The new Korean thriller drama series streaming on Netflix, As You Stood By, is like a typical work of its kind, replete with numerous twists and turns and repeated clashes between the good and bad sides, all interspersed with heavy doses of melodrama. The 8-hour-long drama follows the lives of Jo Eun-su and Jo Hui-su, two best friends from high school who suddenly stumble across the painful secrets of each other’s personal lives, and soon their fates are intertwined because of a decision they take together. Overall, As You Stood By felt a little too winding and long for me personally, although fans of K-dramas should have a fun time with it.
Spoiler Alert
What is the show about?
As You Stood By begins at the Lavie Department Store, a luxurious store mostly catering to VIP clients in the heart of Seoul, where Jo Eun-su works as a senior employee. She takes a quick break from her work at the watch department to make a call to her best friend, Jo Hui-su, as they are supposed to be meeting for lunch in some time. Although Hui-su apologizes for not being able to make it to lunch, as she has supposedly been given some more work by her publisher, Eun-su feels like she spots her best friend hurriedly leaving the department store but lets the matter slide. She returns to work and tries to sell an extremely expensive watch to a customer, only to realize at the end of the day that the man has stolen the watch from the store rather adeptly. Eun-su manages to track down the man, Jin So-baek, and confront him, and after some attempts to sneak his way out of the situation, he returns the watch.
Although Eun-su finds the whole situation rather odd, she cannot give too much attention to the matter, as she is distracted by her personal life. Ever since her childhood, Eun-su has been a silent and scared witness to domestic abuse, as her father has been physically assaulting her mother almost on a regular basis, and she is disgusted to learn that the abuse still continues at present. Confused about why Hui-su has been clearly ignoring her since her marriage a few months ago, Eun-su goes to check on her at her fancy apartment, only to find her best friend in a heavily bruised state. It is clear as daylight that Hui-su is tortured by her husband, Jin-pyo, but she begs her friend to not do anything about it or to try and make it stop in any way, as she fears that she will end up getting even more hurt.
Despite initially staying away from the matter, Eun-su has a determined change of opinion when she becomes witness to another case of domestic abuse. A regular client at her store, Mrs. Kang, comes to the place one day and breaks down in front of Eun-su, asking for her help with the intolerable torture that she has to face at home. However, her husband, Mr. Kwon, comes to the store and takes her away before Eun-su can even understand what to do about the situation. Just a couple of days later, the accidental death of Mrs. Kang is reported on news channels, as she had run into oncoming traffic to end her tragic and painful life. This makes Eun-su determined to help her best friend, and inspired by a remark by So-baek, she decides that Jin-pyo must die for his crimes.
How do Eun-su and Hui-su successfully pull off their plan?
Noh Jin-pyo’s monstrosity is unveiled very soon, as he has the habit of beating up his wife terribly, only to then bring her expensive jewelry as gifts to make up for the abuse. He also treats her no different than an animal by surveilling her at all times through security cameras at their home and tracking apps on her phone. Although Hui-su is scared of killing her husband at first, she realizes that this is the only way for her to escape the torture, since no other measures had worked. She had tried taking legal action earlier by attempting to file a complaint at the police station but could not ultimately do it because of her sister-in-law, Jin-young, who is a police detective. Therefore, she goes ahead with Eun-su’s proposed plan, especially when the latter comes up with an almost foolproof plan that would ensure that they would never get caught.
It would be impossible for the law to prove Eun-su and Hui-su’s crime if Jin-pyo’s dead body were never to be found, and they would be even safer if they could make the world believe that the man was still alive. This plan suddenly comes alive when Eun-su spots a worker at So-baek’s trading company, Jang Kang, who looks identical to Jin-pyo and so can be easily made a replacement for the abusive husband. Since Jang Kang is a poor migrant worker from China and desires to return to his family in Shanghai when he earns enough money, the women decide to make it seem like Jin-pyo has suddenly left the country and flown to China, where he has a secret second family. Jang can easily pass through the airport security and customs carrying Jin-pyo’s passport and pretending to be him, without anyone suspecting anything wrong.
Eun-su needs to arrange a proper and foolproof reason for Jin-pyo traveling to China all of a sudden, and she finds help in one of his disgruntled clients, Kim Mi-gyeong, who also happens to be a regular customer at the Lavie Department Store. Not only does Mi-gyeong love Eun-su for her hospitable and kind nature, she is also livid at learning what Jin-pyo has been doing to his wife, and so she agrees to help right away. She transfers a large amount of money to Jin-pyo’s account right before he supposedly flies out of the country, making it seem like the man had stolen one of his clients’ money to flee the country and settle in China with his secret family. Eun-su and Hui-su carefully execute the plan, despite Jin-pyo finding out what they’re trying to do and assaulting both of them. It is Hui-su who lands the fatal blows on her husband with a heavy snow globe at their apartment, and then the next part of the plan is executed.
