The Devil Judge – K-Drama Episode 2 Recap & Review

The Bomb

Episode 2 of The Devil Judge begins with Ga-On troubled over Yo-Han’s conflicting emotions. After the trial, Yo-Han invites Ga-On and Jin-Joo out for dinner.

Ga-On challenges his ideals that night, claiming he’s been a pampered prince since birth. Well, Yo-Han outright admits that his Father was a loan shark – and Ga-On has a history of borrowing money. Eventually it’s too much for Ga-On to take and he walks away.

On the way home, a man named Lee Young-Hoon drives recklessly through the market. In fact, he even ends up knocking a man over in fright, clutching his arm in pain. Young-Hoon does stop and apologize but it’s one tinged in indifference, especially when he starts driving away and chuckling to himself.

Meanwhile, the Social Responsibility Foundation continue to reel over what happened to Chairman Joo last episode. Specifically, Kyung-Hee is unsure what Yo-Han’s end-goal is and worries it could usurp them. Chairman Seo doesn’t seem too bothered, while Sun-A is more interested in the rising approval ratings.

The next day, Ga-On ends up recording Yo-Han while he discusses justice and the Chairman’s trial. This, coupled with the earlier audio clips of the Judge, are brought before Soo-Hyun where they discuss this together. The pair deduce that he’s threatened the witness (Dr Safety) to change his testimony.

However, the pair are interrupted by Young-Hoon driving recklessly again. He knocks someone off the road but it doesn’t take long for Yo-Han to get involved.

Sporting a black sports car, he matches Young-Hoon’s speed as they scream through the Korean roads. Eventually he slams on the brakes and manages to stop the reckless man. Soo-Hyun and Ga-On eventually catch up and watch from afar as he approaches Young-Hoon’s car with a sledgehammer and smashes into it several times. After handing over a public transportation card, he takes off.

Young-Hoon happens to be a CEO though and after forcing one of his employees to eat cake, ignoring their diabetes diagnosis, he berates a waiter down at a bar too. This is too much for Yo-Han to ignore and he begins following him, eventually asking where his public transportation card is.

At the same time, Soo-Hyun and Ga-On continue to look into Yo-Han’s past. Online, some comments call Yo-Han the devil, which gets Ga-On thinking. This carries over to a meeting in Ga-On’s office later on, where Jin-Joo and Ga-On are invited along to attend a charity fashion show with the Social Responsibility Foundation. Ga-On refuses to attend though while Jin-Joo shows up as Yo-Han’s plus one.

Ga-On visits the church Yo-Han grew up at instead, learning how Yo-Han was treated like a monster during his entire upbringing. All of this stemmed from him killing a bird in class. To get revenge for the other kids bullying him, Yo-Han began turning the kids from the upper neighbourhood against those in the lower rungs.

At the foundation Yo-Han is introduced to one of the influential leaders’ sons – Young-Hoon. The same Young-Hoon who’s been terrorizing the streets. Uh oh!

As the episode closes out, Ga-On heads back to Yo-Han’s office and realizes that the bug is gone from under his desk. Yo-Han soon shows and calls him out for it though, handing it over. “Possibility is like a drug,” He says, as the pair suddenly find themselves dropping to the floor.

A bomb hidden behind a wall painting explodes, sending a fireball raging through the room. Thankfully both survive, with Yo-Han carrying Ga-On out the room.

The Episode Review

With no live court trial this time around, The Devil Judge instead turns its attention to both Ga-On and Yo-Han’s upbringing. The interesting dynamic these two have helps to elevate this series. Ga-On is obviously the righteous judge and wants to do what’s just and right whereas Yo-Han doesn’t care what rules he needs to break to see justice done.

His upbringing explains a lot regarding his attitude to life, and learning his Father was a loan shark could well have much deeper psychological issues than what we’re seeing. After all, the burning church could be a foreshadowed glimpse of what’s to come or it could also be a literal fire started by him.

However, we’ve also seen glimpses of Yo-Han cowering as a child which could be a sign of abuse. It’s too early to tell but the possibilities are certainly tantalizing.

Someone is clearly not happy with Yo-Han though and there’s actually a few different people this could be that tried to blow him up. Sun-A seems to be the most likely, given her power lusting, while Kyung-Hee, any of Chairman Joo’s cronies or Young-Hoon could also be responsible. Either way, this is a tantalizing glimpse of things to come.

The dynamics at play here are what make this series so fascinating, and seeing Soo-Hyun and Ga-On piece together Yo-Han’s past feels like a natural way of exuding exposition about our devil judge’s past.

The ending definitely sets things up nicely for next week, leaving plenty of question marks over the direction this one is likely to take. Roll on next Saturday!