The Netflix Korean series, My Name is a tale of vengeance where feelings of revenge devour an innocent soul. It fills her with anger and anguish. She wants to avenge her father, no matter what the consequences will be. But to take revenge is to become a monster. A person who has shed all fears of the law, death, and morality. What lengths is she willing to go to relinquish her anger? Is she going to kill someone?
Streaming on Netflix, My Name is directed by Kim Jin-min and stars Han So-hee in the lead role.
‘My Name’ Plot Summary
Yoon Ji-woo (Han So-hee) is a teenager who lives with her father, Yoon Dong-hoon (Yoon Kyung-ho). The story begins as local officer Sergeant Cho inquires about Ji-woo’s missing father. Dong-hoon is a wanted fugitive, and due to his sins, the inspectors trouble innocent Ji-woo. In school, the bullies outcast Ji-woo and call her a druggie, as police suspect her father to be an integral member of the drug organization, Dongcheon.
On her 17th birthday, Dong-hoon sends a cake, greetings, and an i-pad for her daughter. However, Ji-woo ignores all texts and calls from her father and blames him for making her life a living hell. In anger, Ji-woo tells Dong-hoon that he is dead for her.
Feeling guilty for being an estranged father, Dong-hoon decides to visit Ji-woo. As Dong-hoon tries to open the lock of the apartment, a hooded killer shoots Dong-hoon twice. Even during his last moments, the father tries to protect his daughter and requests the killer not to harm Ji-woo.
At Dong-hoon’s funeral, the leader of Dongcheon, Choi Mu-jin (Park Hee-soon), pays a visit to his late friend and brother. Ji-woo consistently visits the police station to inquire about the investigation of her father’s murderer. But Sergeant Cho reveals that the case has been shut down as there is no murder weapon or witness. A helpless daughter seeks help from Mu-jin to find her father’s killer. However, Mu-jin refuses to help Ji-woo and calls her weak.
Ji-woo decides to find the killer independently but falls in a trap planted by a few street punks. The punks abduct Ji-woo intending to kill her when Mu-jin intervenes and saves her life.
Ji-woo expresses that she wants to take revenge no matter what, and hence Mu-jin helps her to fulfill her wish. He persuades Ji-woo to become capable of killing someone and takes her to his private gym near Seonjin Shipping Yard. The gym trains hitmen for the Dongcheon organization and makes them ruthless killers. Under the roof, after facing hardship and fatal blows, Ji-woo transforms into a salient assassin, capable of taking revenge for Dong-hoon. Her tale of vengeance begins from here.
Major Spoilers Ahead
Two Names – Two Lives
Consumed with rage, Ji-woo trained day and night in Dongcheon Gym and proved her mettle in the ring. However, a runner-up in the battle, Do Gang-jae, resented Ji-woo’s victory. He drugged her and tried to kill her. For his sins, Mu-jin threw Gang-jae out of the organization. A humiliated Gang-jae swears to take revenge on Dongcheon, Mu-jin, and Ji-woo.
After the battle, Mu-jin believed Ji-woo was ready for the field and thus created a new identity. She got a new life and a new name, “Oh Hye-jin.” Mu-jin’s trusted henchmen, Jung Tae-ju, informed the Gym members that Gang-jae killed Ji-woo and thus had been expelled for his offense.
Mu-jin gave Ji-woo a police revolver and informed her that her father was killed by it. The gun was a police issue, and thus Mu-jin believed that his friend’s killer was a policeman. To find the murderer, Mu-jin ordered Ji-woo to join the police academy, and in 2021, Ji-woo became a part of the Violent Crimes Unit as Corporal Oh Hye-jin.
To find her father’s murderer, Ji-woo started living a new life under a new name, and in the pursuit of revenge, she forgot who she was. The feeling of revenge consumed her and made her a monster.
Who was Song Joonsu?
From the Violent Crimes Unit, Ji-woo shifted to the Narcotics department to find information about the gun that killed her father. When the Narcotics Team raided Mu-jin’s drug factory, Ji-woo planted the same gun on the ship to help Mu-jin run away.
Captain Cha Giho of the Narcotics Bureau, who recruited Ji-woo, sent the gun to the forensic service to find out the gun’s serial number. According to firearms analysis, the gun was issued to Corporal Song Joonsu. However, according to Cha Giho, Dongcheon killed Song Joonsu in 2004.