Jin-pyo’s body is put inside a suitcase, which Jang Kang, now looking exactly like Jin-pyo because of his well-groomed appearance, expensive clothes, and the man’s favorite watch, carries out of the apartment as if he is leaving for the airport. Eun-su accompanies him to the airport and switches the suitcases at the last minute, taking Jin-pyo’s body back with her and burying it at a desolate spot in the forest outside Seoul. Hui-su keeps pretending like her husband has gone away on a trip with his friends, like he often does, and claims that she has no idea about his actual whereabouts. When the police and Jin-pyo’s sister, Detective Noh Jin-young, check his movements as well as his phone’s location, they indeed find him to be in Shanghai, having reunited with a wife and child. Although Jin-pyo’s mother, a famous motivational speaker named Ko Jeong-suk, still believes that something wrong has happened with her son, Jin-young tries to convince her that her brother really had a secret life all along and is now gone from their lives.
Does Jang Kang return to Shanghai?
After the successful murder and the brilliant cover-up, Eun-su and Hui-su spend their lives in peace and happiness, and As You Stood By seems to take a breather before we are once again hurled into an intense series of plot twists and sudden developments. While the best friends had nearly removed all trace of the murder, the one glaring loophole that they had not thought about was the body double they had used, for Jang Kang knows the whole truth, and he can easily exploit them. This is exactly what happens, as Jang Kang suddenly returns to Korea, now a completely changed man as compared to the timid and submissive type that he was earlier. He had received the entire amount that Jin-pyo was officially stated to have stolen from his client, and it had totally changed his perspective on life.
Jang had suddenly realized that he could get even more money just by blackmailing the women, for he had figured out that the man he had been pretending to be had actually been murdered. Since he has access to Jin-pyo’s phone, which contains crucial evidence of the murder and also of the location his body had been buried, even photographic evidence, it is quite easy for him to start blackmailing Eun-su and Hui-su. But Jang’s extreme greed makes him contact Jeong-suk over messages as well, asking for money from her, which quickly gets Jin-young involved as well. As the detective finds the matter very suspicious and starts tailing Eun-su, since she believes that the woman might have been a secret lover of her brother, she happens to come across Jang Kang and realizes what had gone down a few months earlier.
Over the next few days, Jang Kang himself becomes an important piece of evidence that is taken control of by both sides one after the other, with Jin-young planning to get to Hui-su through the man’s testimony and Eun-su wanting to get rid of the man to bury the truth. Eun-su’s friend, Jin So-baek, also gets involved in the matter, as he has a lot of connections and is also associated with the criminal world to some degree, and he promises to send his ex-employee, Jang, back to Shanghai somehow to put an end to the difficult situation. However, Jang Kang does not ultimately get to return to his family in Shanghai, as he escapes So-baek’s facility and lets Jin-young take him hostage, since working with the police detective is his only possible means of escape. Jin-young hides him in the storage closet in her apartment, and this is where things go terribly wrong for both of them.
When Jin-young’s mother, Jeong-suk, visits her apartment and goes to the closet in search of some alcohol, she finds Jang Kang there and believes him to be her son. Although she soon realizes her mistake, when Jang starts abusing her and blaming her terrible parenting for so much of the chaos, Jeong-suk cannot keep her calm. Out of extreme rage, frustration, and the alcohol already fogging her mind, she smashes his head with a heavy object and kills Jang on the spot. She then calls Jin-young for help, but it is already too late for her and her daughter.
Why does Noh Jin-young act against Hui-su?
The line between good and bad is not as blurry or indiscernible in As You Stood By as in reality, and Jin-pyo’s entire family happens to be evil without any strong reason other than their desire to protect each other. For all the months that Jin-pyo had tortured and abused his wife after their marriage, his mother and sister had been very aware of his inhuman crimes, but had done nothing to stop him. Despite preaching about the need to stop domestic abuse and speak out against it, and literally growing rich and famous on the back of her lectures against such abhorrent crimes, Jeong-suk does not do anything to stop her son. Jin-young is even worse, as she uses her profession as a police detective to stop Hui-su from filing a police complaint, only because her reputation and respect at her workplace would be hurt otherwise. She had also thought of her brother’s safety and well-being when she claimed to her colleagues that her sister-in-law to be mentally ill and pinned the blame for her actions on Jin-pyo, and was therefore complicit in the crimes.
For the most part, Jin-young keeps thinking about her own well-being and does not seem to be too hurt at her brother’s disappearance either, as she focuses on her career. In fact, when she is about to be promoted to the president’s security detail, Jin-young considers dropping her personal investigation into her brother’s disappearance. However, she is absolutely shocked and grows vengeful after learning that her Jin-pyo had been murdered by Hui-su and her best friend. This vengefulness is not born out of a police detective’s intolerance against crime, but out of a genuine hatred and disdain for her sister-in-law. What irks Jin-young is Hui-su’s audacity to have killed her brother and messed with her family, and so she takes the matter very personally only now. Thus, she tries to do just about anything to hurt Hui-su, even trying to make her kill herself after staging the scene to look like Hui-su had confessed to the murder of Jin-pyo and then taken her own life out of guilt.
