The Sins Of A Father
Episode 6 of Juvenile Justice begins with a brand new case to tackle. At Moonkwang High School, numerous teachers and students are charged with an Exam Paper leak. This has been forwarded on to Eun-Seok’s jurisdiction and it seems the school in question is one that only wealthy kids are a part of. Wealthy kids…like Won-Jung’s son. This explains the phone call last episode and it seems like he’s directly involved in this case. When Won-Jung heads home, he’s beside himself with anger. He’s been assigned the case to spear-head but yet, learning his son is part of this whole scandal, calls into question his morals and his duty. Because of this confession, he’s unable to stay quiet and cover up what he’s done. Despite Sin-U being a senior now, Won-Jung is put in a very difficult position. Eventually he turns and walks away, leaving his wife howling in sadness. Meanwhile, Eun-Seok is approached by I-Hwan, the man out in the streets. According to Eun-Seok, something happened 5 years ago that caused her to “die” and it seems she’s supposed to be in therapy, at least if his concerns are anything to go by. When Eun-Seok heads inside, she slumps to the ground, breathing heavily. The next day, the judges join together to discuss the logistics of this case. There are 21 kids in total that they need to handle. 18 of them will be handled by the Collegiate Division while the other three who were on the wait list will be handled as a protection case. Kang warns that this is going to be a very different case to what they’ve grown accustomed to. Given the gravitas of the situation and the influence their parents have, this could turn very ugly, very quickly. With the judges ready, they begin sifting through the numerous documents and begin piecing everything together. Kang is overwhelmed with stress, and he even lashes out at Sin-U, telling him if he wants to end his own life he should do it and not drag him down too, given he’s innocent in all this. News is abuzz across the court of Kang’s jump to politics, which is all over the TV. Everyone in the country has heard about this now, given the Liberty party have already called out Kang as their candidate and confirming this Exam Paper scandal is his last case. Sin-U takes his father’s words to heart and steps out in front of traffic. Won-Jung is shocked, and his own words – egging his son on to end his life – hammer home. Won-Jung has always been hard on Sin-U, grilling him for not having good grades. Berating him in front of his brother, and failing to show him proper brotherly love; both of these incidents have been enough for him to make this choice. Sin-u was getting by on 3 hours sleep for months and despite all that, Won-Jung never acknowledged him. And now, looking through the text messages while Sin-U’s life hangs in the balance, it hits home just how much he hasn’t been there for him. Kang makes a big choice and sits down with Assemblyman Eom, deciding to drop out of the election. He reveals all about his son and how he’s part of the case. “So what?” Is Eom’s reply. Eom wants him to keep running and to cover all of this up. If he actually opens up and tells the truth, a whole world of issues will come down on him, the family, the court, and everyone else involved. Eom likens this to a battle of survival and implores him to do everything he can to protect his son. Meanwhile, Eun-Seok starts the court proceedings, with various students and teachers talking about the exam paper scandal. With the school dropping out of the top 5 best in the country and acceptance rates dwindling, the fierce competition for students to be the best, turned this into a FOMO (fear of missing out) competition. With Won-Jung now compromised and doing what he can to protect his son from being found out, both Eun-Seok and Tae-Ju learn that the prosecution witnesses are being excluded from the case. Eun-Seok is shocked and as she calls out his decision, Won-Jung snaps and knocks a whole stack of papers off his desk, even smashing a photo in the process. This is pretty symbolic, given it’s a picture of the group and it’s almost like he’s shattered the integrity of the court. Tae-Ju is convinced that Kang is an impartial judge, but Eun-Seok realizes there’s something fishy going on. When one of the students claims there may be others involved that haven’t been caught, Eun-Seok decides to enlist Tae-Ju’s help to get to the bottom of this. This student actually heard one of the teachers boasting about there being 24 students involved too, but only 21 have been caught. This leaves 3 unaccounted for. Eun-Seok soon learns that the English teacher, Han Ji-Won, is a key witness here. It seems six of the students actually got an easy question wrong, each inputting the same nonsensical answer. It would appear that the questions weren’t leaked after all – it was the answers. Given one of the questions was actually changed on the exam, this should make it easier to track down the missing kids. She deduces that these kids dropped out before things got hairy, escaping the wrath of being found out. Won-Jung is not happy when he finds out Eun-Seok and Tae-Ju are following up this lead and encourages them to stop crossing the line. Eun-Seok continues down this line of inquiry and calls out Sin-U. She realizes Kang’s stress and Sin-U being in hospital point toward Kang’s son being involved. Eun-Seok is on to him now and as she calls him out, the episode comes to a close.
The Episode Review
Oh dear! Kang’s political career is going up in smoke and it’s all because of Eun-Seok’s tenacity and clever wits in finding out the truth about Sin-U. If Kang had actually kept his cool then he may not have aroused such suspicion but alas, that’s not the case. With Won-Jung now realizing he’s in the thick of it, the case is blown wide open and it’ll be interesting to see how this conflict of interest is actually tackled for the rest of the season. This case is certainly a big one and with high ranking officials involved and the entire exam paper scandal resting precariously on a knife-edge, it remains to be seen exactly how this one is going to end. Will Kang manage to save face by the end? Or is he going down with his son?
