 

From what I remember, LEH first saw Hana and her mother via CCTV footage inside the center, then later found them rummaging through dumpsters. Hence, my impression was always that they were already living in the center before he first found them. I did have questions about why he seemed surprised that the one who died in the storage room was a woman. Nonetheless, if he was the one who tenderly placed Hana in the compound of Dreamland Orphanage, there was no way he could not have known the one who died was Hana's mother, so it could have been just a ploy to throw suspicion off himself. As such, I can only conclude that either YTJ killed Hana's mother and tasked him with placing her in safe hands, or LEH did the deed himself.

 

From the footage, the one with bloodied shoes and latex gloves appeared to be the same person who tortured GSH and subdued Hana, before continuing on the grisly carving of the poem in GSH's back. My only doubt comes from the one who attacked GSH first, since he was seen wearing grey gloves. Was this indicative of another person's presence, or yet another production error? 

 

I beg to differ about the shoes left behind for KJH along with the incriminating CCTV footage. These are definitely Director Song's shoes, which were wrongly returned to LEH after he was exonerated - the pattern of which can be seen clearer below, and makes sense that it would be free of blood.

 

It is noteworthy that the leaked press release, indeed any of the crime scenes, never overtly spoke of child abuse or left traces of any child that was rescued. Could this be Red Cry's MO all along - to save the children without drawing attention to the children themselves, merely quietly providing a better environment free from their abusers. Perhaps this was due to the mindset that highlighting the child as abused, is merely to reinforce the trauma that they had gone through without the opportunity to move on. Just my 2 cents.

 

One hour left... wonder if there will be enough time to answer all the questions we have convincingly, on top of CWK's own arc? Please let it be so.

[cyan5tarlight]

25 minutes ago, bedifferent said:

The show has been stressing on the word “choice”.  Do these abused children have the choice like other children? Do the parents and adults have the choice to not inflict violent?  Do they have the choice to love?  Did the abused children have the support and care to let them know they have the choice apart from the present?  Yes, ultimately it comes down to the choice to disengage and walk away from the unhealthy and violent circumstances as an adult.  Unfortunately, some adults are still struggling as broken children.  So tragic and sad.

 

For Eunho, I too wish that he knew before he died that he does belong, that’s he’s somebody. That he is loved by others besides the mother who abandoned him and the brother who abused his loyalty

 

Well said, @bedifferent. People always have a choice in how they deal with their trauma, but at the same time, if someone isn't even aware that there is another way to handle their pain, if they weren't taught that growing up or learned it as an adult, then can they be fully blamed for the coping mechanisms they use to deal with it until they do finally have the opportunity to be shown the correct way to manage their trauma? Food for thought.

 

I also really, truly hope that the show ends with the first steps to healing taking place, for the surviving characters to begin moving on from their trauma while honoring those who died before they were able to. Perhaps that's why Eunho and Siwan's little sister were placed together in Eunho's teaser poster. It's too late for them, now, but not too late for the people whose lives they touched to start making a real difference in the world, and to make sure what happened to them doesn't happen to other children.

 

[liddi]

19 hours ago, 0timelost said:

Just throwing this idea out there, but do you think LEH's brother, Dr. Yoon, is abused as well? Could he have roped LEH into his plan by convincing him that they shared the same past and therefore, they should work together to protect others from danger? 

 

11 hours ago, larus said:

 I do feel sorry for him, especially knowing that his biological brother was a therapist. Now the question is how broken was Yoon Tae-Joo to became a vigilante, to live this double life. It seems that he came back to Korea with a vengence himself.

 

@0timelost @larus You raise an interesting point, and it is possible that apart from abandonment, YTJ himself could have suffered abuse as well. His adoptive father's post mentioned the following:

"At first John did not try to tell what happened to him when he was in Korea. It was not for his poor English. There was something worse that we could not even expect."

and

"After we noticed what had happened to John, we tried our best to cure him that he can get over those bad memories in Korea."

 

It could well be that his trauma went far past just abandonment alone, but perhaps even physical and emotional abuse, which pushed him over the edge to ultimately assume the persona of Red Cry.

