Connect – K-Drama Episode 3 Recap & Review

Composition

Episode 3 of Connect starts on the rooftop after he pushed Muyung-hoon off the ledge and killed Sun-hee by breaking her neck. He also discovers that Dong-soo’s song is the thing that makes his transplanted eye itch. Dong-soo makes his way inside the building and Yi-rang is confused about what just happened.

Dong-soo makes it inside the building and sneaks into the elevator. Ji-young is having a panic attack because she saw Myung-hoon fall off the terrace. She is worried about Sun-hee and rushes to the rooftop only to find her dead. Jin-seop has taken the stairs to the bottom but he is shocked when he overhears footsteps from the bottom coming upwards.

Dong-soo makes it to the 21st floor which was Jin-seop and his colleagues’ office. Once he is certain that the footsteps he was hearing have stopped, Jin-seop goes back to the 21st floor. Dong-soo is still unable to see his face but remembers the jacket Jin-seop put over Sun-hee’s face before killing her.

He rushes to the men’s room where Jin-seop went and confronts the first guy he sees by the sink. He calls the man out and asks him about his coat. Jin-seop hears the conversation from one of the stalls. The man leaves and Dong-soo realizes it was the wrong person. He gives the murderer an open challenge and tries to break the door down.

He goes into the next stall and tries to pry the man out but Jin-seop uses his pen as a weapon to stab Dong-soo. The man who Dong-soo just accused brings security to the men’s room and they pin Dong-soo down without even hearing what he has to say. From where he is pinned, Dong-soo tries to grab Jin-seop’s leg from under the stall.

Jin-seop notices Dong-soo’s hand healing from where he had poked a hole with his pen. The security takes Dong-soo away and Jin-seop exits the stall following that. As the security takes Don-soo away, they spot Ji-young who was coming down from the rooftop. She is sure it was Dong-soo who killed Sun-hee and Myung-hoon.

She pulls down his eye patch and everyone is scared looking at his eye. Jin-seop is back at the office and he wonders who Dong-soo was. He puts an act up in front of his colleagues about being shocked over Myung-hoon’s death. One of the security guards puts Dong-soo’s eye patch back on before calling his eye gross.

Yi-rang somehow makes it inside the office and tases the guards before helping Dong-soo yet again. The cops see the footage of Dong-soo sneaking inside the office building and grow more certain that he is connected to all the murders that took place including Sun-hee and Myung-hoon.

The cops conclude that the timing of Dong-soo entering the office does not corroborate with Myung-hoon falling off the building and ruling him out for killing him. Detective Choi asks about Yi-rang and it turns out that she had threatened an employee into stripping off her clothes and had stolen the identity card that gave her access to the office.

Jin-seop goes back to thinking about Dong-soo and puts some drops in his eyes. He recalls how Ji-young has removed Dong-soo’s eye mask but concludes that something like this was implausible but it still made sense. The cops arrive at the office to question Jin-seop who was the team leader. They ask him about Dong-soo and he recalls how he had made a ruckus on the day of the incident.

Detective Choi asks where Jin-seop was during the incident and he claims that he watched Dong-soo from the hallway. Choi asks Jin-seop about Dong-soo’s comment when he called someone an “eyeball thief” but Jin-seop directs the questioning to Ji-young. They ask Jin-seop about his coat and Ji-young intervenes asking the cops to look for Dong-soo instead of questioning the innocent employees.

Choi notices how Jin-seop showed tendencies of OCD when Ji-young stepped inside a boundary in his cubicle. Dong-soo and Ji-rang are at his house and he is concerned about how she is looking around. Ji-rang spots the makeshift family photograph of Dong-soo taped over that of a couple.

He hands her s cup of beverage and asks who she was. Ji-rang claims that she will soon be a novelist who wants to write about Connect. She shares that a kid helped her when she was young and about to be hit by a car. Ji-rang claims that the kid that jumped towards the car and saved her was a Connect. 

Ji-rang narrates how the truck driver had fled from the scene and how she had watched the child heal despite being crushed completely. She claims that she always wanted to thank him but wasn’t able to do so. Yi-rang claims that she learned about Dong-soo from the gangsters who were organ traffickers.

She adds that there was something bigger than just organ trafficking going on with him because the gangsters want to trap their victims after harvesting organs from them. Yi-rang tells Dong-soo about how she used an online forum to get in touch with someone but she was not able to get any valuable information from the gangsters.

