The Devil Judge - EP 13
Added 2025-05-21 14:08:36 +0000 UTCbattle of the bobs continues
Comments
Thank you so much!
Freddie
2025-05-28 05:58:46 +0000 UTCcan I just say that I absolutely love reading your comments every week! really adds so much depth to the show - I would read a whole book of your analysis. can't wait to read your thoughts as we head into the last few episodes! thank you for taking the time to share! :)
JoannaMaybe
2025-05-26 18:36:01 +0000 UTCTime to address the heterosexual elephant in the room! Disclaimer that this is of course only my own interpretation, but I’ve never bought Gaon’s feelings as romantic – I think he absolutely loves her, but deep down it’s more a familial love than anything else. She’s been this fixed point in his life ever since he was little, and we know his family always had problems, so even more so than his parents, Soohyun has been this steady source of security, comfort, reassurance. She’s his protector. And it’s quite easy to confuse that for romantic love, especially if you haven’t known anything else, and especially if, for example, you haven’t had the chance to recognise or explore your attraction to other guys! Enter Yohan. Suddenly Gaon is confronted with this super hot dude who is challenging him on every level possible, who is the complete opposite of Soohyun – a source of insecurity and discombobulation! He provokes Gaon, he unsettles him, but he also touches him – and not just emotionally! And I don’t even mean that jokingly – it’s deliberate, the way Yohan is so hands-on, the way he ignores Gaon’s personal space. In many ways, everything that happens between them in those early eps IS a seduction, and Yohan might think it’s just an ideological one in order to protect his agenda, but it’s pretty obvious pretty quickly that’s not all it is, even if he’s pretending otherwise. And I’m sorry, but you’d have to be wilfully blind to deny that there’s a very blatant (and very conscious on the actors' and director’s part) chemistry and attraction tween them – one that is absent from his relationship with Soohyun. They are, quite frankly, obsessed with each other! But also, the longer Gaon stays with them, the more he sees through Yohan’s defences and breaks down his barriers, puts the family back together, and their dynamic starts to balance itself out, cos now Gaon has power too, just of a different sort. It becomes more than just a game or a seduction or an obsession – they are in a whole goddamn relationship! (And I’m so glad you said that, during his confession to Soohyun, how what he was describing was EXACTLY what had been playing out tween him and Yohan this whole time, cos I was screaming that at the screen the first time I watched it!) But Gaon can’t or won’t accept that, because now Minister Cha has blown her brains out and he’s rifling through her bloodied corpse, and then Soohyun – his guiding light – sees him like this, fallen from grace, and oh the look in her eyes, and suddenly it all comes crashing down. Because she’s also his moral compass – she reins him in, she guides him, she sets him straight (hah!). But this also means there’s a less flattering, more paternalistic aspect to their relationship which is especially evident when contrasted to his relationship with Yohan – Soohyun is absolute in her ideas of right/wrong, and if she thinks Gaon is ‘straying off the path’, she actively interferes, whether it be physically stopping him when he’s about to attack fraudster, or going behind his back to talk to the Professor after the Minister Cha incident, or going behind his back to threaten Yohan (also let’s just take a second to examine that – second male lead tells first male lead to stay away from female lead for her own good – how many times have we seen that exact same scene play out?? And how aggravating is it to see him flatten the female lead’s agency like that? And does that change just cos the genders have been swapped?), which once again demonstrates that she doesn’t trust Gaon’s own judgement – ‘HE may not know what’s best for him, but you and I both do and it’s not you!’ Even the way she ignores his repeated calls for her to let him handle something himself, etc. In fact, one of the most egregious examples is in this ep, when she lies straight to Gaon’s face about how she came to rescue him – as much as I genuinely liked her character and thought her death was tragic, I’ve never really forgiven her for not telling him the truth in that moment! It just seems so *petty*, but then of course her prime imperative is to keep them apart, and she realises that Gaon knowing it was Yohan who saved him, that Yohan is even now still looking out for him, would make that harder – which also proves that on some level she understands the strength/depth of the connection tween them. Obviously it comes from a place of love, and I think we’d all agree that preventing an attempted murder was the right thing to do! But point is, she doesn’t trust him to make his own choices. And he does call her out on it a couple of times – at one point he tells her she’s not his mum, or something along those lines, and I think that’s so telling, because that’s