"Longing For You" Is A Slow-Burn Whodunnit Centering On A Frightening Premise

Do we really know the people we love? That’s one of the key questions that “Longing for You” poses in its premiere week. The show takes some time to find its footing, but races ahead once it does, anchored by strong performances from Kwon Yool and Na In Woo (who really is so good at playing a hothead, like in “River Where the Moon Rises“). The show tears two brothers apart with no immediate prospect of reconciliation and peers into the murky waters of policing and profiling. Here’s everything we loved about the premiere episodes!

Warning: spoilers for episodes 1-2 below.

1. Oh Jin Sung and Oh Jin Woo’s relationship

Oh Jin Sung (Na In Woo) and Oh Jin Woo (Ren) are polar opposites. Jin Sung’s a hotheaded detective who believes his fists are far more useful than anything the law or procedure has to offer. Jin Woo’s the calmer, younger brother who loves nothing more than fishing and taking pictures of the ocean. Their mother, Hong Young Hee (Jang Hye Jin), spends her time blowing through her older son’s money and taking her younger son for granted. Jin Sung may be the family’s breadwinner, but Jin Woo is the glue that holds it together. He runs a restaurant in their sleepy hometown, serving fresh seafood that he catches himself, while his brother deals with petty crime and their mother dumps all the work on him.

The two brothers are clearly tight, despite Jin Sung getting angry at Jin Woo for being so self-sacrificing at times. It turns out that Jin Woo excelled in his studies and could have done much with his life, if it weren’t for their mother pressuring him to make her life easier. But there’s someone else behind the easygoing, soft-spoken man that everyone knows. Jin Woo is keeping secrets: there’s the visits to Seoul on the days a gruesome series of murders occurred, a box he hides from everyone, and a camera with a suspiciously blank memory card. And none of it bodes well when a series of murders come to light.

2. Ko Young Joo and Cha Young Woon’s relationship

Ko Young Joo (Kim Ji Eun) and Cha Young Woon (Kwon Yool) are longtime friends, prosecutors, and alumni of the same law school, and there may or may not be something between them. Young Woon is clearly besotted, though Young Joo is busy with her work and chasing down crime. When the wife of an assemblyman’s son is murdered, Young Joo is certain that the husband, Bae Min Kyu (Jung Sang Hoon), is the culprit. But Min Kyu conveniently has an alibi the night of the murder (he was cheating on his wife with an actress), and Young Woon isn’t sure that he’s the right man.

It’s because there were two other murders across Seoul with the same M.O. The victim’s ankles were slit, with blood extracted from them, and the bodies hung over railings like they were laundry. As far as murders go in dramas (which can get pretty graphic), this is a quite unsettling method for how meticulous and not gory it is. Young Woon earns Young Joo’s ire by taking over her case and treating it as a serial murder, which angers her enough for her to return to her hometown, the same hometown that Jin Sung works in.

But to give credit to Young Woon, he wanted to work with her, not take the case from her. And when evidence from one of the victims also points to Bae Min Kyu as a suspect, Young Woon goes all the way to Young Joo’s hometown to convince her to join him in taking Min Kyu down. And that’s where he meets the kind, caring Jin Woo. Jin Woo, who owns the same brand of sashimi blade that was used to slit the victims’ ankles and who was in Seoul at the same time as all of the murders. And when a murder occurs in Jin Woo’s neighborhood, as opposed to the regular pattern in Seoul, right after Jin Woo meets Young Woon, a seed of suspicion is firmly planted in Young Woon’s head.

3. The mystery of Young Woon’s illness and his mother

We haven’t seen too much of Yoo Jung Sook (Bae Jong Ok), who occupies a central position on the drama’s poster and may be the villain here. But the show gives us enough to indicate that she’s up to something shady. She appears to be a top-notch doctor and a wealthy one too as the wife to the head of Jinjin Group. Young Woon is the group’s only heir and seems to be afflicted with a strange illness. What’s really creepy about this is that Jong Ok monitors her son’s heart rate and stats every day from home. She seems to provide a similar service to Korea’s elite, using cutting-edge medical tech to ensure that they’re kept hale and hearty to ruin the lives of many more people and suck the nation of money for their own gain.

