‘Good or evil, what you put out in the universe eventually comes back to you,’ and Netflix’s Korean drama series, Karma, is pretty much driven by this principle. The series is centered around a bunch of lowlives with no conscience. They did what they had to to survive; you might wonder if the economy had a role to play in their tragic condition, but we soon figure out that bad things happened to them because they made some unforgivable choices in life. A man owed money to a loan shark, and he was granted a month to pay it back. He had invested the borrowed money in cryptocurrency, but the idea had backfired. He needed quick cash, and once he discovered that he would inherit five hundred million won in insurance money if his father died in an accident, he figured there was still some hope left.
Spoiler Alert
Did Park Jae-yeong get the insurance money?
Park Jae-yeong was in search of a man who could kill his father, and he had recently come across Jang Gil-ryong, a Korean-Chinese man, at the warehouse he worked at. He figured the man was fierce when he threatened the manager, and seeing the tattoos on his arms, Jae-yeong assumed that he was a former gangster. Gil-ryong was interested when Jae-yeong offered him sixty million won if he successfully committed the crime. He mentioned that the killing must look like a hit-and-run case and not a murder. To win the trust of the ex-gangster, Jae-yeong handed him a recording of their conversation. Gil-ryong was not impressed when he discovered that the insurance sum was five hundred million won and not two hundred as his associate had mentioned. Jae-yeong was a little surprised when Gil-ryong questioned him, and he had no choice but to admit the truth. He agreed to hand him one hundred fifty million won after the job was done. Jae-yeong needed an alibi, and he spent the entire night going from a karaoke bar to a fast food chain to ensure that he was publicly seen.
Meanwhile, Gil-ryong tracked down Jae-yeong’s father and drove his car over the old man as was planned. But to Jae-yeong’s surprise, he didn’t receive a confirmation call. While he thought the former gangster had messed up, he soon received a call from the police informing him about the death of his father. Jae-yeong was relieved, and he practiced crying a few times to make it look convincing. Jae-yeong was disappointed when the police mentioned that they didn’t think it was a hit-and-run case. They thought the killing was intentional, and they had a witness who’d confirmed that the driver stopped the car and drove in reverse to ensure that his father was killed. Not only that, the police deduced that it was not a simple hit-and-run case because the body of the victim was found buried in the mountains. Jae-yeong was shocked; things didn’t work out the way he’d planned, and his life got even more complicated than it was before. The insurance company refused to immediately transfer the money to Jae-yeong. They were in touch with the police, and unless the nature of the victim’s death was announced and a thorough investigation was conducted by the insurance company, they could not guarantee anything. Jae-yeong now not only owed money to the loan shark, but he also had to pay Gil-ryong, who had messed up the job but demanded his promised cut anyway.
How was Dr. Han Sang-hun scammed?
Park Jae-yeong had no idea who Dr. Han Sang-hun was, yet he played a crucial role in how his life panned out. Sang-hun was a renowned dermatologist; when he was young, an attractive woman such as Lee Yu-jeong would’ve been out of his league, but wealth had changed the course of his life. We later discover that he was a married man and his wife was pregnant. She suspected that he was having an affair, and she’d employed a private investigator to get to the bottom of it. Yu-jeong insisted that they spend the night together, and they ended up at a resort near a mountain trail. She had been there a few times, and she recommended the place for its scenic beauty. After making love and drinking a glass of wine, Sang-hun had passed out. All of a sudden, Yu-jeong exclaimed that her friend’s grandma had passed away, and she had to leave immediately. Sang-hun could sense that she wanted him to offer her a lift, so he insisted on driving her to the funeral home.
