When The Phone Rings – K-drama Episode 1 Recap & Review

The Kidnapping

Episode 1 of When the Phone Rings starts with the Presidential Spokesperson, Baek Sa-eon, making heads turn in admiration after he arrives at a party.

His wife, Hong Hee-joo, joins him soon after, and all the attendees continue to swoon over the new arrivals. Hee-joo seems nervous, but Sa-eon assures her that the people are only interested in him, so she should stay calm and ensure nothing goes wrong. The two ascend a flight of stairs together as people’s eyes and phone cameras follow.

The scene cuts to Hee-joo  at her job as a sign-language interpreter at a news station. A glitch happens at a compromising point, but she is unaware of this and continues to do her job smoothly.

A live broadcast from the President’s office interrupts the news reporting, and Hee-joo is let go for the day. At the live broadcast, Sa-eon talks about an abduction by a terror group demanding the withdrawal of South Korean troops and a ransom payment or else they will start shooting hostages if their demands are not met. Everyone and the news station reacts strongly to the mention of killing hostages.

Sa-eon reports the government’s position on the kidnappers’ demand, saying that the government is unwilling to negotiate. The government views the kidnapper’s actions as inhumane and cannot be tolerated.

As such, the government will not compromise, but will mobilise all the available resources to rescue the hostages. Hee-joo, who had stopped to watch the broadcast before leaving the news station, is not thrilled about Sa-eon’s announcement, so she gives him the finger and walks out. At the end of his speech, Sa-eon announces a temporary media embargo.

Elsewhere, Hee-joo is at a meeting with her mother and mother-in-law. The mother-in-law strictly tells her to quit her job and focus on supporting her husband in the upcoming presidential elections.

The mother-in-law mentions her selective mutism, asking if she plans to improve on it, but she changes her mind and says choosing to stay quiet is the best choice. After the mother-in-law leaves, Hee-joo’s mother scolds her for not trying hard enough to keep a man she stole from someone else.

Sa-eon reports the government’s position on the kidnappers’ demand, saying that the government is unwilling to negotiate. The government views the kidnapper’s actions as inhumane and cannot be tolerated.

As such, the government will not compromise, but will mobilise all the available resources to rescue the hostages. Hee-joo, who had stopped to watch the broadcast before leaving the news station, is not thrilled about Sa-eon’s announcement, so she gives him the finger and walks out. At the end of his speech, Sa-eon announces a temporary media embargo.

Elsewhere, Hee-joo is at a meeting with her mother and mother-in-law. The mother-in-law strictly tells her to quit her job and focus on supporting her husband in the upcoming presidential elections.

The mother-in-law mentions her selective mutism, asking if she plans to improve on it, but she changes her mind and says choosing to stay quiet is the best choice. After the mother-in-law leaves, Hee-joo’s mother scolds her for not trying hard enough to keep a man she stole from someone else.

After the meeting, Hee-joo sits in her car under the pouring rain for a while before she decides to listen to a commentary about the government’s position on the abduction case.

Suddenly, her radio starts acting up, and soon after, she loses control of her car. Hee-joo is frantic until the vehicle comes to an abrupt stop at an intersection.

Hee-joo tries to leave, but she cannot open the door. Hee-joo remembers a news piece they did about how malware can help someone else take control of a car and immediately realises what is happening. She becomes even more restless, trying to pry the door open, but it doesn’t budge.

Back in Sa-eon’s office, one of his subordinates, Young-woo, mentions that the news media has dug out his background, including FBI training and courses taken in NYPD negotiations.

Since he is a negotiation expert, the netizens want Sa-eon to lead the negotiation team. Meanwhile, a truck narrowly misses Hee-joo’s car, and then a strange man in all black and a mask is seen looking her way under the rain. The man walks over to Hee-joo’s car and unlocks the doors. At the office, Sa-eon receives a call from a new number.

The caller threatens to kill Hee-joo, but it suddenly disconnects because Sa-eon’s phone battery dies. When he charges it, Sa-eon first calls his mother to ask about Hee-joo, and she tells him Hee-joo is with her mother.

