Korean drama "Missing Noir: M", episode two recap

 Air Dates: March 28th to May 30, 2015 on OCN at 11:00 pm on Saturday nights  

Director: Lee Seung-Young  Writer: Lee Yoo-Jin   Length of this episode: 73 minutes

Rating: 1.45%.... OCN is a cable channel which is why the ratings will be a bit low

Main Cast:  Top three are the members of the Special Missing Persons Unit

Kim Kang-Woo as Gil Soo-Hyun.... genius detective who worked for the FBI until recently

Park Hee-Soon as Oh Dae-Young.... older detective with twenty years of experience 

Jo Bo-Ah as Jin Seo-Joon.... computer whiz for the small three person team

Kim Kyu-Chul as Park Jung-Do.... director of the small unit

Park So-Hyun as Kang Joo-Young.... expert coroner who gets all of the SMPU's cases

Guest Stars:

Kang Ha-Neul as Lee Jung-Soo.... prisoner who killed his family and is controlling the 'game'

Go Bo-Kyul as Kang Soon-Young.... had been missing for 15 years, the case revolves around her

 Episode title: "A Puzzle from Prison II"

 No need to rehash any of the events as they're in the above post plus it would make this long post even longer. Where we stand now is that there are three murdered victims and possibly a fourth, despite what Soo-Hyun says above there is one more person in the photo who may still be alive. There were a total of five teenagers in the photo which was taken in December 1999, four of them were teenage boys. So far the girl Kang hadn't been found and had been missing for close to fifteen years. Among the four boys three have recently been killed, their names are Min, Shin and Joo though his death may be a suicide according to the coroner Joo-Young.
 Soo-Hyun had paid another visit to the prison to see Jeong-Soo who had one more puzzle for them to find out and at least for now said then the game will come to an end. The reason for this 'game' is that Jeong-Soo had killed his entire family but there was one member who hadn't been found who was his little sister. If the small Missing Persons Unit can figure out all of the puzzles then Jeong-Soo will reveal the location of his sister. The final challenge for the team is to find out who the killer of Kang was, she's the girl that was in the photo with the boys but was she murdered?
 That was certainly one huge challenge for the team but if anyone can find out the details of a person missing for fifteen years it would be this trio led by Soo-Hyun who has an IQ of 187. To Soo-Hyun what they need to do first is find out what's happened to the fourth boy in the photo, Dae-Young headed back to Kang's hometown to find out the man's identity. It wasn't hard to do as the man was a very popular actor and happened to be on TV when Dae-Young was inquiring about him. The man's name was Kim Seok-Jin, Dae-Young quickly relayed the name to Soo-Hyun who began the hunt.
 There will be another name very similar to Kim Seok-Jin coming up and hope you don't confuse the two. It was easy for Soo-Hyun to catch up with the actor who really had no info to give. Kim had said the day after the photo was taken he had left his town for Seoul to attend some auditions, after that he had gone to study abroad and hadn't been in contact with any of the others in the photo for many years. Seems what Kim said was the truth but there's no doubt in Soo-Hyun that he'll be the next victim which wasn't that far in the future. You can see that in the next screenshot but what was slightly different about this murder was that there was no note left in the body.

 To date have liked the character of Dae-Young the most, he's been a detective for twenty years but is far from being a grizzled veteran. He continued to dig up some info about Kang in her hometown which was in a province south of Seoul. As you can see above he discovered that Kang had become pregnant in December of 1989 when the photo was taken, at the time she was just fifteen. Dae-Young had also learned that Kang had been selling her body to support herself and her little son, she was a female who had some unsaid problems with her brain.
 The mystery about Kang and the photo deepen even more as Dae-Young thought of something which the team had overlooked, who had taken the photo? There's nothing Dae-Young can't find out and it's no wonder he was assigned to Soo-Hyun's team. He visited a photo shop in the small town and discovered that the original set of pics had never been picked up back in late 1989 or early 1990. The person who was supposed to pick them up was the man Kim Seok-Gyu whose name is so similar to the previous Kim.
 The man was living in Seoul so once again Soo-Hyun jumped into action and tracked down the man. Prior to that though Soo-Hyun had interviewed the parents of the murdered Seok-Jin, he discovered that they had paid a settlement fee to Kang when she confronted the family about her pregnancy. It was a hefty sum and it's also possible she also got money from the other three boy's families. But if Kang did receive so much money why was she selling her body to support her and her son?
 That's what Soo-Hyun wanted to know when he interrogated Seok-Gyu who was such a low down creep though at one time he had been a police officer in Kang's hometown. Shortly after Kang had supposedly received her settlement money Seok-Gyu had purchased a store, back then it was almost impossible to do on a policeman's salary. To Soo-Hyun it appeared as though Seok-Gyu had somehow swindled the money out of Kang though it happened so long ago it's almost impossible to prove, for now he's the #1 suspect in Soo-Hyun's mind in the disappearance of Kang.

