'Made in Korea' Season 2 Disney/Hulu Made in Korea, Disney+‘s darkly thrilling K-drama spy series, came to a simmering conclusion on Wednesday as stars Hyun Bin and Jung Woo-sung faced off for one final game of cat and mouse.
Across two seasons packed with twisty machinations, Jung’s virtuous prosecutor Jang Geon-young attempted to pin down Hyun’s shamelessly corrupt — but effortlessly cool — intelligence officer Baek Ki-tae, only to be outfoxed at every turn. But in the final episode of the show’s second season, which Disney says will be its finale, Baek’s carefully orchestrated world finally begins to crumble around him — and Jang, at last, is able to think a step ahead of his rival. (More overt spoilers follow…)
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“Baek Kitae always has several moves in mind. He has his own playbook for navigating different situations, adapting to different circumstances and steering things in the direction he wants,” Hyun says. “But in Season 2, that begins to unravel… Those moments reflect a complicated mix of emotions he feels as unexpected circumstances begin to unfold.”
Hyun, one of Korea’s biggest stars of the past two decades thanks to his beloved performances in Secret Garden and Crash Landing on You, tells The Hollywood Reporter that he believes Made in Korea‘s two-season saga was ultimately designed to impart a timely message just as much as it was to thrill his many fans. Against a backdrop of growing political corruption and military conflict around the world, the actor says he hopes the show’s fictionalized portrait of a dark chapter in Korean history can provoke thought as readily as it entertains.
“I believe the entertaining aspects are fully integrated into our work, but at the same time, I hoped that this question would reach the viewers at least once because, while filming, I realized this story is ultimately about the conflict arising from different beliefs and methods between individuals,” he says. “Reality is not much different from the story in this project. Therefore, rather than dividing who is right or wrong, pondering how I should understand and view someone who has different thoughts and beliefs from me — isn’t that what we need for a better era and life in our current times? I hope people will ask themselves such questions at least once after watching this work.”
‘Made in Korea’ Disney+ Set in South Korea in the 1970s, Made in Korea is a fictionalized dramatization of one of the country’s most turbulent modern eras, weaving invented characters into real events ranging from the 1970 Yodogo plane hijacking to the political crisis unleashed by President Park Chung-hee’s 1979 assassination and the power struggle leading up to the Dec. 12 military coup. Hyun’s Baek begins as a mid-level agent in the Korean Central Intelligence Agency who aspires to rise beyond his humble origins by secretly engaging in the crystal meth trade and using the profits to make himself indispensable to his country’s corrupt leaders. But the higher he climbs, the more his illicit means jeopardize those he cares most about — his younger sister, who eventually falls in love with a meth-dealing associate of Baek’s and gets hooked on the drug herself, and his brother, Baek Ki-hyeon (played by Woo Do-hwan), a young soldier trying to make his way in the Korean military in his older brother’s wake.
Jang, meanwhile, begins the show as a brilliant and impeccably virtuous prosecutor who simply wants to serve his country and expunge the drug trade. But after Baek mercilessly outwits him in season one, framing him for drug crimes and threatening the freedom and well-being of Jang’s younger sister, the prosecutor emerges in season two a changed and damaged man — no less cunning, but willing to do anything to get his revenge.
By the end, as Jang intones in voice-over in the show’s final moments, both characters have betrayed their values as they seek greater power within the corrupt system to pursue their desperate goals — for Baek, to attain ever greater wealth and power; and for Jang, to get revenge against Baek no matter the cost, even if it involves brutally torturing suspects connected to his rival.
In the closing scenes of Made in Korea, Baek doesn’t say much as he bears down on the various figures who have betrayed him during the final season. But his newfound mercy and restraint suggest he may be second-guessing the ruthlessness that led him to the end of the line. Instead of killing Chief Secretary Cheon, he shoots him in the ear and leaves him bleeding. Likewise, he shoots his slimy, double-crossing KCIA underling Pyo Hak-su in the legs rather than simply dispatching him. And in the final dockyard showdown with Jang, Baek, already badly wounded, again opts to leave his rival alive — he simply walks away after catching Jang in the arm with one bullet and uttering a few resonant words about how they both have lost their place in the world.
Baek’s fate in the end rests in the hands of his little brother, Baek Ki-hyeon. Although the elder Baek has been uncompromisingly protective of his sibling, he’s also trapped and suffocated him in an ever-expanding web of corruption and ill-gotten gains. Baek Ki-hyeon aspired to walk a path of virtue and provide for their sister through honest means — but his calculating spymaster big brother was never going to let them out of his grasp. So, his only option, as they meet with guns drawn at the dockyard, is to put an end to it all. The gunshot that rings out and the flashback scenes that follow suggest that’s what happened, but it’s worth pointing out that we don’t actually see the younger Baek shoot his brother, nor do we ever see his body. Could Disney+ be keeping the door cracked open for a potential season three?
Whatever the case, the actors who played the Baek brothers say they developed a bond that will endure beyond the show.
“I loved working with him,” Woo Do-hwan remembers of his weeks and months on set with Hyun. “It wasn’t easy for us to get close at the beginning because we were playing brothers with such a complicated relationship, but now, Hyun Bin feels like an older brother to me. I don’t actually have an older brother, but Hyun Bin always looks after me, which makes me think, ‘This must be what it feels like to have one.’ Whenever he made suggestions about how to improve a scene, he was always very careful and considerate, and following his advice always made the scene better. We trusted and relied on each other.”
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