Decoy – K-drama Episode 4 Recap & Review

The Pursuers

Episode 4 of Decoy begins at the burial of councilman Gwang-sin. Kim Seong-dae pays his respects. Flashback to 2006, Gwang-sin and Sang-Cheon are planning their first scam. The victim is a bar owner known for being ruthless but Sang-cheon has a vendetta since Mr Choi made him go to prison. He manages to take him to the talk on magnetic mattresses and there Sang-cheon finds Mr Park.

Mr Park brings back Young-jin to take care of the con and they manage to make the bar owner invest 500 million won. Sang Cheon gives all the money to Kim Seong-dae. He asks for his help setting up his business and Seong-dae introduces him to his secretary Jung So-ran, the woman previously thought to be either the secretary or the lover.

Now in 2023, Jong-chun tells the violent crimes team that the first victim was Jung So-ram, the woman who fled with Sang-cheon. Byeok-jun had tipped him off. They could not recognize her since she had plastic surgery.

Do-han informs the deputy head of the possibility of Na-yeon writing an article about the serial murders and he tells him to delay the articles as long as he could. In flashes to the past and present, more information about Do-han’s past is given. It’s a crime scene with a dead woman.

Na-yeon tells the victims the police might start investigating them. One of them suggests they tell the police all they know but Na-yeon thinks it is not the time yet. They are saddened that Byeok-jun is arrested for confessing to the crime. Na-yeon’s boss decodes to print the article she wrote about the serial murders and Sang-cheon’s involvement.

However, the article does not stay up for long. The news article gets taken down and the boss gets called by her superiors saying that he got a call about a tax audit. The tax service tells them they would know the reason. Na- yeon is irated and thinks Do-han had something to do with the censorship and the threat. He visits the media office to have a look at the article. Someone higher up must be involved since the police do not have that much power to even call in a tax audit.

One of the victims close to Byeong-jun calls to meet with Do-han. She divulges the information about the victim’s motive. They all believe that Sang-cheon is still alive and wanted the police to investigate. Since he was considered dead, everyone else has moved on and forgotten their pain. She tells him that someone called the pursuer had joined the victims’ group chat. He said Sang-cheon was alive and he would drag him out. He said he would kill his crew, his supporters, and his bystanders. He asked the victims to appear at the crime scenes to confuse them.

They did not believe the person and even removed him from the chat. Then, they started getting individual messages. They still thought it was a prank until they heard that a woman was killed. That is when Byeong-jun started going to the crime scenes to confuse the police. Do-han asks for a search warrant from the victim’s office afterwards.

Na-yeon makes a deal with Do-han to leave the victims alone. She tells him she knows about the dead woman. She goes to the police station and Do-han asks her to tell the story to his whole team so they could understand. Just then, we are taken back to the scene where the deputy’s head tells the team that he knew the dead woman. Just then, one of the team detectives walks in and tells Do-han they have the video.

Do-han asks to speak with Jong-hun in private. He had him tailed and he had lied to them about where he had been or what he did the whole day. Do-han wants to know why he lied. Jong-hun thinks it is not important what he had been up to but conducting a thorough investigation to catch the real killer was. They get into a confrontation as Do-han accuses him of being the killer of the first victim.

Do-han believes that the deputy’s head knew that something would happen that’s why he put him on the case to help cover things up when it goes bad. He asks the deputy head to trust him. Do-han asks the deputy head to tell him why he lied and what happened in the past.

Flashback to 2011 after So-ram approaches the victims offering to help. She tells them that she too is a victim betrayed by Sang-cheon and wanted him arrested. She tells him Sang-cheon had killed Young-jin. She makes them a deal that she would help them find Sang-cheon and they would give her a share of the money so she could disappear. They agree to use her.

