The Scarecrow: Episodes 9-10
by solstices
An innocent man takes the fall, while the real culprit continues to walk free with the inadvertent help of self-serving people in power. How deep will the chain of corruption run, and how much further will the authorities be complicit in aiding and abetting a serial killer?
EPISODES 9-10
With another victim murdered with the exact same signature methods as our serial killer, including undisclosed details that only the police on the case were privy to, it becomes apparent that the culprit is still at large. Alas, that doesn’t mean Seok-man is off the hook. Instead, the prosecution amends their charges. Since the circumstances of the 7th murder were so different from the serial killer’s usual pattern, Shi-young paints Seok-man as a copycat killer.
With the circumstantial evidence pointing to him, it doesn’t help that Seok-man can’t recall his whereabouts that night. Or rather, as the perceptive Ji-won realizes, he won’t. It turns out that Seok-man, loyal and selfless to a fault, has been keeping a promise to his sister that he won’t tell anyone they met up — which means he has a potential alibi for the night of the murder. But by the time this truth comes out, it’s already too little, too late.
Despite being the one to arrest Seok-man and set this whole chain of trials and accusations in motion, Tae-joo can barely spare half a mind to take responsibility. Rather than address the growing doubt that Seok-man is a killer, Tae-joo writes him off with an assumption of guilt. Tae-joo’s mind lies elsewhere, because he’s just heard about the disappearance of the eight-year-old Hye-jin.
Immediately, Tae-joo surmises she could have been murdered by the serial killer, even as everyone else balks in disbelief because a child doesn’t fit the profile of the usual victims. But Tae-joo argues that the culprit is drunk on the thrill of his kills, having grown emboldened by the police’s failure to catch him. He’ll start killing more brazenly and indiscriminately.
Declaring that they have to search the mountain where Hye-jin was last spotted, Tae-joo obtains a search warrant from Commissioner Kim (it’s amusing how these two keep cooperating, if only because the latter is opportunistic and stands to benefit from Tae-joo’s success). Then Shi-young summons Tae-joo as a witness for the next trial, pulling him away from the search party. In place of himself, Tae-joo puts the maknae detective Dae-ho in charge.
Initially, Dae-ho’s hesitance and trepidation seem like the self-effacing nervousness of the team’s youngest member. He doesn’t want to find Hye-jin’s corpse, because it’d mean she suffered such a horrible death at such a young age. Then the search party discovers a body on the mountain — but it’s not a child. It’s another woman entirely, murdered in the serial killer’s signature style.
Finding the discovery too coincidental and thus too suspicious, Tae-joo examines the crime scene himself later at night. That means he’s there when Dae-ho returns to frantically dig up the soil in a specific spot. Tae-joo confronts him, and we see what truly happened.
The night before the award ceremony, Dae-ho and the abusive detectives had found Hye-jin’s corpse. The news went straight to Shi-young first, and our morally corrupt prosecutor ordered them to bury Hye-jin right where they found her. Just for the time being, of course. Just until they receive their commendation for catching the serial killer, because the alternative is facing disciplinary action for catching the wrong guy and pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.
So how did Hye-jin disappear, and why was another victim found instead? Fast-forwarding to the present day in 2019, Ki-hwan offers the answer. He’d witnessed someone — Dae-ho — digging Hye-jin’s body up. It was so that she would be discovered during the search the next day. But a while after Dae-ho left, two other men showed up and moved the corpse elsewhere.
Accusingly, Ki-hwan asks Tae-joo what the cops did with the child — as if also denouncing the real-life police force who did the exact same thing, hiding the young girl’s corpse and dismissing her disappearance as a mere runaway case. To this day, even after her parents have passed on, her remains still have not been found. The serial killer is undeniably despicable, but so are the police officers who were complicit in his crimes.
After realizing the police are effectively helping him conceal his crime, Ki-hwan has grown more brazen, even attending the trial of the suspect accused in his place. It’s appalling to see just how much the serial killer was enabled — empowered, even — by the police and prosecution’s incompetence and neglect of duty. The worst part is how Dae-ho’s circumstances are likely all too common. As the family breadwinner, Dae-ho’s fear of losing his job compelled him to follow orders even when they conflicted with his conscience. But as much as that worry isn’t unfounded, it’s also a form of cowardice that breeds inaction.
