Extraordinary Attorney Woo – K-Drama Episode 8 Recap & Review

A Tale About Sodeok-Dong 2

Episode 8 of Extraordinary Attorney Woo begins with Young-Woo waking up at Dong Geurami’s place. After the fight with her father, Young-Woo has decided that she’s going to move out properly, making a big step as she’s an adult. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worst when she shows up at work.

Unaware of what Min-Woo has done, news leaks of Young-Woo’s connections with the CEO and her father, including how she’s been “handed” the job at Hanbada.

Of course, Su-Yeon knows immediately that Min-Woo is responsible, given their little chat, but Young-Woo is still unaware as they attend the morning meeting. This time though, the CEO joins them to listen in on how they’re getting on. She also gives them some encouragement and urges them not to lose against Tae Su-Mi.

After the meeting, Su-Yeon shows off the news from the bulletin board. Defeated, Young-Woo brings up how she has benefited from nepotism. However, Su-Yeon sticks up for her, fighting Young-Woo’s cause and pointing out how not hiring her in the first place is a form of discrimination, given her autism. Su-yeon encourages her to fight back against Min-Woo and shows that she really does belong there.

Hanbada Law Firm and Tae Su-Mi’s group both show up at Sodeok-Dong, awaiting the judges who agreed last episode to show up and check the town out. It’s a miserable day and both law-firms join the judges as they’re led through the town. However, Heung-Min and several other townsfolk have actually consented to the road, given Tae Su-Mi has offered double what they were originally offered as compensation.

Myeong-Seok sees right through this and believes it’s all a ploy to feel out the townsfolk. Unfortunately, 343 of the 488 households in town have actually consented to this new compensation amount, and as a result it’s swung things in the prosecution’s favour.

The thing is, an actual amount hasn’t been confirmed and Myeong-Seok is concerned that this is a big play to swindle them and divide the town. It seems to work too and unfortunately, it could well lead to the whole case being dismissed.

To try and work out where they are in all this, Hanbada divide the town into red and blue zones. Those in blue are likely to side with the law-firm. The ones in red are those who would move out after receiving compensation.

It’s a precarious situation though and the temptation of receiving more money and moving on is something that several residents have already succumb to. And that number seems to be rising, as Taesan work overtime to begin handing out forms to convince them to leave.

In the middle of this manic door-to-door scramble, Young-Woo ends up chatting to Tae Su-Mi. She hands over her bag and brings up the wedding dress case she dealt with. Su-Mi is impressed and actually offers her an alternate route through the world of law.

In fact, Tae Su-Mi offers her the chance to leave Hanbada and come and work with her. Su-Mi hands over her business card and tells Young-Woo that Taesan is going to be a better fit for her.

Min-Woo ends up watching from afar and eventually confronts Young-Woo, calling her shameless and admitting that what he wrote may be true, but it doesn’t matter if it was him or someone else.

Spurred on by this, Young-Woo decides to leave her father and packs her things, heading out that night and deciding to stay with Ge-Ra-Mi. Unfortunately, her dad blurts out that Tae Su-Mi is actually her mother and she can’t go to Taesan. Distracted, Young-Woo loses her footing and slips down the stairs.

In hospital, while Young-Woo is recovering, Woo Gwang-Ho elaborates, including how he met Tae-Su at university and she was conceived when they weren’t ready. Su-Mi wanted to give her up but Gwang-Ho pleaded with Su-Mi not to terminate.

Gwang-Ho offered to raise the baby himself and not take the bar exam, even going so far as to plead on his knees to let her agree. And as promised, Gwang-Ho is handed little Young-Woo and a bag of things.

Since then, he raised Young-Woo himself but his silly promise to Tae Su-Mi, which now means nothing, makes him realize that he should have fought harder for Young-Woo.

As they talk though, Young-Woo has a proverbial lightbulb moment, realizing that the hackberry tree could be their trump card to use in the road development case.

“Hurry up and leave, Dad.” Young-Woo sys savagely, ringing Jun-Ho and bringing up the suspicious way the hackberry tree couldn’t become a natural monument. Young-Woo actually rings at 3.10am though. So naturally she has to wait until the morning.

When they investigate further, we learn more details about the tree. To designate the Sodeok-Dong hackberry tree as a natural monument, they have to ask Gyeonghae-Do first.

If the committee then think its worthy of designating, a report is written up asking the Cultural Heritage to designate it. The person who plays the violin in town, Yu-Jin, works at the office. Questioning him, things are a little awkward, especially as he heads off to go and find the documents pertaining to when the experts arrived on hand to examine the tree.

In his absence, Jun-Ho speaks to Young-Woo, who admits that she does like him. Only, they’re interrupted by Yu-Jin running away. Of course, a big foot-chase ensues as Yu-Jin is eventually knocked down and stopped. The reason for his running stems from the fact Yu-Jin never actually filed the report for the tree, nor did he ask the cultural Heritage Committee.

Back then he was convinced the subway was good for the town and decided to fake the whole thing. In court, Taesan win over the committee… but they don’t win the war.

Myeong-Seok brings up a notion to suspend and stop proceedings. This stems from the umbrella the judge has, which sports a dolphin – sorry, an Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin – on. This is the same one as Yu-Jin.

Young-Woo manages to stop the case for the time being, getting the one-up over Su-Mi. Not only that, but the permission for the hackberry tree being made a natural monument is going ahead too, meaning the road will be forced to change. Another win for Young-Woo, hoorah!

At Taesan Law Firm, Young-Woo shows up to see her mother and talk in private. Young-Woo brings up exactly who she is, given their familial ties, and decides that she can’t leave Hanbada to join Taesan, given how she abandoned her. Su-Mi is shocked and Young-Woo decides to stay by her father’s side after all.

“Do you resent me for what I’ve done?” Tae Su-Mi asks. Young-Woo speaks plainly, bringing up how nice it was at the tree together and, with tears in her eyes, leaves the lawfirm.

The Episode Review

The halfway point of Extraordinary Attorney Woo rounds out this two-parter with an emotionally charged ending to the road development case.

This whole ordeal has been super-charged with tension and in the end. Young-Woo and Hanbada come out on top thanks to the tree. This was perhaps going to be the deciding factor, given the emphasis on this through the two episodes, but it’s nice to see the writers use this as a way of solving the case.

There’s a good deal of character development here too, with Young-Woo siding with her father and dealing with her mother and unveiling the truth.

The irony here, is that in wanting to be an adult, Young-Woo has actually shown a surprising amount of maturity to tackle this issue head-on and do so with enough courage and truth to show how strong-willed she actually is.

The drama involving Min-Woo is not going to end any time soon and I’d imagine he’ll probably find out the familial link to Tae Su-Mi as well before long.

Either way though, this show continues to deliver the goods with another very solid episode. Roll on next week!