You’re Hurting. You’re Hurting So Much You Want To Blame Someone.

choi hyo-man’s internal monologue where he’s essentially going “grate… un… ungrate… uh… what’s the word again? the thing that gives me a really bad feeling.” and then two scenes later going “ungrateful. they’re ungrateful.” stays the funniest fucking internal dialogue i’ve heard in my life

gaon as a character genuinely gets so little true agency of his own through the entire show, and it's something that he's clearly aware of and frustrated by. he's constantly presented with choices and ultimatums by those around him, his agency is continuously shot down and overruled by others, and despite how much he cares about each of them, every time it happens he ultimately demonstrates - intentionally or not - how much he hates that by immediately pushing back on whoever poses such limitation to him in the first place (re: soohyun telling him to stay back and let her handle digging into yohan's past -> gaon sneaking around yohan's house; min jungho pressing gaon to make his decision -> gaon siding with yohan; yohan telling him not to see soohyun if he wants to stay on his side -> gaon leaving the kangs).

in the end, all of those people are no longer actively in his life. he is alone and he must be independent, and it must make him feel so confllcted - that his having agency and free will is grounded in how those he cared for are unable to influence him anymore.

the only bright side of this is in kang yohan, who makes it clear through his actions in the end that he's consciously made the choice to give the agency back to gaon, to put the ball into his court. yohan chooses to take a step back, take his hands off, and let gaon choose what he does in rebuilding the system; he demonstrates his trust and faith that gaon will do it all well, teasing that he - a man "known" to be dead - will come back into the fray if gaon doesn't do a good job.

it must be so bittersweet to be kim gaon.

Kim Gaon as a character is so important to me.

This poor boy, whose parents committed suicide when he was so young, ends up being manipulated by almost everyone in his life who think they know what's best for him.

His mentor, who he saw as a father ends up manipulating him to further his own agendas and goals all while giving him the illusion of choice. Ga On has never truly had a choice.

And Soohyun too. Yes, she only ever wanted to keep him safe, and that is a nice sentiment, but in acting the way she did towards him she caged him in.

Maybe it's the Gemini in me, but if someone tries to limit my freedom of choice or influence my judgement in any way, I start to get suffocated. No matter what the sentiment behind their actions are. She didn't deserve the end she got, and she genuinely cared about Gaon but at the same time she ended up trying to influence him because she thought she knew what was best for him.

And then comes Yohan. Yohan is complicated (as morally grey characters tend to be), because for a good while in the beginning, he too tries to use (or at least wants to use) Gaon for his own ends.

But also, after he sees who Gaon truly is: a kind and caring and a firecracker of a soul, he is the first in Gaon's life to offer him a choice. And not the Min Jungho type of choice where it's just an illusion; but an actual choice.

And Gaon. Gaon only ever tried to do what he thought was right even while being pulled in a thousand different directions by different people. He tried so hard to make the right choices. He finally found the family he lost when he was young in Yohan and Elijah and Ms Ji. Lord knows I wouldn't survive if I found out that the fucker who drove my parents to suicide was living alive and well somewhere else with nothing on his conscience, and that I had been lied to for so long. And then, Soohyun, the last person who he has left from his past tied to his parents, his best friend, dies.

And then he loses his found family as well.

Kim Gaon, at the end of the show has absolutely no one left from his past; the Kangs, Soohyun, his parents and Min Jung ho are all gone.

All he has left is himself and a herculean task of rebuilding the justice system.

And how miserable must that be?

The way that if you think hard enough about this, Gaon’s reaction to Yohan’s death could totally be interpreted as a parallel to how he perceives the deaths of his parents (one dies first and the other immediately follows)…

It is not like that with Suhyeon for him. It is, in fact, like that with Yohan though.

Can you please explain the part whereby Gaon said soohyun was his world, and how that doesn't mean he loves her despite the confession.?

Hey Anon!!