 Back after a two day break, so much has happened in this series and need some time off to clear my head, whewwww! Where we and the small missing persons team stand now is that the main clue is the photo from 1989 that had five teenagers in it, four boys and a girl. Those four were Shin, Kim, Min and Joo and all four have recently been killed. Joo's death was a possible suicide but to
Soo-Hyun the odds are very high that he was murdered. The girl in the picture was named Kang, she's been missing since February 2000 but Dae-Young had deduced her actual disappearance and possible death had occurred on the 20th of that month thanks to a clue from Jeong-Soo.
 It's now February 18, 2015 and the statue of limitations only has two days to go. For a while to
Dae-Young Kim Seok-Jin was the prime suspect but with his death Soo-Hyun firmly believed the man behind the possible and probable death of Kang was Kim Seok-Gyu, he had interviewed the creep and got nowhere with him but is having him followed. But even though he may be behind Kang's murder there's still four others to solve and with Jeong-Soo in prison there's no way he could have committed all of them.
 Very little had escaped the three person team, Soo-Hyun did some investigating and found out that Jeong-Soo has had a man visit him at the prison a few times, the last occasion took place at the end of December. Soo-Hyun had been convinced that Jeong-Soo has had an accomplice carry out the murders and this man seemed like the logical person to have done them. What they've found out is that the man's name is Joo Yo-Sep but what relationship could he have with Jeong-Soo?

 We didn't learn about their relationship until the end but that man's last name as mentioned was Joo, also the last name of the priest who was now dead by hanging himself as to Soo-Hyun it was no suicide. We haven't seen too much of Seo-Joon through these first two shows but there's nothing she can't find out on a computer, she's also supposed to be a whiz at hacking. She's discovered that the priest had adopted Joo and had given him his name, another mystery which is why would a priest adopt an unknown boy who was about ten at the time?
 Seo-Joon had found out that Joo Yo-Sep is actually Kang's son, could the priest Joo have been involved in her disappearance and adopted him out of guilt? Of course that was never found out as there's no way to interview a dead man but for now the team shifted their attention back to the creep Kim Seok-Gyu. He was the person who had taken the picture of the five teenagers and was a constable in the small town at that time. Kim had covered up a rape that occurred to Kang back in December 1989, all four of the males in the photo had committed the brutal crime.
 Kang had asked the families of the boys for settlement money, if they paid her she would keep quiet about the rape. Kim knew the full story though and as Kang had some mental issues Kim was able to swindle most of the settlement money from her which forced her to sell her body to support herself and her young son Yo-Sep.
 All this info had slowly been discovered by the team, they had a few breaks here and there but for the most part it was their hard work which led to them solving the crime. It's now late on February 20th, Kim is sitting in a restaurant as the clock strikes 12:00, the date is now the 21st which means he can no longer be charged with a crime. Yo-Sep knew that too and he's soon to be on the trail of Kim to avenge his mother's death from 15 years ago. Yo-Sep never wanted to see Kim charged with murder but instead had his own brand of punishment for the villain.

 Trying to zip through this recap as I know long ones can be a bit difficult to read, especially two in a row but none of the main details about the story have been left out. As Kim was driving home his car was suddenly smashed into at an intersection, he was injured but alive though passed out. The driver of the other car was none other than Yo-Sep who put Kim in his vehicle and drove off with Kim to a secluded area which just happened to be near a steep ravine. Soo-Hyun during that incident was at the police HQ, they've got a make on the car and were able to follow it though Yo-Sep had at least a five minute head start.
 He brought Kim to the ravine, Yo-Sep had a gun and wasn't afraid to use it on Kim. This Kim is just such a low life person, even under the threat of being killed he still was able to blabber on about how bad of a woman Yo-Sep's mother was and us viewers were hoping that Yo-Sep would pull the trigger or at least throw him over the cliff. Kim was able to pounce on Yo-Sep and it appeared he would be able to wrestle the gun away from him which happened for a few seconds but just at that time
Soo-Hyun and Dae-Young arrived on the scene. That enabled Yo-Sep to once again grab Kim, really didn't seem as though he wanted to kill Kim but Yo-Sep needed sort of closure to avenge the murder of his mother.
 Though Soo-Hyun had his pistol pointed at Yo-Sep he wouldn't drop his gun. As Yo-Sep was holding Kim so close to him Soo-Hyun could really only shoot one of them, kill Kim as he was such an evil man or Yo-Sep who was possibly involved in four murders? Soo-Hyun never got the chance to make the decision as in a flash Yo-Sep whipped out a pair of handcuffs and linked himself with Kim. In another flash Yo-Sep quickly dragged Kim to the edge of the cliff and threw the pair of them over the edge. Both were now dead and with those deaths so many questions were left unanswered for the small team as the episode was getting close to finally being finished..
 Just a few loose tidbits here which came out near the end and one has to do with Jeong-Soo's sister who is an above screenshot. She was still alive and had been held captive by Yo-Sep though he had taken good care of her. It wasn't Jeong-Soo who had been the mastermind behind the killings but instead it was Yo-Sep who had kidnapped the sister to get Jeong-Soo to play along with his plan. Also it was discovered that it definitely was Kim who had murdered Yo-Sep's mother 15 years ago as she had threatened to expose Kim unless he began to give her the settlement money which was rightfully hers. In the final seconds of the show Soo-Hyun had been approached by the director Park who we didn't see too often in this episode. He's given Soo-Hyun an offer to lead a special Missing Persons Unit which only will deal with old and mysterious cases like the one he just solved, would be accept the offer? Soo-Hyun didn't give a response but presume the answer will be yes and we've finally hit the end of this long recap which actually could have been much longer.

 Thanks again if you've read through the pair of recaps, there's no way to make them short but think this one turned out to be a decent length considering the episode was 73 minutes. This may be an easier drama to follow as the stories will be two-parters and don't think there will be any major ongoing plot through the ten shows. Won't be zipping through the series as fast as other ones so the next pair of recaps won't be until next week. There's also a Japanese drama from 2017 that just got subbed and may be recapping that series at the same time. Set another record for screenshots as there's 104(!) of them and they do make it much easier to follow the story.