Race – K-drama Episode 5 Recap & Review

Light At the End of the Tunnel

Race episode 5 takes us back to when Jae-Min was arriving at Seyong headquarters and meeting other employees, still talking about the rumours regarding Yoon-Jo being unqualified for her job position and being favoured by the top administration.

Jae-Min goes to the HR department to ask a friend, Lee Yeon-Sung, if she can give him an evaluation report on the non-discriminatory employment program. However, the HR team leader doesn’t allow Yeon-Sung to give Jae-Min that report. He tries obtaining the report from other departments, but it was sent to HR.

Meanwhile, Yoon-Jo is getting hateful comments on her Instagram account. People think she had something to do with her being offered a job at Seyong. Yoon-Jo decides to make her Instagram account private.

Later, Jae-Min finds PR team 2 trying to find out who leaked the information about Yoon-Jo not being academically qualified for her job position, as per Sun-Tae’s instructions. Sun-Tae walks in and starts yelling at Jae-Min and the other employees in the room about them not containing this situation as well as they should have.

Jae-Min tells Sun-Tae that all this happened because the entire non-discriminatory employment program was taken seriously in the first place. Of course, this pisses Sun-Tae off.

Jae-Min tells Sun-Tae to make the non-discriminatory recruitment evaluation report public, which makes Sun-Tae even angrier. Sun-Tae tells Jae-Min that they can’t make the evaluation report public and that he shouldn’t bring up the issue about the report again.

Yoon-Jo then texts Jae-Min asking him if he could meet somewhere private and talk. When they meet, Yoon-Jo asks Jae-Min if the rumours about her are true. Jae-Min denies it, but, Yoon-Jo doesn’t believe him. Yoon-Jo tells Jae-Min that she is also starting to believe what people are saying about her being unqualified to work at Seyong. Later, Yoon-Jo happens to meet Yi-Jung in the elevator. She tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t have the courage to.

The next day, Yi-Jung summons Jae-Min to her office as he was in charge of the non-discriminatory employment program. Sun-Tae gets worried about Jae-Min meeting with Yi-Jung because he knows that if she knows about the evaluation report, it will be revealed that Yoon-Jo was favoured against other candidates.

Jae-Min goes to meet Yi-Jung at her office. Yi-Jung asks him how the PR department handles complaints and rumours spreading on Seyong’s online forums, but, Jae-Min doesn’t give a definite answer. Yi-Jung also asks Jae-Min about his process of coming up with the statement that was a response to the rumours about Yoon-Jo, but he also doesn’t give a definitive answer.

Meanwhile, Yoon-Jo confronts Sun-Tae in front of everyone about why she was employed at Seyong and whether or not the rumours about her are true. We’re taken back to when Sun-Tae pushed for Yoon-Jo to be hired despite other candidates being more academically qualified than her.

Back to the present, Sun-Tae assures Yoon-Jo that she’s employed because she’s qualified and that other employees voted for her to be hired.

A while later, Dong-Hoon, who was at Seyong to meet with Byung-Man about Seyong Cosmetics’ marketing project, spots Yoon-Jo sitting outside alone. He heads over and convinces her to talk about what’s troubling her. Yoon-Jo confides in him about what’s happening, and he encourages her.

Jae-Min returns from meeting with Yi-Jung, and Chul-Jun tells him how Yoon-Jo confronted Sun-Tae earlier. Another one of Jae-Min’s team members, Lee Seung-Hee, also tells him about how Yoon-Jo has been harassed online.

Elsewhere, Yi-Jung bumps into her ex-husband, Ahn Eun-Seok, and Ji-Hyeon together. Sensing the tension between them, Ji-Hyeon tells Yi-Jung that Eun-Seok came to help with Seyong’s legal team, but both of them seem not to care as to why either of them are there.

After they walk away, Eun-Seok expresses his disappointment in Ji-Hyeon hiring Yi-Jung. Ji-Hyeon mentions that she and Eun-Seok would have made a good couple if he had agreed to marry her instead of Yi-Jung. But he went against his parent’s wishes and married Yi-Jung instead. This remark really pisses Eun-Seok off.

That evening, the PR team leaders have a meeting. It turns out, Yeon-Soo, the current head of Sales under the Operations Division and the upcoming Seyong Vice-President, has decided that Yoon-Jo will take the fall for all this. So, Seyong won’t do anything to clear up the rumours about Yoon-Jo and instead will transfer her to another Seyong branch.

Eun-Jeong doesn’t support this move, causing her and Sun-Tae to begin arguing. At the same time, Jae-Min goes over to Yoon-Jo’s house for dinner. Hae-Jo, her younger sister, starts asking Jae-Min if he’s single and whether he can date her, and this pisses Yoon-Jo off.

The next day, Sun-Tae tells Yoon-Jo that she’s being relocated, and as expected she’s not happy about it. Yoon-Jo goes to ask Eun-Jeong if she was the one who pushed for her to be transferred. Sun-Tae tries to convince Yoon-Jo to return to his office to talk about this, but Eun-Jeong refuses. Jae-Min also comes to defend Yoon-Jo, causing a huge argument between him and Sun-Tae.

Just then, Yi-Jung walks in and isn’t happy about how Sun-Tae and Jae-Min are behaving. She asks the entire PR department to have a meeting with her.

At the meeting, Yi-Jung addresses the recent rumours about Yoon-Jo and how the PR department responded to them. She then reveals she has the non-discriminatory employment evaluation report. It turns out that Jae-Min told her about the report when he met with her earlier. Then, Yi-Jung asks Sun-Tae how they finally settled on hiring Yoon-Jo. It is finally revealed that only the team leaders participated in choosing the suitable candidates for hire, and not all the employees as believed.

Yi-Jung concludes that this whole mess created by the rumours is the fault of the PR department. She then mentions that Yoon-Jo deserves an apology from Seyong for what she has been through because of this.

Yoon-Jo then meets with Yi-Jung in her office, and she’s excited and nervous about meeting her role model. Yi-Jung begins asking Yoon-Jo about work specialization. Meanwhile, Sun-Tae meets Jae-Min privately and scolds him for telling Yi-Jung about the evaluation report and confronting him earlier. He tells Jae-Min that if he doesn’t like how Seyong works, he should quit.

Later, Eun-Jeong finally allows Yoon-Jo to be in charge of Seyong Cosmetics’ marketing project. This doesn’t sit well with Ji-Hyo though, and she even texts her aggrievances to someone. It seems she’s the one who may have started the rumours about Yoon-Jo.

That evening, Jae-Min goes out drinking with Chul-Jun. They get drunk, and each take a taxi home. On the way, Jae-Min feels nauseous, so he stops the taxi and ends up vomiting. The cab ends up leaving him in the middle of the road.

The episode ends with Jae-Min calling Yi-Jung, asking if she could see her, and she agrees.

The Episode Review

I’m so glad Yi-Jung stepped in and cleared this mess caused by rumours, making life easier for Yoon-Jo again. I’m also happy that Eun-Jeong has finally started recognizing Yoon-Jo’s potential. It turns out, Jae-Min and Yi-Jung have a romantic relationship. I hope he doesn’t bring Yoon-Jo’s hopes about them being together. Dong-Hoon is also attracted to Yoon-Jo, and I don’t blame him as Yoon-Jo is a pretty lady.

Sun-Tae is one of those people in work environments who thinks they’re untouchable, forgetting they’re just employees like everyone else. I look forward to seeing the day he gets a reality check and learns his place at Seyong.