We are picking up Strangers 2 (aka Forest of Secrets 2). This show is available on Netflix and is airing Saturday and Sunday at 22:00 KST. (I can’t update my sidebar with this drama yet because WordPress updated their platform which locked me out of my widgets ughh 😩).

Neither of us watched the first Stranger/Forest of Secrets but we heard sooo many good things about it. Basically that it was one of the best detective shows ever in Korea. So I, for one, am excited to see this installment!

Caution: Be wary of typos

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How to Watch: Netflix

Shorthand Character Chart: coming up

How we do this: This live recap will be in two parts and we segment each post around every 10 minutes. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later depending on the scene. There will be typos which we have fantasies of fixing once the episode finishes airing. Also, if there is a preview then we will try and translate it. Look for that at the bottom or on a separate post!

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KOREAN DRAMA STRANGER 2 EPISODE 1 – PART 1

——-dramamilk.com——-

/1/

VO – Devoted to the truth, moving toward the way, these are all endless processes. It becomes a failure when you stop.

VO – Moving towards change is like my feet becoming needles with invisible wires, endlessly walking.

VO – The belief of a handful of hope is better than a hundred despairs to do it again without stopping (???)

We open on a foggy dark night or morning. A red light from a car shines. A street light flickers. And a car drives up a street. There are the sounds of ocean waves.

The car is entering a restricted area along a beach.

MARCH 2019

Hwang Si-mok is driving and listening to the radio. The radio says that the police arrested a Mr. Jung who ran away after abandoning his car. He was drunk. He gets a text message from a Manager Lee who asks where he is.

He does not respond.

A woman starts to talk about a mist warning for the area. Drivers need to be careful in the mist.

Si-mok stops the car and answers the phone. Someone asks him where he is and tells him that he shouldn’t be late. He is the main person. Si-mok asks if he can contact the shoreline service because the restricted area line is disconnected here. They need to reconnect it. He tells him where he is.

On the phone, the police chief shows up. It looks like everyone is waiting for Si-mok to show up. The person on the phone tells him to show up quickly. Si-mok apologizes and says he cannot be there too soon.

Si-mok drives into a hotel. Police start to race up the street. Si-mok looks at them racing away, they are racing to the road he just came from.

BEACH

The misty beach road starts to fill up with ambulances and cars. Si-mok drives back and walks to the beach. It is a crowded site now. Several onlookers say that someone died there.

Si-mok walks out onto the beach. A policeman yells something so he looks at him. But he then continues walking to where two other cops are. The two cops are looking at a pair of expensive tennis shoes in the sand. They are a limited edition.

A person walks up with a blanket on him. It looks like he was in the water. The police ask him if these were his friends and if he really walked into the water over there?

they point to the water.

But then they see something so everyone runs to the water and pull out a body. Th friend starts to back away slowly. Si-mok feels strangely about it but he doesn’t show any expression either way, he just looks at him.

Si-mok continues to look at the friend and observe him. The friend says this is the first time in college, he was drunk, he didn’t know they were out. He starts to cry.

Si-mok starts to imagine what might have happened. He sees two friends running around the beach having fun. One of them takes off his shoes so they can run in the water. Then a car drives up and stops. It might have been his car when he drove by.

The friend goes under water and doesn’t come back out. But then he comes out and gasps. The friend runs back to the water to help him. Si-mok’s car drives off.

In the present, Si-mok starts to walk back to the street. The officer calls him and asks if he is coming to his own farewell party? Si-mok doesn’t say anything. He puts the phone down without speaking.

—————–

/2/

APARTMENT

In stark contrast to the misty dark beach, Han Yeo-jin is laying in bed in her pajamas in a bright room. She is looking up Marvel Universe things on her phone and wonders if someone went there to see that? She stops on Iron man and compares that Iron Man with the one on her shelf.

Then she keeps flipping through photos on Instagram. But she accidentally presses a button that shows the scene of the crime. Two people are taking photos by it. But then the photo disappears right away. She wonders where the photo went.

On the news, the announcer says that the high ranking police officer who leaked the information will be investigated. The news continues to talk about how the information leaked. She is very interested and wonders who this person is. On the screen is an image of a man with his face darkened to remove it.

MORNING

Yeo-jin starts to drive to work. There is a ton of traffic which she is adorably annoyed about. On the news, they talk about two people who were freshman in college who went to the sea. They were both drunk and one of them died. 

They went through the restricted line to get in but the shoreline service did not put this line up properly. This happened two years ago as well. Accidents frequently happen due to that.

POLICE DEPARTMENT

Yeo-jin gets to work and greets a couple cops. One of them tells her that the chief went to the intelligence team so go there if you need to report anything. She tells him okay and goes to her desk.

At her desk, she looks at the Instagram photos and remembers the photo that is missing from someones Instagram page. She starts to search something.

Elsewhere, a man stands outside a room listening as the commissioner yells at Si-mok about how he did not come to his farewell party. The man sighs and walks away. The commissioner keeps yelling at Si-mok.

The man goes to Si-mok’s office, it looks like this is Si-mo’s secretary or manager. The other secretary asks if he was very angry? The man says yes. The woman asks if he is in big trouble? She thinks their prosecutor is very consistent until the day he leaves.

Si-mok comes in so these two greet him and tell him that the things in the box she is packing are his so he can take them with him. He thanks her and then sits at his table. He gets a call.