how I always read their dynamic – the fond bickering, the easy energy: Soohyun as the responsible older sister with Gaon as the rebellious bratty little brother she has to keep on the straight (hah again!) and narrow (at least their dynamic from his POV – I do think Soohyun is genuinely in love with him…or her *idea* of him). But Yohan – despite the age and seniority difference more readily lending itself to that paternalistic aspect– is the complete opposite. Yes, initially he withholds stuff from Gaon, but when you’ve spent years formulating to perfection an evil masterplan to wreak hideous revenge on all your enemies you’re gonna be a little hesitant bout sharing all the gory details with the pretty twink that’s just shown up at the office! Like I’ve said before, he wields the truth like a weapon, but he IS honest with Gaon, in his own way, and more importantly, he allows Gaon to make his own decisions – that is really important to Yohan, as we can see in his confrontation with the Professor – agency. Something he felt was denied to him for much of his life. So if Gaon chooses to throw his lot in with Yohan, so be it. And if Gaon chooses to walk away…so be it, even if it breaks his heart. He won’t force him to stay. But just as Gaon sees through him, Yohan sees through Gaon – he knows there’s a darkness there, a rage, and I know some ppl might argue that he uses it for his own means, but I don’t think that’s quite true – he forces Gaon to acknowledge it, he basically says quit pretending you’re all fine and dandy bout the way things are, and yes, it definitely benefits his agenda to do so, but when Gaon DOES spiral and goes off half-cocked to confront fraudster and Yohan plays Soohyun’s role and reins him in, the key difference is he holds Gaon back long enough to give him time to really think on what he’s about to do…and then nevertheless lets him decide for himself whether or not to go through with it, even though fraudster’s death would massively mess with Yohan’s own plans. He both gives Gaon permission to feel what he’s feeling and the agency to choose what to do with those feelings. With Soohyun, Gaon has to repress himself; with Yohan, he’s free to express himself. And isn’t that just the perfect metaphor for his sexuality?? But let’s go back again to Minister Cha’s office: his hands are literally covered with blood and his moral compass is staring at him with horror in her eyes. He’s been trying to juggle these two worlds, to keep them apart whilst living in both, and suddenly they’ve crashed full-force into each other, and at the worst possible time. (What he doesn’t realise at this point though is whereas Soohyun may never be able to accept the part of him that inhabits Yohan’s world, the same can’t be said for Yohan - yes he challenges him on it, he pushes, but he does recognise there are lines Gaon won’t cross, and that Gaon’s acting out of a sense of justice not just personal vengeance.) And then Yohan, being the emotionally constipated fool that he is, makes it worse by issuing Gaon an ultimatum. So what does Gaon choose? Of COURSE he chooses Soohyun – he chooses the known, the familiar, the comfortable, the good, the righteous (the girl, the closet); he chooses his safe place. And then his protector, his white knight, literally rides into battle and rescues him! And so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after years and years of playfully batting off Soohyun’s declarations of love, Gaon confesses to her a) post-adrenaline rush of her saving his life as she patches up his wounds and b) after things have come to a head with Yohan. He came too close to the dual suns of perceived moral corruption and homosexuality (and oh ho ho so much to unpack there what with the two being lumped in together!!!) and got his wings singed so fled straight (hah!) back to the welcoming (yet, come on, INCREDIBLY platonic – what was with that hug??? That was NOT the culmination of decades of romantic pining!!!) arms of his law-abiding, morally upright, FEMALE best friend. So when you look at it that way, I actually think this turn of events CONFIRMS rather than delegitimises the queer reading of the show – I mean, can you make the gay panic any more obvious than how Gaon reacts to being caught by his hetero love interest? Instantly moves out of his sugar daddy’s house and flings himself into her (SISTERLY!!!) embrace! But also, on a more serious, subtextual level, by aligning Soohyun (representing heteronormativity) with ostensibly all that is good and pure, vs Yohan (representing everything transgressive and therefore queer) with ostensibly all that is dangerous and amoral, the show is interrogating, playing with, and subverting a tale as old as time – the homosexual as corruptor of values, of societies, of families. Gaon being ideologically (and even linguistically!) ‘corrupted’ by Yohan as a metaphor for his sexual ‘corruption’. (And just in case anyone thinks I’m reading too much into it, I think it’s important to note the writer has been open bout his literary and thematic influences, many of which lean into the motif of seduction/corruption/sacrifice or lend an overtly romantic reading