She gets a tip about Sang-cheon’s hideout and the victims race to go find him. They arrive at the mansion and he is no longer there but they find documents about Bigs Network indicating he might have been there. The police arrive and SO-ram is afraid of getting arrested. The victims help her run from the police. She seems genuinely emotional as she walks away from the house. Na-yeon is the one who tipped off the police she does not trust So-ram.

Elsewhere, Sang-cheon is not happy that it taking so long to arrange his escape. He seems unbothered about So-ram who is seen running through the forest at night. She thinks back to when Sang-cheon had sent her to go stall the victims. The detectives are after her but Jung Jae-hwang, one of the victims helps her out. He dropped out of college because he invested his tuition in the Ponzi scheme and lost it.

In the year 2023, Na-yeon walks into Jong-hun’s office. She reminds him of the time he betrayed the victims. She trusted him and he lied, he promised to catch Sang-cheon. He abandoned them, leaving them helpless when he got promoted time and time again. Does she ask if he was happy? She does not resent him since it was circumstances that made him change but thinks he needs to be held accountable for making fools out of the victims who trusted him.

Jong-hun calls the chief prosecutor park Sang-do. He tells him that he knew who the first victim was. Elsewhere, Do-hun and Na-yeon grab a meal together. Do-han asks how she knew the dead woman was So-ram. Na-yeon reveals that the victims’ alliance had hired a search party to go looking for Sang-cheon in China and had sent a photo of So-ram. Do-han thinks the victims should have let go of the issue and moved on to which na-yeon responds that he cannot understand them since he had an easy life. Do-han tells her that they are not the only ones who had gone through an ordeal that ruined their lives.

Na-yeon is baffled by how So-ram died in Korea when she was supposedly in China and wanted by Interpol. Do-han says she had a fake ID so it was not completely impossible. Na-yeon thinks the immigration is not as incompetent so they would have most likely caught her. In addition, the woman whose fake ID she used had never been out of the country which only suggests that she got it after she got back to Korea.

The deputy head and the chief prosecutor are having a similar conversation wondering how So-ram got into the country and who helped her. The deputy’s head keeps talking about whether the prosecutor knew what he had been up to. The prosecutor gets frustrated and accidentally hints that he spent his day talking to the commissioner of the National Tax Service.

The deputy’s head tells the prosecutor to stop covering up the serial murders. He is afraid that they too are at risk, He talks about a person getting out of prison which he confirmed after knowing about So-ram’s death. He talks about a list and people on it are being murdered. He had been trying to find someone but he had vanished without a trace. The deputy’s head asks the prosecutor if No Sang-cheon was dead.

Do-han and Na-yeon are still at the restaurant. Na-yeon discloses that they were not involved in the murder investigation just to confuse the police but they also wanted media attention so the police could re-open the investigation. Do-han thinks there’s a bigger reason like they know who the real killer is and it is a person they are willing to protect.

Na-yeon tells a story about the potential killer. He was like a big brother to her. Someone she could rely on after her father died. He had a list of names of all the people who put the victims through hell. The first three murders of Young-jin, Gwang-sin, and So-ram were people at the top of the list. He had killed one of Sang-cheon’s attendants 12 years ago and was arrested, he had just been released and Na-yeon was confused about whether to help the police or help him escape the police. The episode ends with a man panting and running through a forest.

The Episode Review

The episode handled most of the previous frustrating mystery. We have an idea of who the killer might be and his targets. He plans to kill Sang-cheon’s partners, bystanders, and those who attended to him. The backstory of Captain Do-hun is still unknown though and I hope the next episode reveals some information about his story. Does he have any connection to the case?

In most cases that is the plotline that makes the series different since the head detective seems to not be connected to the case but to the homicides since his sister was killed. I do not understand why the deputy’s head is very secretive and lying about his involvement. I feel that he did all he could for the victims unless there was something more we are yet to discover about him.

Also, what’s the deal with the chief prosecutor Park? He might be the one who got the article taken down and went after Na-yeon’s workplace. Makes one wonder what exactly he did to help Sang-cheon escape back then.