[thistle]

50 minutes ago, bedifferent said:

.....I still believe in what I said before about the drama ending with those involved taking the first steps in healing.  It cannot end in a hopeless cliff hanger for those lives that were lost, Eunho, the parents, little SK... did not fail to make a difference for those living.  The mistakes that were made, the misfortunes that trapped these children, their lost cannot be forgotten without impacting anyone. RC maybe resurrected or live on... to serve as a warning for us to be vigilant as a society to help these children.

 

This is the ending that I am hoping for:  that some good will come and that healing will begin.

 

I think that this drama has two warnings that we should heed:

• that we watch out for and protect children in jeopardy; this means being cautious to exercise common sense as to what is and what is not abuse (like the current ridiculous epidemic of social services reports here in the US where parents have been jailed simply for allowing their children outside alone or for allowing them to walk to school)
• that we should never go beyond being vigilant to becoming vigellantes.  Even though Red Cry may be based on good intentions, the actions that resulted were wrong and should not have been allowed to happen.

We also cannot ignore the fact that some families seem intelligent, lively, and loving when the absolute opposite is true. I could tell you more than you would ever want to know about that. 

 

It's a sad and scary world.  The only actions we can really take responsibility for are our own.  And many times the only thing we can do is to clean up the mess that others have made of our own lives and the lives of others.

 

 

29 minutes ago, cyan5tarlight said:

 

Well said, @bedifferent. People always have a choice in how they deal with their trauma, but at the same time, if someone isn't even aware that there is another way to handle their pain, if they weren't taught that growing up or learned it as an adult, then can they be fully blamed for the coping mechanisms they use to deal with it until they do finally have the opportunity to be shown the correct way to manage their trauma? Food for thought.....

 

There are those who do not know what is abnormal and what is not, who do not know what is love and what is harm.  Too much time is spent on warning children in this regard; it is the parents who require education. 

 

For years I have wondered why people have to get a license to to drive or to get married but anyone can have children with no training or emotional support whatsoever.  We assume that everyone is "normal" and should be allowed to do whatever they wish but some parents may be incapable from the start.  Certainly I am not saying that we should curtail individual right to freedom but I do think that the necessary rights for safety and security of children should not be ignored.

 

I don't think that LEH really knew how very damaged and vulnerable he was.  Maybe he forgot until the old director demanded "comfort."  And he had no idea of how to manage his own trauma properly.  He was a good person who was harmed.  But he was not harmed beyond repair.  

 

 

[0timelost]

6 hours ago, liddi said:

@kumakumo

From the footage, the one with bloodied shoes and latex gloves appeared to be the same person who tortured GSH and subdued Hana, before continuing on the grisly carving of the poem in GSH's back. My only doubt comes from the one who attacked GSH first, since he was seen wearing grey gloves. Was this indicative of another person's presence, or yet another production error? 

 

 

I think both Red Cry are at work. The older brother is the one with the blue glove (completing the torture scene and murder) and LEH is the one with the gray glove (knocking the father out, calming Ha Na, and carving the body).

 

6 hours ago, liddi said:

 

 

@0timelost @larus You raise an interesting point, and it is possible that apart from abandonment, YTJ himself could have suffered abuse as well. His adoptive father's post mentioned the following:

"At first John did not try to tell what happened to him when he was in Korea. It was not for his poor English. There was something worse that we could not even expect."

and

"After we noticed what had happened to John, we tried our best to cure him that he can get over those bad memories in Korea."

 

It could well be that his trauma went far past just abandonment alone, but perhaps even physical and emotional abuse, which pushed him over the edge to ultimately assume the persona of Red Cry.

 

Whoa! I don't know what I was watching because I missed that part. Yikes. Thanks for the insight, because I think it confirms something I was thinking of.

 

LEH was abused by the Senior Director of the orphanage...LEH and YTJ were sent to an orphanage and YTJ left the orphanage after a few months after he got adopted. Could YTJ suffered abused under the hand of the Senior Director when he was in the orphanage that scarred him? And when YTJ was adopted, the senior director turned his attention to LEH? If that is the case, could they have bonded because they suffered under the hands of the same abuser, and that's why they decided to take revenge against him and every child abuser in the world? Also, could YTJ be the one who set up to frame the director for being Red Cry instead of LEH, because even LEH told JH that he didn't think the director could be the killer (which would contradict with his motive to frame him if that was the case)?