to the dynamic tween Yohan and Gaon.) Except we – and Gaon – know that it’s not so black and white. The world is more complicated than that, Yohan is more complicated than that (I mean, gay love was literally in the process of REPAIRING that family!). The world/person Soohyun is theoretically protecting doesn’t actually exist - society is already fucked up, Gaon is already fucked up. Yohan isn’t *corrupting what was pure* – he’s merely teasing out what’s always been there under the surface and holding it up for all to see. He’s making society/Gaon confront, reckon with itself/himself. You could even, in fact, argue that Soohyun’s idealism actually does more damage than good when practically applied to a world which is so gone to hell - it’s a bit like when someone says they’re colourblind: well that’s nice for you, but unfortunately society very much isn’t so how does that help anyone?? Of course that's not to say Yohan's right and Soohyun's wrong - that's still too simple and binary an interpretation! But it goes both ways. I think Soohyun’s in love with an idealised version of Gaon, which fits with her role as a cop (which we know she took on precisely in order to look out for him) – as protector of the innocent and vulnerable (and part of the reason it fits perfectly is because these are gender-flipped archetypes – she’s playing the part of the good and upright second male lead who has steadfastly held the female lead’s hand all this time, looking out for her and not seeking any reward in return). So it’s no coincidence that Gaon seeks refuge in Soohyun *precisely* when he most needs to believe in that idealised version of himself, the version that she clings to. But she doesn’t see - or doesn’t allow herself to see – that Gaon ISN’T that little boy with the scraped knee anymore. He’s messed up, he’s burning with the injustice of it all, he’s full of passion and anger, and, most importantly, he sees the world – and the people in it – with more nuance than she does. So this equilibrium tween them can’t last, because that’s not who he really is – we see the very next morning they’re already in conflict because he knows Yohan is the only one who can stop what’s happening. Even if she hadn’t died, I genuinely don’t think they could’ve kept it up – sure, they could pretend everything was hunky dory when it was just the two of them warm and snuggly in that room, but when confronted with the reality of what’s happening all around them, either Gaon would have had to keep hiding parts of himself (parts he’s ashamed of because Soohyun’s moral absolutism makes him ashamed), or they would’ve clashed and kept clashing. For all that ep 12 felt like a devastating break-up, we see in ep 13 that Gaon hasn’t actually severed himself from Yohan – as soon as he’s back at work he’s calling him, seeking him out, confronting (eyefucking!) him. He might have convinced himself he’d made a clean break but we can all see that’s not true. Perhaps him and Soohyun could’ve reached a compromise, but compromise doesn’t really appear to be in Soohyun’s nature, at least not when it comes to right vs wrong, and definitely not when it comes to Yohan! (If I come across as unduly harsh on Soohyun, it’s truly not borne from malice - I think she’s a good person who didn’t deserve what happened to her, and I love the actress, I enjoy the banter tween her and Gaon - they’re very cute – and I love the contrasts set up as a result of her positioning in the show, but I just think they work better as pseudo-siblings/bffs! IMO she’s just not the best person for Gaon for all the reasons listed above, or, frankly, the best person for the dystopian world she’s living in - she’s kinda the embodiment of the ‘Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure’ meme! Either she’d have to compromise her own morals (and we see this start to happen and the toll it takes on her) or she’d be chewed up and spat back out. But either way, I don't see a happy ending for her.) Okay this got away from me so gonna try and sum up my non-love triangle thoughts as succinctly as possible! Love the nuanced gender dynamics in the scene tween Jinjoo and the villains and how Sunah is both part of and apart from them - for as much as she’s using her, you can see she genuinely cares for Jinjoo, sees something special in her, and doesn’t like her being dirtied by association with those venal sleazy ingrates! (Also shout-out to my girl who when confronted didn’t double-down but instead sought out the truth for herself and then did what she could to make reparations – love her!) Yohan hugging Elijah – that’s the Gaon Effect in action! See how far he’s come – he’s initiating affectionate and comforting physical contact! Gaon ringing Yohan the second he’s out of the bubble of heterosexuality – you broke his heart, you can’t just call him up and make demands of him! But also: all Yohan cares about is that Gaon is okay and not hurt. President being devastatingly right bout him and Yohan being cut from the same populist cloth – what’s that saying bout a broken clock?? Also probably (sadly) right bout ppl more likely to listen to the guy saying stay inside cos the ppl