YJ – How are you?

SM – Yes

YJ – I am doing fine also *sarcastic*. 

Sh laughs and then starts to ask him about the shoreline. She saw that it was partially closed, but was it opened at all? Did you see a partially opened spot?

SM  – Why?

YJ – What time did it happen? The news was too brief about it.

SM – It was just an accident, it won’t be too long. The time of death estimate was around 7-8:30 pm. The shoreline was closed to Han San island since 6:40 pm. They were three friends since middle school who were college freshman. One of the parents bought a car for going to college, so it was a spontaneous trip with a new car.

YJ – Oh, they are brave. Freshman should be new drivers. But they went that far? Maybe they really wanted to go to the beach.

We see a flashback of the friends driving to the beach .

SM – The survivor of the three friends survived because he was a new driver. He was under so much stress driving down so he passed out after two drinks. He didn’t even know his friends went out.

YJ – So he woke up alone?

We see the friend walking alone on the beach and looking for his friends.

SM – They did not pick up the phone, he waited for awhile but they did not show up. Then he went out for a walk. That is when he found out.

YJ – What?

The shoes are in the sand. The friend runs to the sea and calls their names.

YJ – Aigoo….why don’t you ask why I am asking you.

SM – Yes, why are you asking?

YJ – that restricted line. Was there a possibility that it wasn’t properly installed but that the kids did it? There is a picture that was taken on the shoreline. I followed her and saw her post the photo at 8 pm sometime and took the post down.

Si-mok remembers the officers working hard to replace the line at the beach. One person complains that they are working hard to replace the line after the cows got out.

YJ – Does the restricted line have a banner with a red color? It says restricted? Where did they find that shore without the restricted line and why did they remove the photo? It was her own thing to post or not, but after one hour to remove after posting three at the same time?

SM – The police reported that the kids might have cut it and then gone in. Or maybe the kids wanted to see the sea after coming all the way there. The survivor said that the other two were talking about that.

YJ – Yeah, that is possible. But in that case, do you think they cut the line or just hopped it.

SM – If the couple in the photo cut the line for some reason then we still have a problem as to whether the kids went into the sea first or the couple cut the line first.

YJ – I see, I will investigate it.

SM – Prosecutor, is this your case? Are you doing it?

YJ – No, I am done with my work. And drowning after drinking is common here. Even if people investigate, it will be closed quickly.

SM – You know all the details because it is a small city.

YJ – Yeah, kind of.

SM – Okay, work hard.

YJ – Yes.

He thinks or a second and then is about to say something. His secretary tells him that the police commissioner wants to eat lunch together since they didn’t have their farewell party. The manager grumbles.

The woman says the commissioner might really not want to let you go. She chuckles and the manager chuckles as well.

Si-mok asks when the shoreline restriction is lifted. They tell him it should be lifted already. He starts to leave. The woman reminds him that the commissioner wants to have lunch together! But he leaves. They both look at each other and grumble.

—————–

/3/

POLICE STATION

Yeo-jin types on the computer to ask the Instagram man a question about the beach. She asks if she went to that beach last night. But she erases it and then tells her that she is selling a retro figurine and if she would like it. She sends that message.

The other person read it.

He replies for her to tell him the name of the model and the picture.

She tells him that she is at work right now but she can send it to him when she gets home. 

He reads it but doesn’t answer.

She grumbles then calls detective Jang Gun. He tells her that what she is asking is very time consuming. Even if we ask for cooperation they wont’ tell us until a long time later.

She asks, even if I as Instagram in person? (Though the name on the show is Ansta)

The detective starts to look at the Instagram photos of the man. He tells her that the fitness club on the third line looks expensive. She starts to look at that photo.

But he gets surprised when Detective Choi Yoon-soo yells at him to startled him about what he is looking at on the computer at his age. Detective Jang tells him that Yeo-jin thinks the thing that happened on the beach might not be an accident, it could be an incident.

Detective Choi starts to look at the photos as well. Yeo-jin starts to tell them about his girlfriend and all that stuff. They call her a stalker. She says you can start to know everything about someone when you follow them for awhile.

So they start to look at her Instagram. They look at his car and think it is his since you see the car consistently. They zoom in to one of the photos to find out the license plate number.

They also try and find out where the girlfriend lives. Jang thinks she doesn’t live in Gangnam, she just takes photos there. Choi thinks she does because she said the photo is in front of her house. Choi is all like, people lie on Instagram.

They find out the name of the fitness place. It is a super expensive work out place that they know about. They also find out several of the license plate numbers.

VO – Even if the couple on the TV cut the line for some reason, there is still the problem of whether the couple cut the line first, or the kids went into the sea first.

Yeo-jin leaves and walks to the workout club. The workout club people won’t let Detective Jang in because they will not release personal information. Yeo-jin walks up and tells him that he is part of the main branch National Investigation agency. Are you not cooperating? Do you want us to investigate all the members?

The man sys no. Detective Jang starts to act with Yeo-jin, they pretend like they don’t know each other. He says that if the special investigation team is working on it then I am out. Wow, what a headache.

Yeo-jin tells the club guy that he understands that they have a process so announce to your members that the information they get today is only for this job. The club guy looks worried and asks for her to wait.

Their plan works. Yeo-jin walks away. Detective Jang runs up and comments on the power of the main branch and how he should have gone there. She hits him in the belly.

END PART ONE

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Click here for part 2!

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