[liddi]

@0timelost The one who calmed Hana was also wearing bloodied latex gloves. So, assuming we were to go by different gloves being worn by different people, the torture, carving and subduing of Hana were done by one person (with latex gloves), while the other (grey gloves) was only responsible for incapacitating GSH and preparing him for torture. As to who did what... based on what we already have seen of the grey gloves being similar to LEH's work gloves, and also the ones worn by the person who drugged ASW before burning the charcoal briquette, it would mean LEH attacked GSH first, and YTJ did the rest.

 

Wow... I forgot about YTJ being in the same orphanage for several months with his brother before being adopted to the US. In which case, it is definitely possible that he first suffered the old director's abuse, and only managed to get away from it due to his adoption. That would explain his utter hatred for abusers, and the driving purpose behind the establishment of Red Cry. Still... the final killing of the director was at LEH's hands, not his. Could it be because all that fury and hatred had been channelled into his crusade which provided him with cathartic release, while LEH needed to hand out that judgment himself?

[kumakumo]

@cyan5tarlight I'm not trying to say that Eunho isn't a culprit or responsible for the deaths, but for me this is more about getting justice for him as a victim of Red Cry himself. As it stands right now, he died a murderer that as far as the general public can tell was just as much on board with the idea of murdering and equal in status as the mastermind behind Red Cry as his brother. However, although I can easily see the brother not having remorse about killing, I can't see Eunho as being able to do so as easily as he told Wookyung he did. There's also the matter that because we we're never given solid evidence that Eunho killed (such as CCTV footage) there's no telling whether the flashback was truly a flashback or just a visual representation of the story that Eunho was trying to sell. The show did a similar thing with Hana's mother's death since, other than Hana saying she saw a good person, she never actually said anything about how her mother died or what exactly happened that night. The flashback we were given then was a visualization for the situation that Jiheon assumed happened, but it's possible that what we saw then was not actually the full/accurate story.

 

I totally get you though about feeling betrayed if the flashbacks we were given were not actually flashbacks. It does have a bit of a feeling of being pettily tricked if they go back and say, "Psyche! Something completely different happened!" But at the same time I can sort of forgive it because in a mystery genre you want things to come together because of facts and evidence not just assumptions and word of mouth.

 

I'd actually be willing to accept Eunho as the murderer in Sora's dad's and Hana's mother's cases, just not Hana's father's. The first two deaths were very hands-off killings and I can imagine Eunho being able to do them because they weren't cold-blood murder. The dad was already in the wrong for choosing to drink while on sleeping pills and could quite possibly have died on his own anyway had no one discovered him even without Eunho lighting the charcoal in the car. Similarly with Hana's mother, she was putting herself at dangerous risk in the first place by living in a dusty attic when she had severe asthma. She could have just as easily dropped the inhaler in a crevice somewhere and died from that at any point. I can see how someone without a predisposition to murder may be able to easily justify those murders to themselves by thinking they were just expediting the inevitable and that really it was the victims' own fault they died. But Hana's father's death was the first one that involved violence and torture, which is another reason why I think it was Tae Joo's doing and not Eunho's. Notably, the only cold-blood murder that it's certain Eunho committed was the one that he committed suicide after which, once again, proves to me that he wasn't as unaffected by the idea of murdering that he said he was.

 

As for the shoes, I don't think there's been a mention of them since the camera showed them with the envelope, but I could be wrong. The camera angle didn't give a clear shot of the laces so it's hard to tell whom they belong to. Either way, who's shoes they are doesn't matter so much as what the shoes themselves signify. The police would not be able to tell that there was a second culprit present at the dog farm if both of them were wearing the same size and type of shoe. It's likely that the shoes (which were craddling the envelope as if they themselves were part of the evidence btw) are meant to be a sign that Tae Joo could have also been wearing them that night. I also have a hunch that there's some kind of critical evidence hidden in the shoes (the dog farm's CCTV footage maybe?) that can be used to incriminate Tae Joo since because of the Black Chat app Jiheon isn't going to be able to get any concrete evidence out of searching his computer and phone.

 

When it comes to the poems, I'm honestly going to be super bummed if it turns out that there's no purpose behind the selection of the poems. It would feel like a major cop-out for me on the writer's part to take random snippets out of poems just so that she could use them in a completely different context and then dismiss the rest of the poem with some excuse like the character wasn't educated enough to understand them, especially since 3 of the 5 poems are very straightforward. If she was going to do that then she should have at least chosen angry or condemning poems. The thing is the poems she chose are anything but angry or condemning. In fact, they're kind of the complete opposite.

