K-drama midseason recap: Through the Darkness – true-crime procedural explores South Korea’s most heinous criminals
- Based on the memoir of Korea’s first criminal profiler, Through the Darkness recreates some of the country’s most notorious criminal cases of the early 2000s
- While emphasis was put on the behavioural aspect of the crimes early on, the show hasn’t delved as far into the psychology of the killers as some may have hoped
This article contains mild spoilers.
After a brief break, following its first six episodes, for the Beijing Winter Olympics on South Korean broadcaster SBS’ schedule, true-crime procedural Through the Darkness is back with part two of its first season.
Based on Those Who Read Hearts of Evil, the memoir of Kwon Il-yong, South Korea’s first criminal profiler, the show has recreated some of the country’s most notorious criminal cases from the early 21st century.
When the show began, we were introduced to Song Ha-young (Kim Nam-gil), an introspective detective whose methods clashed with his coarser colleagues, and Gook Young-soo (Jin Seon-kyu), a captain at the National Police Agency (NPA) trying to convince his superiors to introduce behavioural profiling in the Korean police force.
By episode three, Young-soo had succeeded in getting his profile unit, the Crime Behaviour Analysis Team, and convincing Ha-young to join it. The team, which also welcomes young statistician Jung Woo-joo (Ryeo Un), is forced to make do with a dank semi-basement office, not unlike the spaces first forced on the fledgling investigative units in the American shows Mindhunters and The Wire.