She’s not pleased with Young Woon’s investigation of Bae Min Kyu, son of Assemblyman Bae Tae Ock (Kim Jong Goo), one of her biggest clients. She instructs her secretary Jung Woo No (Kim Chul Ki) to see that the case is wrapped up as soon as possible so her son doesn’t ruin his career trying to arrest one of Korea’s elite. And whatever Woo No does seems to involve framing Jin Woo. Or does it?

4. The murkiness of policing and profiling suspects

What happens when more than one person fits the bill of a killer, motive, opportunity, evidence, and all? “Longing for You” examines just that. The profiler posits that the killer had an ankle fetish due to how carefully the ankles were slit in each victim. They would also have had to be good with a knife. Bae Min Kyu is a dentist, so that would track.

With the advent of one of the serial murders being in his small town, Jin Sung has the jurisdiction to request to join the investigation. Working with Young Woon is a challenge for him because Young Woon is all about procedure, and Jin Sung is more used to just grabbing the guy who did it and shoving him into an interrogation room. It works in a small town but it’s not the most effective tactic in Seoul. However, while Jin Sung digs into Bae Min Kyu, Young Woon digs into Jin Woo. And after finding far too many coincidences, calls between Jin Woo and the victim who died in Jin Woo’s neighborhood is the last straw. Without telling Young Joo or Jin Sung, Young Woon has Jin Woo arrested. And Jin Sung goes feral.

Jin Woo’s arrest is a watershed moment in each character’s relationship with the other. Young Joo is disappointed in Young Hoon for ignoring all the evidence pointing to Bae Min Kyu and for being in favor of targeting a regular citizen instead of a wealthy chaebol. Young Hoon thinks that Young Joo isn’t being objective due to growing up with Jin Woo. And Jin Sung is just plain furious. Young Woon hits a wall in his investigation after finding that Jin Woo purchased the knife set from someone online named “lemontree” and had the texts to prove it. The suspiciously low price of the knife set does concern him, as does the fact that Bae Min Kyu’s actress girlfriend had reported her knife (the same one believed to have been used in the murders) missing.

Meanwhile, Jin Sung goes on an evidence-gathering rampage while his brother is being interrogated. He successfully proves that Jin Woo’s knife couldn’t have been the knife used to kill the victims because Jin Woo sharpened it in a very specific way, altering the blade so as to make it a different knife altogether. Faced with this evidence, Young Woon has to let Jin Woo go free. Jin Sung and Young Joo try to focus the investigation back on Bae Min Kyu, until Young Woon manages to restore the deleted memory card on Jin Woo’s camera. This time, it’s Young Woon’s turn to drop evidence in front of Jin Sung and Young Joo. Because Jin Woo has been photographing high school girls’ ankles.

“Longing for You” opened slowly but seems to have settled into its pace, with every player now on the chessboard. Having a family member framed for murder is nothing new in terms of story, but the way the show is leaving us to guess whether or not they did it and giving up multiple suspects is relatively novel. Surprisingly, Young Woon is the heart of the show thus far as he tries to balance the different sets of evidence pointing to different people. With next week promising further chaos, it’s safe to say the show is off to a good start!

What did you think of this week’s episodes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Also catch up on the first two episodes of “Longing for You”:

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Shalini_A is a long time Asian-drama addict. When not watching dramas, she fangirls over Ji Sung, and spins thrillers set in increasingly fantastic worlds. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram, and feel free to ask her anything!

Currently watching:  “Revenant,” “Numbers,” “Longing For You,” “Not Others,” and “My Lovely Liar.”
Looking forward to: “Gyeongseong Creature,” “Ask The Stars,” “The Girl Downstairs,” “The Worst Evil,” “Queen of Tears,” “Vigilante,” “Daily Dose of Sunshine,” and Ji Sung’s next drama.