 

I already explained about the leper poem, so another short example is the one left behind at Hana's mother's crime scene. The line is from a poem called "The Unknown Warrior" and it's essentially about a soldier taking on the burden of the life of his enemy he took and wishing for the deceased to become everlasting by turning into a tree and reuniting with his mother in the skies. The very stanza he took his line from was "The rotten and corroded flesh/The weight of that flesh/in this time when I think of you/it becomes the weight of our own flesh\From the moment your entire body/becomes buried in the earth's soil/May your bones/become everlasting roots." The use of the line becomes even more peculiar when you take into consideration that he changed it to say "the weight of that crime."

 

The poem left behind for Seok Woo's mom before she was hit by the truck is odd in a similar fashion. The poem "You whom I cannot save" is about a priest who sees a person struggling with darkness within them but because they have decided to stand alone and turn their back on the world he can't save him no matter how much he wishes to. Instead he can only continue to send up futile prayers on his behalf. Again, not the kind of poem that you would expect to see at a murder scene.

 

I kind of doubt in the 1 hour we have left of the show that they're going to address the content of the poems, but you've got to admit it's a very intriguing collection of selections.

[thistle]

3 hours ago, kumakumo said:

.....I'm not trying to say that Eunho isn't a culprit or responsible for the deaths, but for me this is more about getting justice for him as a victim of Red Cry himself.....

 

 

I just had to clip out this statement because I think it's so interesting and insightful.  

 

Although I have not wanted to see LEH as a killer, I must admit that I failed to see him as a victim of Red Cry.  That is a very important point.

 

Red Cry's victims are not only the people that it has killed but also those who have to live with the trauma of what Red Cry has done.  Red Cry may have good intentions at first but the consequences are racking up and any potential good is spiralling downward.  Something like Red Cry must inevitably do more harm than good.

 

 

..............editing so that I won't post after myself.

 

Quoting from my own earlier post:

Quote

that we watch out for and protect children in jeopardy; this means being cautious to exercise common sense as to what is and what is not abuse (like the current ridiculous epidemic of social services reports here in the US where parents have been jailed simply for allowing their children outside alone or for allowing them to walk to school)

 

I happened to see an article just now on the BBC with this headline:

Police quiz dad after baby fed hot sauce

 

Isn't that a "click bait" title!?  In reading the article, however, I saw that not only was the title overblown but so was the report that was made to the police.  The incident was NOT abuse to the child but the repercussions could actually be seen as abusive to the parents!  

 

Here's a quote from the article:

Quote

(The father) said he was at a branch of TGI Fridays when he took hold of (the baby) to allow his partner to eat her food.

 

After wiping his hands on a napkin, he then put a knuckle in Ben's mouth to pacify him.

 

The baby made a "funny face", but did not scream or cry, he said.

 

Mr Dawson later wrote on Facebook: "Apparently five-day-old babies don't like it when their dads put their fingers in their mouths after eating hot wings. Unintentionally by the way. Lol."

 

Three days later police knocked on his door to ask if he had been feeding Ben hot sauce.

 

It is in making reports like this that we run the risk of becoming Red Cry.  

 

 

[liddi]

@thistle I agree. Red Cry, while driven by a worthy cause, is ultimately flawed in its very execution. While extremities taken may appear necessary particularly with so much red tape that hinders rather than aids, its choice to take the law into its own hands, pronouncing itself judge, jury and executioner, and making those who are rescued potentially complicit in that choice subverts the very good that comes out of it. Can decent people pushed to the brink, like Sora and Siwan's mothers, and even LEH, ever truly recover from the guilt of their decisions and actions, despite knowing it was one made in desperation? I cannot believe it possible unless they never had a moral compass to begin with.

 

Was rewatching the end of Ep3, and my heart ached immeasurably to see how LEH tensed up in fearful anticipation when CWK strode towards him in anger, and his shocked gasps as he reeled from her slap. Knowing now what we do about his history of abuse, it pained me all the more, since his body language indicated that despite knowing what was coming, he could no more avoid nor prevent it from happening, and merely accepted it as his due