Ji-woo tried to investigate further, but her past nemesis, Do Gang-jae, surfaced. To take revenge on Dongcheon, Gang-jae introduced LSD to the market and tried to replace it with Dongcheon’s meth. During an attack on his peddler, Gang-jae saw Ji-woo on CCTV footage and instantly recognized her. Gang-jae waged war on Ji-woo, and after a furious battle, Ji-woo killed her nemesis. Before dying, Gang-jae revealed to Ji-woo that she didn’t know anything.
The words kept troubling Ji-woo, and finally, she visited Cha Giho to kill him. At his house, Ji-woo discovered that the captain had already been stabbed. But even though the captain was bleeding badly, he gave Ji-woo evidence that became a pivotal point in her investigation.
According to picture evidence, Ji-woo’s father, Yoon Dong-hoon’s real name was Song Joonsu. He was an undercover agent who worked for the narcotics department. Song Joonsu infiltrated the Dongcheon organization to take them down from inside. Like Ji-woo, even her father lived a dual life with two names, and that’s why he always looked like he was on the edge of the cliff.
Who killed Yoon Dong-hoon / Song Joonsu?
From the beginning of the series, Mu-jin made Ji-woo believe that a policeman killed her father. Even when Ji-woo confronted Mu-jin with her father’s real identity, Mu-jin convinced her that Dong-hoon flipped and became a loyal member of Dongcheon. It was how Dong-hoon saved Mu-jin’s life, a tale of valor, loyalty, and friendship, that he kept on repeating. A lie is repeated profusely to make it sound like the truth.
Mu-jin told Ji-woo that he held back her father’s real name from her because he wanted Ji-woo to have conviction in her revenge. But in reality, Mu-jin was deceiving Ji-woo and fueling her rage to make her an irrational monster.
In the end, Mu-jin’s trusted minion, Jung Tae-ju, who stabbed Captain Cha Giho, came to kill Ji-woo. Tae-ju revealed that he wanted to kill Dong-hoon, but it was Mu-jin who killed him.
While beating a punk, Mu-jin found a covert listening device planted inside his lighter. The lighter was a present given by his most trusted friend, Dong-hoon. Soon after, Mu-jin searched Dong-hoon’s room and found a typewriter and a service pistol. At the same moment, Tae-ju, who was driving Dong-hoon, informed Mu-jin that Dong-hoon had left in a car to meet someone. Dong-hoon went to his apartment to meet his daughter on her 17th birthday. When Dong-hoon was on the doorstep, Mu-jin, dressed in a hoodie, shot Dong-hoon twice with his service pistol, which was recovered from the murder scene.
While remembering that ill-fated night, Mu-jin expressed that he never once betrayed someone who trusted him. So why does everyone keep betraying him? He was hurt that after Dong-hoon, his daughter, Ji-woo, wanted to kill him. But he was ready, ready to cut out another piece of his heart.
‘My Name’ Ending Explained
In the beginning, Mu-jin told Ji-woo that the whole purpose of living is to find a person you can tell that you’re in pain. In the last episode, Ji-woo found that person in Jeon Pil-do (Ahn Bo-hyun). Pil-do convinced Ji-woo to give up her inhuman vengeance and help him judge Mu-jin with the law. Embraced by love and finding comfort in Pil-do, Ji-woo felt like home. She shed the monster in her and started believing in a peaceful life. But Mu-jin knew her weakness, and he sought an ending.
Mu-jin shot Pil-do on his head. The blow killed him instantly. Mu-jin knew that the loss of another loved one would push Ji-woo’s sanity off the ledge and wake up the monster again. And that’s what exactly happened. After Pil-do’s death, Ji-woo raided Mu-jin’s stronghold, Hotel Liber.
In the final battle, Ji-woo confronted her final nemesis, the person who made her a monster. Ji-woo went for Mu-jin’s vital body parts and stabbed him in the end. After Mu-jin’s death, the police raided Hotel Liber, and Ji-woo sneaked out. A bleeding assassin who exacted her vengeance but lost everyone dear to her on the way.
Ji-woo paid her last tribute to her father. She put Dong-hoon’s ashes near her mother’s urchin in Pureunsol Memorial Park. Ji-woo also left her father’s last belongings, the apartment key he fixed in the lock and held until the end to save his daughter.
After fulfilling her duties, Ji-woo visited the Jeon family’s grave, which belonged to Jeon Pil-do and his sister, Jeon Daeun. She bid a final goodbye and left. Probably, Ji-woo would live near the beach like her father always wanted to. In the last episode, Pil-do took her to a beach house called “Happy June,” which belonged to his friend. It could be Ji-woo’s resting place where she would wait for the wounds to heal and spend the rest of her life.
My Name is a 2021 South Korean crime thriller series directed by Kim Jin-min. It is streaming on Netflix.
