We’re back with a new K-drama review, this time we’re writing about ‘Nobody Knows’. This is our very first Patreon Exclusive K-Drama Review, so let us know in the comments what you think. If there is something that you wish we’d paid more attention to, tell us. If you watched it and want to share your opinion, feel free to leave a comment! We’d love to hear from you.
‘Nobody Knows’ is a brand new crime drama that was aired on SBS and has 16 episodes. It had okay ratings, ranging from 6.6% to 12%. The drama aired from March to April.
I remember seeing one of the teaser pictures and Kim Seo-Hyung looked amazing, so I was definitely intrigued. It wasn’t until I saw that Sunwoo Jung A had an OST for the drama that I was sold.
Watch the trailer for the drama ‘Nobody Knows’:
The Cast
There are a couple of familiar faces in ‘Nobody Knows’. There’s Kim Seo-Hyung, Ryu Deok-Hwan, Moon Sung-Geun, Min Jin-Woong, Jang Young-Nam and many more.
I feel like most of the cast did a pretty good job. I liked the intensity of Seo-Hyung’s character and Ahn Ji-Ho was absolutely adorable. The only performance I wasn’t necessarily a fan of, and that has more to do with the writing than the actual performance, was Park Chul-Min’s. He played the team leader of Seo-Hyung’s team and it felt a bit like a caricature. There was no real depth to him and he wasn’t fully fleshed out. I think they tried to bring some lightness in the conversations, as pretty much all of it is quite heavy. But it felt misplaced and kind of awkward.
The plot
Cha Young-Jin’s (Kim Seo-Hyung) best friend was murdered by a serial killer when they were teenagers. The killings were named the Stigmata murders. Young-Jin ignored the calls of her friend that day and when she’s coming out of the police investigation for her statement, the killer calls her with her friend’s phone and she finally picks up.
She promises that she’s going to catch him, so he better stay alive. To be honest, I really liked this moment, because it creates the entire frame. Though is it completely rational that she decided to become a detective after and dedicates her entire life to catching the Stigmata serial killer? Hell no. A rational decision would have been to move abroad, start a new life, start a restaurant, maybe fall in love with a cute local. Though, that would have made ‘Nobody Knows’ a completely different K-drama.
Anyways, back to the story, Young-Jin tells the detective in charge, Hwang In-Beom (Moon Sung-Geun) that she got the phone call. He decides to lie to everyone, saying that he got the call so that Young-Jin can remain anonymous and no one will know her name or her face. That’s important because 19 years later no one in her team knows that she was the best friend of one of the victims. It’s going to be a whole issue, obviously, but it felt dragged out like some of the other plot points. I’ll get to that later.
Present
In the present, she’s this badass detective who’s ‘lucky’ in the sense that every time she turns around she finds someone murdered and has a new lead. She’s also friends with the teenager Ko Eun-Ho (Ahn Ji-Ho) who’s living in the apartment a floor below hers.
They met when she saved his mother from her abusive partner. Since then, they’ve been sort of taking care of each other. Eun-Ho waters her plants so they don’t die when she’s too absorbed in a case. She makes sure he has stuff to eat, books to read and a place to hide when the mom brings over a boyfriend.
Ko Eun-Ho
Ko Eun-Ho is an interesting character. Though there was one thing that bothered me a tiny bit. He’s so utterly, utterly good and righteous. I think it was so noticeable because all the other characters feel quite faceted, in the sense that they’re all shades of gray rather than just black or white.
He starts the main events of the series. After seeing a man collapse on the street, he performs CPR and literally saves his life. He tells one of his old friends to turn themselves in because his mother got the answers to a test and he cheated. Eun-Ho helps a different student to go back to the straight and narrow after finding him stealing from a drunk on the street.
The only thing that felt out of character was when Eun-Ho, his mom’s boyfriend and the student who was caught stealing Joo Dong-Myung (Yoon Chang-Young) found a whole bunch of money at Millenium Hotel and divided it among the three of them. Eun-Ho felt conflicted and eventually gave his share to Dong-Myung.
The money came from a drug deal that went wrong because of the guys taking the money. This part felt so weird and contrived. Also it felt unnecessary and just something in place to A, fill up the episodes and B, connect them to the hotel and its workers.
I feel like I barely touched on the basics of the full plot even though I’ve written a lot. So here’s the basic gist of the other elements to the story. Baek Sang-Ho (Park Hoon) is the owner of the hotel and is a part of New Life Church.
New Life Church
That’s the same church who runs the school that Eun-Ho and Dong-Myung attend. That’s also where their teacher Lee Sun-Woo (Ryu Deok-Hwan) works. The teacher is a bit of an odd duck in the story. He helps so much with the investigation instead of just letting Young-Jin and her team do the work.
The reason he helps with the investigation is because one night, Eun-Ho jumps off the roof of Millenium Hotel. The thing is (spoiler alert) he didn’t voluntarily jump. He was being chased by the staff because when he saved the old man by giving him CPR he got gifted the New Life Church bible and that was the key to a fortune that was buried somewhere. Baek Sang-Ho desperately wanted that fortune and found out Eun-Ho had the book, hence the chase. Eun-Ho doesn’t die but ends up in a coma for a while. Also Eun-Ho had seen something in Baek Sang-Ho’s office that could get him arrested.
Now the thing is, the New Life Church is weird. It’s a bit cult like and Baek Sang-Ho has a very tragic backstory. The Stigmata killer is also from that church. But, surprise, there’s two Stigmata killers. The first one ends up dying in a very dramatic fashion with Young-Jin as the sole witness. It’s all very anticlimactic.
Baek Sang-Ho
The subplot that had me confused if not a bit bored was the one with the drug dealers. They, obviously upset that they lost such a huge amount of money, try to find the ones who stole it. In the end Baek Sang-Ho and his staff find them first and he tortures them. It was so bizarre. In the beginning Baek Sang-Ho was a bit weird but not necessarily malicious or insane. This moment shows his enjoyment in seeing other people suffer and the fact that he can play God and decide who lives. I wish there had been a better build-up to this or at least some other signs that he’s bad. Because he’s the second Stimagata killer and he’s the one who killed Young-Jin’s best friend and the one who called her when she was in the police station.
Overall
It was a bit disappointing. The last five episodes of the drama ‘Nobody Knows’dragged on for what felt like forever and I had a bit of a hard time finishing it. I kept getting distracted by other things. Is it still worth a watch? Sure, if you like crime series, why not. If you’ve never seen one before, I would skip this one for a while and watch some of the other ones that can hold the plot together without adding subplot after subplot.
Every episode of the drama ‘Nobody Knows’ is available with subtitles on the official SBS YouTube Channel which is a plus.