I poured out the bulk of my thoughts in this post here! But in essence, Soohyun to Gaon is as Isaac to Yohan (which Writer Moon Yoo Seok confirmed in this post). He definitely loved her; there's no denying that, but that love was very different from what he feels for Yohan. The latter was so all-encompassing and wild, and painful that after Cha Kyunghee's death, which itself harkens back to Gaon's parents' death, our man ran to what was familiar and soft and comfortable, all of which Soohyun represented to him.

He was swept up in a maelstrom of emotion: all the death, the Foundation nabbing people, Soohyun not wanting to talk to him. He was essentially adrift and he can't be faulted for latching onto the only anchor he's had since childhood. But even with those flashback scenes of them as children, what we see is Soohyun playing more of a caregiver role than anything else. She blows on his scrapes, he comforts him when he's sad. She might as well be his sister or his mother, because she truly is his Isaac.

On top of everything, Gaon was under the false belief that Soohyun rescued him from the thugs when it was really Yohan, all that gratitude, and his need for comfort, and the fact that she came back for him despite being angry with him, manifested in him confessing emotions that were long dead if he was being honest with himself.

But Gaon was too confused to be honest with himself and he just didn't want to think at that point. So he didn't.

But at the end of the day. Gaon brought a knife to avenge Soohyun and a bomb to avenge Yohan. Gaon tried to die for Yohan twice.

Gaon's reaction when Yohan was announced as dead is so so telling. While Sunah collapses, he's silent, frozen, then he leaves, because he knows he'll be joining Yohan in death.

And even when Yohan's alive, when Gaon no longer has reason to be guilty anymore, he still wants to die with Yohan because it's better than living without him. Soohyun might have had a pretty confession, and a wooden kiss (really wooden) but Yohan won in the end, because by word and deed, Kim Gaon vowed before all of Korea that he would die with his Chief.

Plus when he thought Yohan was gone for the second time, he went through Yohan's bedroom and reminisced about them ogling each other. That's gay. We love to see it!!

just here to confess that i am The overanalyzer. professionally. personally. academically. lovingly. in every way possible, even

the way TDJ approaches gender is SO interesting to me.

soohyun as the female love interest with a more traditionally masculine approach to problems (trying to take things on personally to keep gaon away from hardship, fighting with physical violence, literally being a cop) vs. gaon as the male main character with a more “feminine” take on the world (nurturing his plants and the prople around him, protective of children and the weak, how his work is in his words and he is really only ever allowed to be physical about his rage by the man he’s closest to).

then there’s yohan, who’s just Man at his peak i feel (gun-wielding, broody, aggressive, dark and powerful and dangerous… but misunderstood and chivalrous and a provider at heart… mr Beast from the hit disney film type beat) vs. seon-a, who is the actual definition of an ambitious Woman (her power coming from being underestimated as a woman, and how she forcibly empowered herself through the circumstances of being taken advantage of for her girlhood).

and then there’s soohyun and yohan being in explicit competition with each other for gaon everytime they meet while gaon and seon-a passive aggressively battle away in yohan’s home. LMFAO. enough said on that one i feel.

Kim Gaon is the most female coded character ever

I forgot to say this last time. Baku, Gotak and I, we all know you visit your friend in the hospital and why he's there. But in my opinion it wasn’t your fault.

THIS!!!

if season 1 was a testament to sieun’s fight of self-determination — standing up for himself, punishing those who hurt him and his friends — and eventually realizing through beomseok’s plotline how damaging that sort of mindless violence can be, then season 2 is the portrayal of sieun’s reckoning with that, tempering down his viciousness, choosing force only when it is necessary, in an effort not to be cruel or do excessive harm.

it offsets so well with the baku-baekjin plotline — baekjin, a similarly intelligent and calculating boy who grew up bullied by others, who has that capacity for swift, harsh violence that sieun demonstrated all through season 1. but that’s not the person sieun is anymore, nor is it the person he wants to be.

