Kyung Ja of Mask Girl has been one of the scarier villains we have come across and especially so since it was hard to say whether she was actually in the wrong here. She had lost her son, the reason she had braved such difficulties over so many years, and it had to have left an impact. All Kyung Ja wanted was to live a decent life with her family. She had not expected love, understanding, or anything of that sort, which is why she agreed to marry her husband, even though he wasn’t that great a catch. But she was left destitute when her husband left her for another woman. We doubt she ever had time to grieve properly for him. She had to focus on survival, which was the same reason she got married in the first place.
Spoiler Alert
Luckily, Kyung Ja found something she loved: her son, Joo Oh Nam. He became the center of her life and the reason she worked as hard as she did, because she wanted to give him a good life and make him her greatest achievement. There is no doubt that Kyung Ja loved Oh Nam, but she did not have the quality that makes one stop and think about other people’s emotions. That is why she never noticed that her son was getting bullied, despite all the signs being there. Let us suppose that those are still signs that are easy to miss, but Kyung Ja was also never curious about the fact that Oh Nam never seemed to have any friends. She wanted her son to go to medical school, probably hoping that she would finally have something in her life that was aspirational.
Kyung Ja never stopped loving her son, but she was certainly disappointed that after her years of hard work, he had just turned out to be ordinary, and she never failed to remind him of that. This also makes us think that she probably never asked him how he was feeling. She worked for him, fed him, and made sure he had everything, but she forgot to ask the crucial question, the one that may have allowed her son to open up to her or at least learn to trust her a bit. But Kyung Ja was so swallowed up by the troubles of life that she forgot to live it with her son. That is why she was so invested in him. Even after he got a job and was reasonably settled, she did not do anything for herself but continued to live life as before. She could have traveled, brought herself some nice things, or just taken a few more days off work, but that life had long gone out of the picture for her, despite it being possible. To sum it up, there was nothing worthwhile in her life except her son.
When she found out that Oh Nam had died and that he may have had some unusual inclinations, she was not ready to accept it. For Kyung Ja, Oh Nam had to be someone perfect, someone worthy of showing off to her Bible class, and someone who would be the caretaker of his mother at a later stage. Therefore, despite the overwhelming evidence that showed what he used to do and what he liked, she simply turned a blind eye to it. It did not escape our notice that in the years she spent chasing Kim Mo Mi, not once did she ask her why she had killed her son. That is because the answer did not matter. There was no question of right or wrong; it was all about inflicting the same pain on others that she had to go through.
There is something to be said about Kyung Ja’s determination. Had she not been a little bit more rational, she may have lived an amazing life, considering the zeal and zest she had for things. Who else bothers to learn computers and modern-day slang when she could have hired someone to do it for her? She was determined till the very end of her investigation, and not even death could keep her from getting what she wanted. Kim Mo Mi eventually turned herself in, but that was not justice enough for Kyung Ja. It was when we saw that Kyung Ja had gotten plastic surgery instead of just explaining herself to the police or basically finding some other less invasive solution that we realized how far gone she was.
Tracking down Mi Mo and making herself a part of her life was the most sinister thing that she did. She quite literally pulled the strings of the girl’s life and shaped everything that happened to her. She was punishing and isolating Mi Mo for the crimes of her mother. Then there finally came a day when Mi Mo had nowhere to go but to Kyung Ja, and that is when she decided it was the right time to carry out her execution. We honestly don’t know whether she would have changed her plan had she known that Mi Mo was her granddaughter. Her love for her son had long been replaced by her hatred for Mo Mi. Note that Kyung Ja did not finish the deed and then told Mo Mi about it. She tortured her with her daughter’s life by telling her everything she was going through and letting her know what was going to happen to her. She was dispensing torture before the final execution.
We believe that Mi Mo was only the first step. Kyung Ja was not going to stop until she had killed Mo Mi as well, and probably her mother too, by saying that she should also pay for her daughter’s crimes. Kyung Ja’s anger and thirst for revenge knew no rationality. But on the off-chance that she had known that, we believe that she may have still kidnapped Mi Mo. There was no question about the fact that Mo Mi had to suffer, and the only way to do that would have been to take Mi Mo away from her. Kyung Ja in Mask Girl would not have killed her granddaughter had she known her identity, but her life would have been tragically tied with her grandmother’s for as long as they both lived.
