The Truth Will Out
Episode 5 of Private Lives begins with Joo-Eun heading home while Jeong-Hwan reflects on the exact moment everything started to go wrong. This sees us jump back in time to Director Choi facing the crowd and admitting that he didn’t embezzle funds. While Joo-Eun is at home with her parents, the camera slickly switches across to Jeong-Hwan who’s working at PC Graveyard. Back to the present, Joo-Eun almost catches our mystery motorcyclist (Jeong-Hwan) watching from afar. She then heads into the detective agency she’s now inherited. Only, Bok-Gi happens to be there waiting for her. The two verbally spar for a bit until Joo-Eun mentions she was at an “important place” earlier. That place happens to Edward Kim’s mansion. This gains Bok-Gi’s attention, who’s then asked exactly what her relationship with Kim is. Once more, this results in us cutting back in time to the embezzlement scandal timeline. Edward Kim breaks into the mansion (the same one we saw him at last episode) and claims to have saved Bok-Gi’s life from an assassin. In exchange for “saving her life”, Edward Kim asks for a favour beforehand. That favour comes from breaking into the family safe and stealing Choi’s ledger. Only, she happens to have a gun stashed away and manages to hold it up to him. President Choi has been killed and that ledger apparently holds the clue over exactly who did this. Convincing her to hand over the gun, Edward makes her leave the country as an immigrant and return as this new alias – Sophia Chung. Essentially, Edward Kim is the ringleader behind this whole operation and served as her “student teacher”. As we skip forward to August 2019 we see Jeong-Hwan’s final mission. This is finding Edward Kim, a task given by Bok-Gi originally. Jeong-Hwan managed to evade the guards outside and followed them to a nearby bar. This ties into the first time he met Joo-Eun, whom he chats up as a distraction to get closer to Jae-Wook without arousing suspicion. Only, the big business transaction going down happens to be a fluffy white dog. Back at GK, Jeong-Hwan learns that Seok-Ho has been given a promotion. After scoffing at the news, Jeong-Hwan tells him he wants 10 million won for his task. Inside the meeting room, General Manager Kim takes the case away from Jeong-Hwan as he shouldn’t be mixed up with the current scandals going on with President Choi. He’s also tasked with changing Yoon-Kyung’s file, in particular the cause of death. This incident then leads to Joo-Eun and Jeong-Hwan’s various encounters. The normal series of events we’ve seen before continues, leading us to 9 months before Jeong-Hwan’s wedding to Joo-Eun. A night of noodles and drinking alone sees him wake up in the detective agency. Bok-Gi rings and it’s here Jeong-Hwan reveals all. UI have entered the picture, partly thanks to the connection he’s made between Edward’s Korean name Jae-Wook and Bok-Gi herself. He’s sold her information but urges her to leave the hotel and run if she wants to make it out alive. He’s unable to watch someone killed thanks to what he’s done and quickly shows up to help. Bok-Gi charges down the stairs and tries to hide as thugs race up to find her and track the girl down. After causing a distraction, the pair manage to slip away. It appears the company are actually after President Choi’s ledger that they believe Bok-Gi has. Only, she doesn’t and it’s actually in Jae-Wook’s hands. On the back of this, Jeong-Hwan plays a dangerous game as he’s caught in the middle of the UI issue and forced to save face at GK. There’s certainly no love lost between Seok-Ho and him though, with the GK manager mentioning his detective agency. He warns his co-worker not to get caught for GK’s sake. Jeong-Hwan continues to live a double life. With wedding plans in full swing, General Manager Kim and Seok-Ho are impressed and seemingly believe he’s going to fit in now. While this is going on, Jae-Wook combs through the security cameras and finds footage of Bok-Gi and Jeong-Hwan running away together. Out in the woods, Jeong-Hwan phones Joo-Eun before completing his mission. Here, we understand exactly why he’s at Edward Kim’s house. Jeong-Hwan is intending to get the ledger back but also has cameras set up in Kim’s house to figure out the combination to the safe and where it’s hidden away. Jeong-Hwan just about manages to evade capture and heads home in time for dinner. This catches us up to the wedding day as Jeong-Hwan finds himself confronted by those same thugs from the hotel. He does his best to evade them and makes his way back to PC Graveyard. There, he finds Yoon-Seok hanged – a clear message and warning. The necklace he was wearing is gone and Jeong-Hwan remains determined to try and right these wrongs. With Yoon-Seok’s body in his car, Jeong-Hwan plants evidence at the hotel room and races his car along the road. Planting the evidence as before, he watches from afar as the car explodes on impact into a fiery inferno. Jeong-Hwan throws his ID down and goes rogue, determined to avenge what’s happened to him and get back at GK whom he believes are behind this. Out in the woods, Edward Kim finds his dog dead – which serves as a clear message that Jeong-Hwan means business.
The Episode Review
Finally all the puzzle pieces come together and reveal what’s really going on. After a couple of fragmented and admittedly confusing episodes, episode 5 finally brings everything together to paint a much clearer picture of what’s happening. After playing a double agent, Jeong-Hwan’s past catches up to him and his compassion and unwillingness to let Bok-Gi get killed is enough to paint a big target on his back. This explains why Jeong-Hwan wasn’t present at the wedding and just whose body was found in the car. Whether we’ll see our trio of characters teaming up together to take on Edward Kim remains to be seen but this story is certainly far from over.