outside are dangerous than the guy telling you to go out and help them. Your heaviest of sighs at the prospect of more heterosexuality at 39:40ish cracked me up – most relatable! The contrast from the incredibly tepid getting together – from the dead fish kiss to the ‘come here and hug your big sis!’ to the strictly no-touching sleepover – to the immediate and tangible tension the second Gaon and Yohan are in the same room together is so huge I choked on it! The fact that’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the break-up, and there’s just this second of eyeing each other up and everything that’s going unsaid…ooo it’s so delicious! Then them in the car together?? Yohan’s finger stroking his mouth and Gaon’s eyes immediately being drawn to it and Yohan clocking it and them just looking at each other looking at each other before Gaon has to break eye contact??????? It’s impossible NOT to compare the chemistry tween the two couples and I’m sure the showrunners know that. Speaking of Gaon watching Yohan – we talked bout how he did it all the time in the earlier eps, but then during the big climactic uprising scene which I adore beyond all measure, he’s doing it again – even when there’s a literal revolution happening at his feet, his eyes are still drawn inexorably towards Yohan. It’s fascinating. Not that I can blame him – Yohan’s got a serious messianic vibe going on there, what with the backlighting and everything. He knows what he's doing! My sis and I have this little theory that makes us giggle – you know how it’s shown Gaon has fans and is treated like an idol? Well what do idol fans like to do? Ship! So we like to think that even within the DJ world there are ppl shipping Gaon and Yohan, and they're just like us, reading into every tiny glance, going crazy whenever the camera catches ‘moments’ tween them – moments like Gaon’s boss running to his side when he’s struck by a stone and gently caressing his face, all captured on the big screen for the fujoshis to lose their minds over! Well who doesn’t love a bit of jeopardy?? Gah, only three eps left…I’m not ready to say goodbye (again)!
fishinabook
2025-05-25 12:52:22 +0000 UTCAlso thirsting over attorny koo is so mainstream pls I'm thirsting over live court show pd nim
bella
2025-05-23 04:45:12 +0000 UTC"I hope this isn't the end of the yaoi" honey you've got a big storm coming
bella
2025-05-23 04:41:38 +0000 UTCArgh I don't have time to comment properly yet but just wanted to quickly say this reaction was the highlight of my week (okay we're only halfway through but I know it'll still be true come Sunday!), especially you groovin' along to the soundtrack cos that's me every single time! And also you are 100% valid in crushing on Attorney Ko cos he's the coolest cat in the world - so suave, so competent, so nonchalant, sitting with his feet up on the desk whilst holding a room hostage at gunpoint as the door is battered down! Nobody is doing it like him! Okay, I'll be back later with further insufferable ramblings including a 10,000 word thesis on why Gaon's confession is actually all about Yohan - boy rebounded so hard he bounced straight back into the closet to dead fish kiss his pseudosibling!
fishinabook
2025-05-21 21:53:49 +0000 UTCFrom what I remember seeing in snippets of actual Korean news during crises, and from other dramas where the president is addressing the public during a crisis, they usually wear a windbreaker looking jacket like that. edit: I googled it, and it's actually the uniform of the Republic of Korea Civil Defense Force. "Although not mandatory, the Enforcement Decree of the Framework Act on Civil Defense advises the Civil Defense Force to don this uniform during training events, war, and national disasters." "According to the official guidelines of the uniform, the color of the jacket is lime. On the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Office of the Civil Defense Bureau in 2005, the color of the uniform was changed from khaki to lime. The lime color was selected to generate a vibrant and energetic image of civil defense and radiate a positive, hopeful, and confident energy as it resembles the color of sunlight."
mirka
2025-05-21 20:34:23 +0000 UTCThis interpretation make's yohan's line where he tells mr. president that he looks good in yellow so much better too
Fern
2025-05-21 18:22:36 +0000 UTCOk color theory Fern strikes again-- Not sure about the cultural significance in this context, but since you asked about the yellow jacket the president wore when addressing the country here are my thoughts: He mentions that he's dressing down, probably more casual to push the image of him being just "one of the people", like the common man's leader. When it comes to the color yellow, it's obviously seen as a bright and cheery color (his image that he pushes coming back) but more interestingly in literature the color yellow is also the color of deceit and trickery or false pretenses. Since pretty much everything he's spewing in that scene are lies, it's not too hard to understand the significance of the color.
Fern
2025-05-21 18:14:20 +0000 UTCThe yaoi never stops
Char
2025-05-21 16:13:17 +0000 UTC