On the way, Yu-jeong tried to get cozy with the doctor, and he got distracted while driving. Suddenly, after a loud thud, they discovered a body lying on the road. Sang-hun panicked when he found out that the man was dead. The man in question was Park Jae-yeong’s father, and we gradually discover how the corpse ended up there. Sang-hun assumed he had hit the man with his car and he would end up in prison if he didn’t cover up his crime. He loaded the body in the trunk of his car, and just when he was about to leave, he noticed a man leaving on his bicycle. The doctor was convinced that the man was a witness, and seeing that he had no other choice, he hit the man and loaded his body in the trunk as well. The witness was still alive, and the doctor decided to pay him money to buy his silence. With the help of the witness, Sang-hun dug a grave for the deceased and buried him in the mountains. But the witness was not as innocent as he seemed to be. He even ended up at his clinic to extort money, stating that he felt guilty for what he’d done. Sang-hun assumed that this one incident would be the end of him, and he had pretty much given up. Unexpectedly, when he went to collect his car from the garage after the incident, one of the workers there mentioned how unusual the scratches were, considering it was a deer accident. He hesitantly added that the deer must have fallen from above to create such dents. This piece of information was crucial for Sang-hun. He rushed home and fetched the dashcam footage. He was shocked to find out that he didn’t run his car over the stranger; someone had intentionally dropped the body on his car, and as it turned out, it was the witness.
Kim Beom-jun was a petty criminal who had been in and out of prison several times. The last time he was released, he paired up with Lee Yu-yeong to scam married men and extort money from them. He would’ve done the same with Sang-hun had he not received a call from Gil-ryong asking for a favor. They had met in prison, and Gil-ryong was ready to split his share with Beom-jun to kill the old man. Beom-jun was behind the wheel that night, and as it turned out, the old man was still breathing after they had run the car over him. They loaded his body in the car, and Gil-ryong choked him to death. Gil-ryong requested Beom-jun to take care of the body, especially now that the cause of death would be asphyxiation instead of hit-and-run. Beom-jun promised to deal with the crisis. He contacted Yu-yeong, who was already at the resort waiting for Beom-jun to show up and extort money from the doctor. She had spiked Sang-hun’s drink that night, which was why he had been feeling dizzy. Beom-jun decided to use the doctor to get rid of the body and also find a better way to extort money from him repeatedly. That’s why he dropped the body from an overbridge onto Sang-hun’s car to make it look like a hit-and-run case. Everything had worked out in his favor, but as luck would have it, the dash camera had captured everything. Sang-hun planned on handing over the footage to the police, but he made the mistake of telling Yu-yeong of his plan.
How did Kim Beom-jun end up at the hospital?
Kim Beom-jun and Yu-yeong drugged the doctor and brought him to a derelict building in Guhoe. Fearing they would be exposed, the duo planned on killing Sang-hun. But the doctor woke up while they were busy digging his grave. He had a terrible temper, and without thinking of the consequences of his actions, Sang-hun pressed down on the accelerator and ran the car over Yu-yeong, killing her immediately. The doctor’s hands were zip tied, and there was no way he could escape Beom-jun. Sang-hun offered him money, but Beom-jun didn’t see any point in keeping him alive. He repeatedly stabbed the doctor with the shovel he was carrying. What he didn’t realize was that there were private investigators tailing the doctor, and their cameras had captured the crime. He was not the only one who’d messed up; Gil-ryong too had made a terrible move. He had killed a police officer who ended up at his trailer searching for evidence to prove his association with Jae-yeong. The entire incident was recorded on surveillance camera, and Gil-ryong had no choice but to escape to China. He pressured Jae-yeong to hand him his share immediately. Since Jae-yeong didn’t have the insurance money, he decided to kill Gil-ryong.
When he met the former gangster again, he had hidden a hammer in his car. He handed over a bag and asked Gil-ryong to check the cash. Gil-ryong was furious when he found out that the bag was filled with pieces of paper. Jae-yeong was about to hit him with his hammer, but Gil-ryong was a professional, and he had anticipated Jae-yeong’s move quite some time back. Gil-ryong attacked Jae-yeong instead, and brought him to the dilapidated building where he’d met Beom-jun. Beom-jun was a wanted man after the video of him killing the doctor had reached the police. While Gil-ryong was thinking about what they should do with Jae-yeong, Beom-jun came up with a plan. He stabbed Gil-ryong and pushed him down the elevator shaft.
Jae-yeong couldn’t understand what was going on when Beom-jun poured gasoline all over him. Beom-jun’s plan was to kill Jae-yeong and adopt his identity to get away from the police. His plan was a success; the only problem was that the fire he had started ended up almost taking his life, but thankfully the fire brigade came at the right time, and he was hospitalized. When the cops questioned him, he lied that he was Park Jae-yeong, and since his face was disfigured as a result of the fire, the cops didn’t suspect him.
Did Lee Ju-yeon get her revenge?