“don’t cross the line” - that’s what embodies sieun’s approach to violence now. it’s why his takes resonate so much with his new friends at eunjang, who have all seen and felt very personally the harm of those who carelessly do so (jun-tae with hyoman, gotak with seungje, baku with baekjin). this is what broadly characterizes the motivations of our protagonists in s2, and it’s certainly a breath of fresh air in the vicious cycle they more broadly exist in.

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all"- The quote at the beginning of WHC.

And this is so perfect because:

This time Sieun didn't fight to avenge, he didn't to damage, to hurt, to win, he never fought for himself. Not once. This time, he fought to protect. And what makes WHC2 great is that you can actually SEE this difference in his fights this time. He is not vicious, just calculated, just enough to hold it at bay. He was calculating before, too, but this time it was subdued, quieter.

Park Jihoon truly is amazing as Yeon Sieun. Because everything this season, the way he acted genuinely showed the trauma, he embodied loss, hopelessness, not really belonging, the desperate plea to not get into a fight if he could avoid it, not to make the violence personal, Jihoon portrayed this all soo sooo well: from his body language to his eyes.

I had to make this post after seeing this amazing post because this needs to be said for all new viewers of TDJ. 

I can actually confirm that the writer did intend for Yohan and Gaon’s relationship to be gay. 

Ji Sung said their relationship was one of “seduction”. At the Devil Judge press-con, he confirmed that his role was that of Mephistopheles (around the 23 min mark but I’m at work and can’t pinpoint rn loL) who “seduces” Gaon who is Faust. I’ve analyzed this in more detail in this post. 

Writer Moon Yoo Seok has been very open about his influences in crafting Yohan and Gaon’s relationship being: Beauty and the Beast, Goethe’s Faust, and the movie Let The Right One In .

All these influences are either romantic or homoerotic. All of them. 

The writer has also confirmed that Gaon occupies a traditionally female character and feminine gender role. He’s used tropes that we normally only see in heterosexual romances for Yohan and Gaon’s romance. A non-exhaustive list:

living together

snooping through the mysterious house of the man who’s whisked you away

undressing your partner and wound-tending

making him food, refusing let anyone eat unless said man returns

understanding him like no other, being the only one who sees through his facade to the loneliness within

choosing him over everyone else (ep 8 and then end of 15)

trying to die for him (twice)

defending him to the het love/past love, everyone around really

PINING, yearning (Gaon literally looked at the bed in ep 16 and thought back to shirtless Yohan okay)

taking care of each other

being vulnerable before and for each other

oogling him shirtless (both of them did this)

hand holding

DEEP. STARES.

sexy bomb defusal

love triangles (K and Soohyun)

Homosexuality is so taboo in Korea that the closest we’ve gotten to proper rep is the wlw couple from Nevertheless and Kim Seo Hyung’s character from Mine, and even then that’s because men find it easier to see women in love with each other than men being in love. And men finance drama production.

Writer Moon Yooseok (who has 25 years of writing experience) has literally done everything he can to get a queer story out there. Heck he’s even including stuff in the TDJ comic (spanking, anyone?) that wouldn’t fly on TV because he has more freedom there. 

Ji Sung and Jinyoung have known this from the start as well (that poster photoshoot), and it’s hard not to know that your character is gay when they’re staring at another for 95% of the show and undressing and oogling each other, or when the ending is 2 minutes of sappy staring. They knew. 

The director in episode 8′s bts at 6:04 as Jinyoung and Jisung rehearse Gaon ditching Min Jung Ho: “Gaon’s become cute now that Yohan’s here”. 

Jinyoung: nods.

Me: Okay we’re all in agreement clearly. 

Rather than new fans being disappointed for it not being gay enough, I hope they can uplift this for what it is: a serious attempt to bring a gorgeous romance onscreen. Writer Moon Yoo Seok really said lawful husbands. He’s been saying it from the beginning. 

currently rewatching the devil judge as i study for a populism and democracy final and i think my next step might just be writing a fic where gahan just Talk and Argue about everything i’ve gotten out of all 75 of the readings that i need to review for this class

The political plotline of TDJ was lowkey out here endorsing (at the very least sympathizing with/explaining the logic behind) terrorism as a tactic against a fascist oligarchy which hides behind populism for legitimacy, and, as a political science/international relations student in the US, I’m kinda fascinated by that.