Meanwhile, another conflict is brewing. It comes to light that Assemblyman Cha has yet another illegitimate child, and this one is a product of his affair with Tae-joo’s mom — in other words, it’s Soon-young. No wonder she shares a generational name with Shi-young and Joon-young. And yes, that means Assemblyman Cha sired three children (that we know of so far), each with a different woman. What is he, Zeus?
Reaching out to Soon-young, Assemblyman Cha welcomes her into the Cha family. As for Shi-young, after he gets over the shock, he admits the truth to Tae-joo — apologizing uncharacteristically — and asks for his help in smoothing things over with Soon-young.
Needless to say, Tae-joo blows up. It’s an understandable reaction, but the problem is that he also blows up at his sister, and doesn’t explain anything to her. So it’s not surprising when Soon-young decides not to heed the decisions he unilaterally makes for her, and chooses to move under the Cha family roof instead. As a single mother, her child will have to endure much hardship and stigma; she’d rather accept the help of the wealthy and powerful Assemblyman Cha, for her child’s sake.
Uh… has Soon-young conveniently forgotten that Shi-young had a direct hand in Ki-beom’s tragically untimely death, and Assemblyman Cha pursued glory and recognition at the cost of overlooking the injustice inflicted upon Ki-beom? I understand Soon-young wanting to put her and Ki-beom’s child first, but this feels like a disgrace to Ki-beom’s sacrifice and a dishonor to his memory.
In any case, we circle back to Hye-jin’s disappearance. Having noticed mountain dirt on the shoes of PARK SANG-BEOM (Gil Eun-sung), Shi-young’s club boss underling, Tae-joo hounds Shi-young to reveal where he moved Hye-jin to. When Shi-young finally concedes, he offers a deal — he’ll tell Tae-joo her whereabouts, but only on the day the next murder victim is discovered.
That day rolls around all too soon, but in a stroke of unfortunate timing, it falls on the same day as Seok-man’s final trial. Despite his initial plans to testify about the unreliability of the hair follicle test, Tae-joo pulls out right before the trial, much to Ji-won’s disappointment. Tae-joo asserts that his testimony wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway — but it sounds to me like he’s just unwilling to properly acknowledge the possibility that Seok-man isn’t the murderer, because believing the rest of the circumstantial evidence is far easier.
In the end, Seok-man is sentenced to life imprisonment for the copycat murder of the seventh victim. His guilt hasn’t exactly been proven beyond reasonable doubt, but it’s fairly plausible that he was the murderer. And with the mounting public pressure and high-stakes scrutiny on this case, it’s enough for the court to condemn him.
I’ll be frank, I don’t understand Tae-joo at all. How does finding a dead person take priority over ensuring an innocent living person doesn’t end up wrongly imprisoned? I apologize for not mincing my words, but I’m genuinely gutted by his irresponsibility here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the reason why Ji-won has distanced herself from Tae-joo in the present day. I understand that Hye-jin’s bereaved parents are going through unimaginable grief, but Tae-joo’s active refusal to take accountability for his arrest and prioritize Seok-man’s case — especially in the face of evidence that could exonerate Seok-man — is quite frankly appalling.
Abandoning Seok-man’s trial, Tae-joo follows Sang-beom to find Hye-jin. But of course it’s a trap, and Sang-beom beats Tae-joo half to death on Shi-young’s orders, then begins shoveling dirt over him to bury him alive. Sigh. Tae-joo, you walked right into this…
Of course, we know Tae-joo survives this ordeal, since we see him in 2019. We close this week’s episodes with a confession from Ki-hwan, who finally reveals the meaning of “12+2.” One of the two special murders was Hye-jin, since she was a child. And the other was particularly memorable, because an innocent man was imprisoned for it. In other words, the seventh victim that led to Seok-man being put behind bars.
With this latest victim, Ki-hwan has racked up ten murders. His mother is staying in Muwon, and Ki-hwan visits her weekly, which explains the Muwon victim that Tae-joo discovered. And now that Ki-hwan has moved to Cheongju to stay with his wife’s family, it seems he might be murdering his sister-in-law soon. History tells us how the case will play out, but The Scarecrow is never short on surprises. I’m expecting even more intricate storytelling, rewatching the unreleased clips uploaded on YouTube, anticipating that cameo by Lee Min-ki that I spotted in the preview, and bracing myself for the gut punches that are sure to come.
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