She tells him that was when she had planted the tracking device which she used to hear their conversation. Yi-rang claims that it was the device that helped her learn about Dong-soo. He asks her about the story of Connect and she explains how South Korea’s Number 1 Pharmaceutical company was connected to his kind.

Dong-soo claims that finding the murderer and stopping him is a priority now. He explains to Yi-rang how the corpse artist has his other eye and that he could see out of it at times. She is initially amused but eventually believes him. The detectives leave the office building and Choi is concerned about Jin-seop’s reactions to Ji-young intervening in the conversation.

Yi-rang asks Dong-soo more about his vision and the transplant. She takes off his eye patch and looks at his eye. He starts growing concerned but she hands him some sunglasses to replace the eyepatch since everyone was on the lookout for a man with one.

Dong-soo and Yi-rang go to a departmental store together where he spots a ‘Wanted’ post with his photo on it. He rushes away and starts growing concerned. Outside the store, he suddenly makes a connection with Jin-seop again and this time it is Jin-seop who was purposely watching the video.

He realises that Dong-soo is the one who sang the song. Dong-soo also realises that the connection is possible only when his song is played. Jin-seop stops feeling the pain in his eye when he stops the music. Yi-rang is sure that the murderer has found out about the connection but Dong-soo is not sure about it yet.

She thinks that he will try to kill him but Dong-soo claims that he cannot really be killed. Yi-rang claims that Jin-seop had the power to make his life hell and kill him by revealing his identity online. She asks him to keep a low profile.

Dong-soo is back at work the following day when his song starts playing on the radio. The singer Z has released the song from Lonely Guitar Man aka Dong-soo. Dong-soo is shocked but emotional to hear his music play on the radio. Jin-seop meets up with Z to ask him about the song and its original singer as they were to use Dong-soo’s song for one of their advertisement campaigns upon Sung-hee’s request.

Z tells Jin-seop that he and his team were not able to find the true owner of the song and ads that the copyright revenue will be donated. Z signs the contract with Jin-seop’s agency. Detective Park interrogates one of the gangsters they were able to nab after the chase for Dong-soo on the previous day. Detective Choi asks Park to let the man go and asks the team to keep an eye out for Dong-soo.

Yi-rang is still listening to the conversation between the gangsters using her transmission device. She hears one side of the conversation and learns that the new owner of the eye, aka Jin-seop was soon going to die. The gangsters know that Connect aka Dong-soo’s eye hold a lot of value so they want to take it back before Jin-seop is dead and cremated.

The gangsters discover the tracking device and conclude that it was Yi-rang who was overhearing their conversation. Yi-rang quickly destroys her electronic device that was transmitting the audio and flees. The gangsters discuss what they should do and conclude they should keep her alive as she possibly has more information on the creature.

Yi-rang follows the man the gangsters were talking to and discovers the place where Jin-seop lives. Jin-seop is in a weak state of health but he still has a new mural in mind. Yi-rang tells Dong-soo about the corpse artist’s illness. Dong-soo suddenly feels the connection again and sees that Jin-seop is sketching the face of his next target.

The sketch is of Dong-soo’s face while Jin-seop writes “This time I will come find you. You can look forward to it.” as a warning. Dong-soo is alarmed as Jin-seop shows him his other targets, which are three young girls. Jin-seop had purposely played Dong-soo’s version of the song to instigate him and Yi-rang asks the humanoid to relax.

The gangster that the cops released goes back to his group but Detective Park is on the lookout for him. Dong-soo is out on the street when the connection is made a second time. Jin-seop is watching him now and Dong-soo turns around but still can’t see his face because Jin-seop is hiding inside a car.

The car passes and Don-soo tries to chase it but the cops catch him. Detective Choi takes Dong-soo away. Meanwhile, the doctor is harvesting organs from another body when he finds Jin-seop in his clinic. Jin-seop attacks the doctor and asks him questions about the eye.

The Episode Review

This show is really interesting but somehow seems a little fast. The story is not unraveling slowly but a lot of things are happening in quick succession. We learn that Jin-seop is dying but I am still not sure how Yi-rang is one step ahead of everyone in the plot. There is a possibility that this was all a part of Yi-rang’s plan and that she somehow has some ulterior motive behind helping Dong-soo.

Jung Hae-in’s acting here is stupendous and it is hard to see him play a weak timid character after seeing him as the spy in Snowdrop. The story is intense but I hope that the cops trust him and save the kids before Jin-seop strikes again. It could be possible that Dong-soo was the child that save Yi-rang when she was young but we could expect a plot twist there too. I can’t wait to finish the next three episodes!