In the first episode, we see a lone-wolf terrorist attack against the Supreme Court building after the warrant for Joo Il-do’s arrest is dismissed, a sign that the government was likely to be lenient against this CEO despite the wishes of the people. Leaving out the actions taken by our main characters in response and what that tells us about the priorities of the protagonists, we then see in the same episode a complete reversal of that expectation that the government will disappoint the people, when Kang Yohan sentences the guy to 200-something years in prison.

A key part of the logic behind terrorism (please don’t put me on a watchlist I’m just currently taking a course on insurgency and terrorism for my major) is the cost-benefit analysis of whether or not you can 1. draw sympathizers and supporters to your cause through a violent action that sends a message to an audience beyond the actual victims, and 2. through that support, coerce the targeted government into changing policy or action.

Yohan demonstrates with his harsh ruling against Joo Il-do that, in a Korea under his interpretation of the rule of law, the government will respond to violence done on behalf of “the people.” It’s no wonder the far-right populists of their society — Jukchang TV and crew — immediately gravitate to him, hailing him as a savior and a man of the people. And it’s no wonder that public opinion sways in his favor, since he capitalizes on the very real and valid pain that they feel when he showed that he was sympathetic to the sort of cause (like the one upheld by the bus driver earlier in the episode) that they would feel sympathetic to, even if the majority of people would not act in the same way.

The key point that surrounds the at-least-perceived success of terrorism as a tactic here is that Heo Jung-se has enacted every populist tactic in the playbook to assert his leadership. He claims that his (oligarchic, fascist) country is a democracy, that he is a ruler “for the people.” A leader chosen by “dear, respectable citizens.” His use of in-groups and out-groups in condemning criminals (migrants, foreigners, etc. etc.) while placing the “true-blooded Korean people” as sovereign, and ultimately creating the impression that it is the common people who hold power in society. Kang Yohan reinforces the idealistic part of these populist ideas to the public with his performance in the Live Court Show: he adamantly takes the side of the people in each case, and harshly punishes all who the people deem guilty on their behalf — and the people eat it up because it feels like hope that they really control their government.

Another thing about terrorism: it’s most useful as a tactic in democracies where the people are able to place real pressure upon their governments, where the displeasure of the people will lead to policy change. Heo Jung-se created a perception of his society as one of that kind, and in Kang Yohan, we find a man who enables that belief — even if in reality it is, also, mostly for personal motives. And we see in Kim Gaon, by the last episode, a man who is desperate enough in his fight against the corrupt government (and also just, y’know, generally in his life) to use terrorism as a tactic once again to place pressure, in the context of how he’s developed under Yohan’s influence over the course of the show — followed by the final trial by Yohan, who has straight up been planning to resort to terrorism all along, apparently.

I’m still really quite curious as to why the writer chose (and was allowed to choose, frankly LMAO) to end the storyline there — with a story that has left off with messaging that essentially equates to Terrorism Works (but only in a society that is already so used to violence that it can see some types of motivated violence as gratifying and, therefore, Not Horrific), especially with the nod to Gaon sticking around in politics and bureaucracy — and Yohan encouraging him to do so — after the fact. It’s a nod to the reality that even for those who use terrorism as a tool, they know reconstruction will be done “legitimately,” that non-legal violence can only be used as a tactic for so long before the return to legal routes is necessary in order to rebuild. But it’s definitely really interesting to think about how TDJ points out the usefulness of terrorism as a tactic in democracy — though I’m still not completely certain why, or whether the writer intended this as a commentary for Korea, or for the rest of the world…

Could go on a whole other ramble on why this is relevant to modern politics but I’ll stop there tonight, I reckon.

TLDR:

The Devil Judge is an excellent study on how terrorism Can be used against a fascist + populist government, yes.

Is the moral of The Devil Judge that, in order to beat fascists, you have to blow them up? Because I’m down.