When Sa-eon calls his mother-in-law, she lies that Hee-joo is with her and she will send her home after dinner. Therefore, when the strange number calls again, Sa-eon thinks it is a prank call and does not take the caller seriously. When the caller tries to ask for ransom, Sa-eon hangs up the phone after assuring him that he is not paying.

At the car, the caller gets angry and starts strangling Hee-joo. He then stops and tells Hee-joo that the only thing that can save her is if Sa-eon cares about her enough.

When he tries calling again, Young-woo accidentally answers, and this time, to Hee-joo’s horror, Sa-eon tells him to call back when there is a corpse. Sa-eon is called to attend an urgent meeting and leaves the phone in his office, so the caller’s following calls are unanswered.

Hee-joo gets frustrated and tries to drive the car off the road. The car radio starts working again and announces that the negotiations with the kidnappers were successful and the hostages are released.

Sa-eon gives the last speech of the day about them and cloaks out. Reporter Hyuk-jin catches up with him at the parking lot to try to get an exclusive interview, but he is turned down. Sa-eon suddenly stops and asks Hyuk-jin to help with something.

The scene cuts to Sa-eon driving like a madman recklessly but carefully dodging vehicles on the road and scaring Hyuk-jin out of his mind. He asks Hyuk-jin to help trace the number, saying that even though he thinks it is a scam, he has a bad feeling, given that the caller went to the extent of using a foreign number and a voice modulator.

Sa-eon rushes home and only calms after seeing Hee-joo in the kitchen. He casually mentions the strange call but Do-jae then calls with updates from trying to trace the number. After Hee-joo finishes her meal, she goes to her room and gets a call from her mother, nagging her about the marriage and getting pregnant.

At that moment, Hee-joo thinks back to their wedding. It turns out that she is a stand-in wife. The wedding was between Sa-eon and someone else, but the one wearing the wedding gown is Hee-joo. Sa-eon gives her a contract with three conditions she has to follow.

Hee-joo is never going to initiate divorce, especially during the election period, and is not supposed to disclose to anybody that she is his wife. Violating the conditions will lead to a fine of two billion won.

Back at the party, Hee-joo accompanies Sa-eon as a sign language interpreter. The ambassador’s wife assumes that Hee-joo is Sa-eon’s wife, but she refutes it Later, Hee-joo leaves the party angrily after cursing Sa-eon when he tells the ambassador his wife is his weakness.

After she leaves, Sa-eon gets a call from the same number, and this time, he’s petrified since the caller is also at the party and knows intimate details about his life. The caller threatens to kill his wife and not the stand-in Hee-joo, but his real love, Hong In-a.

Hong In-a is Hee-joo’s sister and the real fiancé who ran away on their wedding day. To maintain the political relationship between the two families, Hee-joo married Sa-eon as a hostage.

In an overwhelming turn of events, the caller is revealed as Hee-joo. Sa-eon is now spooked and shakily asks for the caller’s demands. The caller demands that Sa-eon leave Hee-joo and get back together with his real wife since he does not need Hee-joo.

After the call, Hee-joo thinks back to when Sa-eon told the kidnapper to kill her. When she crashed the car, she took the kidnapper’s phone and fled the scene.

Back to the call, Sa-eon’s mood suddenly changes from begging to threatening. Hee-joo gives him until the next day to make a decision. However, he later changes the tune, saying that if the caller wanted to blackmail her, she should have studied him first and not gone after his person. Hee-joo almost hangs up but stops when he hears Hee-joo call her his person.

She sarcastically tells him what happened to her when she was kidnapped the previous day. At the end of the episode, Sa-eon gets too agitated after listening to what Hee-joo has gone through and vows to catch the caller.

The Episode Review

The first episode is a tad confusing but unique and thrilling. The backstory of Sa-eon and Hee-joo’s marriage is explained. However, we can’t help but wonder who Sa-eon might be in love with between the two sisters.

The twist at the end of the episode throws us off the edge of our seats. Who is the real kidnapper? Was he just an amateur trying to take advantage of the situation and get a ransom from Sa-eon? If Sa-eon and Hee-joo’s marriage is a secret, how did the kidnapper know about her?

Now that Sa-eon has vowed to catch the person who tried to abduct Hee-joo, and she is the one who made the call at the party, what will happen between them?