The Stolen Child
Episode 3 of The Goddess Of Revenge begins with more background surrounding Min Joon’s sister. Walking down the street, she notices two shady businessmen talking. Wide-eyed, she flees and rushes off in the other direction. Scrambling past abandoned railway tracks and entering town, she hurries inside a random woman’s house and phones her brother, who happens to be First Lieutenant. When she hangs up, he rings back and the woman on the receiver claims that her husband took this frantic woman away. At the same time, Min-Joon watches the news breaks of a scandal. Back in the present, Hae-Ra tries her best to remain neutral and figure out what happened to a girl called Seung-Joo. However, she’s not impartial to the fact if she was given an offer to be an anchor she’d take it immediately and get out this line of work. Not long after, she does receive a call and hurries out. Eun-Hye joins her and works with Hae-Ra to bag a better deal for selling her car. Meanwhile, Tae-On is led to a room with Hoon-Seok where they discuss how to play their hand. It turns out they’re liaising together to usurp the former’s father. She claims there will be a personnel change in 3 weeks time and tells him to get his reputation in check by then. Hae-Ra receives a call confirming that she can’t come back to the station. However, she hears news that Hoon-Seok is on course to take over as CEO and purposefully walks into the office. As she does, Min-Joon talks to his associate, Do-Yoon, who claims that Hae-Ra is the cheat key to his plan. Anyway, Hae-Ra heads in and speaks to the Manager about what’s going on. He eventually brings Producer Choi into the mix where Hae-Ra admits she’s going to file for an injunction unless they stop the show. The ball is really in FBC’s court but he tells her to go and speak to the CEO. Unfortunately she just misses him and worse, hurts her hand in the process. After getting patched up at the hospital, Hae-Ra notices a familiar looking girl rushed in – it’s Seung-Joo. As the plot thickens, Eun-Hye looks over the case file at home and notices that the file is also relating to Chairman Song. (Rule 1 of K-dramas – it’s always the Chairman!) Tae-On meets her father and confirms that the foundation incident is under control. It’s being handled by her Aunt and she confirms all charges were dropped in court. Meanwhile, Min-Joon meets with Chairman Song and hands over the files with details on Hae-Ra. He propositions Hae-Ra as the one to keep close as she may be useful in the future – especially if she could be used as a weapon against Tae-On. He agrees to think it over, and looks at her file with interest. When Min-Joon leaves, he walks straight past Tae-On who purposefully struts into his office. As we see from the past, she seems to have a link with what happened to Min-Joon’s sister and now it becomes clear exactly why he’s looking to take her down. Interestingly, Min-Joon has planted a bug in Song’s office and watches from the car. There, he overhears details of their plan surrounding the Foundation and Tae-On taking charge. When he tells her not to get mixed up in anything, she chuckles bitterly and reminds him of the previous scandal he was involved in. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Song eventually decides to take up Min-Joon’s offer and use Hae-Ra as a weapon against Tae-On. Back at the hospital, Hae-Ra learns more about Seung-Joo. It turns out she worked at Haena Entertainment. Shortly after, a big boss from a rival company arrived and head-hunted her, giving the girl a raise but coming with a whole swathe of issues. As they talk, she hands over a card and tells Seung-Joo’s Mother to ring if she feels up to it. Hae-Ra meanwhile, rushes back to Eun-Hye’s place as news breaks online of further scandals. Hae-Ra’s name is being dragged through the mud, as a random bystander claims that Hae-Ra was flirting with her. Hae-Ra takes Eun-Hye’s car and heads off leaving her behind. Hae-Ra confronts her ex-husband and asks just what he’s planning to do. That plan soon comes to fruition as he switches on his speaker and lets Hae-Ra dig a hole for herself. She tells him not to bring their son Ga-On into this but he bites back, telling her that he knows the boy isn’t their son. He’s concocted this entire story and shows Hae-Ra the recording he now has, asking outright exactly who Ga-On’s father is. Just before she contemplates tasering him, Min-Joon takes her aside and tells Hae-ra to hold it together. Back at the office, Min-Joon tells Do-Yoon to dig deep into Hae-Ra and her son, determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Meanwhile, Eun-Hye shows incriminating audio evidence of Tae-On and Hoon-Seok concocting their plan together. This includes the aforementioned DNA test. How has she obtained this you ask? Well, it turns out Eun-Hye has installed spyware on Hoon-Seok’s phone and now they have both of them right where they want them. Seung-Joo’s Mother shows up with a letter from Chairman Song. Despite Seung-Joo being in hospital, he wants to file a false accusation. With nowhere else to turn, Hae-Ra decides to take up Min-Joon’s offer, now knowing that he was well aware of the connection between everything. The plot thickens and the scandal becomes more juicy, as Hae-Ra goes to the police with evidence she was being abused by Hoon-Seok. Only, Min-Joon realizes the media taking Hae-Ra’s side isn’t necessarily good. Even worse, he receives a letter about Ga-On in the form of records from Hae-Ra’s ob/gyn 11 years ago. While Hoon-Seok charges out his car and grabs Hae-Ra, demanding to know where Ga-On is, we cut back in time as Min-Joon looks in shock at the letter. It turns out Hae-Ra’s child was already dead when she arrived. The baby she was pregnant with was Hoon-Seok’s as he already did a DNA test when she was carrying it. Unfortunately this means she took in another child as a twisted form of revenge to make Hoon-Seok raise a child he thought was his own. Cutting back to Hae-Ra and Hoon-Seok, she vows to make sure he doesn’t know what she’s done with Ga-On.
The Episode Review
With more of the political drama unveiled this time around, the revenge story works well to backdrop this to make for an engaging and intriguing series. This situation between Hae-Ra and Hoon-Seok continues to escalate and the reveal about Hae-Ra’s son is a shocking way to end this episode. Despite the abuse that Hae-Ra suffered, forcing Hoon-Seok to raise a child that’s not actually his own is incredibly dark and twisted. While I’m not condoning Hoon-Seok’s actions – his abuse is despicable no doubt – as a Father myself I would be absolutely crushed if I found out my two children were not biologically mine. This situation is far from over though and with Hoon-Seok looking set to try and salvage his reputation within 3 weeks, this fight is going to get dirty – quickly. Can either of these characters save face?