What Happens To Jin-Young And Her Mother?
While Jin-young continues with her attempts to bring down Hui-su and Eun-su, her colleague at the police department, Detective Kang Ju-yeon, starts to suspect her of having concealed the truth. He finds out how Jin-young had tampered with the security camera footage in the recent investigation of the murder of the security guard at Jin-pyo and Hui-su’s apartment and, more importantly, realizes that she had lied about her sister-in-law’s mental ailment. Ju-yeon had spoken with the medical expert who had examined Hui-su when she had come to file the complaint and learned that the woman had indeed been physically assaulted, clearly by her husband. Ju-yeon had realized that his colleague had intentionally lied to him in order to hide her brother’s crimes, but cannot bring any considerable charges against her just yet, as he would need to prove his claims.
Eun-su also realizes that if she waits for the law to stop Jin-young, it would be too late for herself and her best friend, and they would get into significant trouble as well. Therefore, when she learns from So-baek’s spy that Jin-young and her mother have killed Jang Kang and are loading the body into the trunk of their car to get rid of it, she decides to expose the truth once and for all. Before Jin-young can establish a solid connection between Hui-su and her brother’s dead body, Eun-su successfully makes a connection between Jin-young and a dead body, that of Jang Kang, right on the street, in front of hundreds of witnesses. With the help of So-baek’s spy, Eun-su rams her car into Jin-young’s vehicle in such a fashion that the trunk of the latter is stuck open, revealing the dead body inside.
During As You Stood By’s ending, Noh Jin-young and her mother, Ko Jeong-suk, are both arrested by the police and put behind bars on multiple charges, including murder and attempting to hide evidence of domestic abuse. More satisfyingly, Jin-young’s career as a detective is completely ruined, as she will be shamed and shunned by the administration and also society when, or if, she is released from prison. Similarly, Jeong-suk also suffers a massive fall from grace, as the people who used to love and admire her till now get to know her real self and shame her for her actions. Although Jeong-suk still tries to claim her and her son’s innocence outside the court during the trial, nobody stands by her anymore.
What happens to Eun-su and Hui-su?
Jin-young and Jeong-suk’s sentences in the court trial are all the more serious only because of Hui-su’s decision to finally confess her crime to the police. It is only because she admits to having committed the murder of her husband that Hui-su can report the horrible torture and abuse he subjected her to and how his family members had also been silent accomplices. Her confession is also driven by a sense of guilt and remorse for having taken a life, and not necessarily for killing her husband in particular. Even months after the murder, Hui-su would hallucinate or imagine Jin-pyo, which proved how sensitive her emotional state was. After all, she is not a hardened criminal who can convince herself murder is acceptable, and so Hui-su decides to face the consequences of her actions. Eun-su confesses her part in the crime immediately afterwards, keeping her word of always accompanying and supporting her best friend through thick and thin.
Both of them plead guilty during the trial, and despite them being imprisoned, they find peace in their respective lives, with Eun-su’s efforts to stop domestic violence being successful when her mother decides to end her abusive marriage. As You Stood By does not mention how much time the women spend in prison, but they are eventually freed, possibly after a couple of years, with Eun-su released earlier than Hui-su because of the latter having committed the murder. But they do reunite as soon as their prison sentences are over and move to Vietnam together in order to start their lives afresh. At the end of As You Stood By, Eun-su and Hui-su are seen spending their lives happily together in Vietnam, sporting new looks and having found a new purpose in their lives: to support one another.
Do The Women Remain In Touch With Jin So-Baek?
Jin So-baek had become a loyal friend to the women as soon as he had realized what they had gotten themselves embroiled in. Apart from being genuinely sympathetic towards their situation, especially Hui-su’s, he also had personal experience with having to deal with extreme grief and pain without the law doing anything about it. Ten years back, So-baek’s young son had been murdered by goons seemingly hired by his professional rivals, and despite his best efforts, he could not do anything against the perpetrators, legally or otherwise. Therefore, he now believes that Eun-su and Hui-su are worth fighting for, and he provides them with all the help and support possible.
Even after the women are imprisoned and then released from prison, So-baek hangs around to support them, and it is with his help that they can start a new life in Vietnam. Therefore, Jin So-baek is also seen with them, as the three friends now spend their days together, although So-baek possibly goes around to different countries on business still. As You Stood By makes no mention of any romantic angle between So-baek and either of the women in the end, although it did seem like he and Eun-su had started developing an interest in each other, and they all simply remain close friends.