While Beom-jun assumed he’d got another chance at life after he was rescued, being Park Jae-yeong was no bed of roses. There was a doctor in the hospital, Lee Ju-yeon, who claimed to know Jae-yeong. We eventually learn that Ju-yeon was a gang rape survivor, and that she struggled with the trauma even after all these years. She tried not to think about her past, but when Jae-yeong was hospitalized, she thought fate had brought him there. She hired a private investigator to find out what had happened to the gang of rapists. One had committed suicide in prison after raping a minor, another had died as a result of drug overdose, and Jae-yeong was the only one alive. When she was in school, she went out on a date with Jae-yeong, and on their way back home, masked men showed up and raped Ju-yeon. The cops later told her that Jae-yeong had orchestrated the gang rape, and she’d despised him since then. She wanted to seek revenge, and she decided to stab him and get the closure she had always wished for. But she didn’t find the courage to kill him while he was still at the hospital. Beom-jun had no idea who Ju-yeon was, and all he cared about after being released from the hospital was getting his hands on Jae-yeong’s father’s insurance money. He received a call from the insurance company stating that even though they had decided to clear the claim, he wanted him to know that he was not going to inherit it. As it turned out, the old man had removed Jae-yeong as the beneficiary a few days before his death. He wanted the money to go to the church he frequented, and he wanted it to be used for the treatment of the less fortunate.
Beom-jun was furious; he stormed into the church and demanded that they transfer the money to his account. During the heated exchange, he noticed Ju-yeon seated quietly inside the church. He didn’t know what she wanted from him, and he thought she lacked the desperation to cause him any harm. Beom-jun didn’t know that the pills he was taking were not painkillers but fentanyl (Ju-yeon, with the help of her private investigator, had replaced the bottle of pills). As soon as he stepped out of the church, he started to feel dizzy. Ju-yeon approached him with a scalpel in her hand. She wanted to stab him, but her partner, Dr. Yoon, stopped her. He reminded her that by giving in to her temptation, she would destroy the life she had built after the incident. He wanted to let her know that she was more than that incident and she didn’t need to give the culprit so much power. Ju-yeon dropped the scalpel and slapped and punched Beom-jun/Jae-yeong before she left. A quick flashback showed that Beom-jun had instigated Lee Yu-jeong to plan the gang rape. Yu-jeong and Ju-yeon had been classmates, and Yu-jeong was envious of Ju-yeon after she was selected to be the face of the school magazine. Beom-jun was a few years senior, and when Yu-jeong had explained her trouble, he had advised her to ask her guy friends to rape Ju-yeon and teach her a lesson. So, either way, he deserved to be punished.
Meanwhile, the cops figured that Jae-yeong (Beom-jun) was lying since he mentioned that he was tied up when the building caught fire, but when the firefighters found him, he was not tied to any chair. The cops suspected him, and when they requested him to answer a few of their questions, he stated that he would meet them the next day. The cops realized that the man was lying, and they broke into his house only to find out that he’d escaped. Just when Beom-jun thought he had left all his troubles behind and could start his life afresh, men working for the loan shark Jae-yeong owed money to showed up. They forcefully dragged him into their car and brought him to an operating room. Anyone who failed to pay the money they owed was killed, and their organs were sold on the black market.
Who Ended Up With The Rolex?
Karma’s ending revealed that Dr. Yoon worked for the loan shark, the same crook who paid a visit to Park Jae-yeong at the beginning of the show. The side hustle helped Dr. Yoon pay off his student debt, and that was his last day at work. The loan shark wished him the best and gifted him the Rolex that Beom-jun was wearing. The watch was previously stolen by Jae-yeong from his father’s trunk before his death. Beom-jun stole the watch from Jae-yeong before he started the fire. And surprisingly, it ended up with Dr. Yoon, almost as if Jae-yeong’s father’s prized possession had finally found someone worthy of it. When Dr. Yoon discovered that he had to operate on Beom-jun, he decided not to use anesthetics. He wanted Beom-jun to feel the pain, and that was the end of the criminal. Even though the private investigator had brought her new information about the case (DNA results proved that Park Jae-yeong had died in the fire and the man pretending to be him was Beom-jun), Ju-yeon chose not to take a look at it. She no longer cared about the rapist; she had moved on, and she only wanted to focus on her happiness. Karma had taken care of the rest for her.
