A prosecutor in Seowon is given a difficult assignment: take down Jo Young-gook, the powerful CEO of Hyunseung Company.

Woo Je-moon knows that a conventional investigation probably won’t be enough. He puts together a team of people who have their own experience with violence and crime, then goes after Young-gook and the network protecting him.

That is the setup for Bad Guys: Vile City, the 2017 Korean crime thriller starring Park Joong-hoon, Joo Jin-mo, Yang Ik-june, Kim Moo-yul, and Ji Soo. The 16-episode drama aired from December 2017 to February 2018.

Watch Bad Guys: Vile City on Amasian TV

Woo Je-moon already knows how ugly the job can get

Woo Je-moon is a prosecutor at the Seowon District Public Prosecutors’ Office, and he has a reputation for using drastic methods to get results.

Three years before the main events of the story, a corruption investigation ended badly. Je-moon’s colleague was killed, and another was left seriously injured. When he gets another opportunity to pursue the people responsible, he decides to approach the case differently.

His target is Jo Young-gook, the CEO of Hyunseung Company and one of the most powerful figures in Seowon.

Je-moon starts assembling people who can help him reach Young-gook.

The team is built from people with very different pasts

The group includes four other men, and their reasons for being there aren’t the same.

Heo Il-hoo, played by Joo Jin-mo, is a former mobster who was once feared for his violence. After leaving that life behind, he runs a restaurant, but Je-moon knows his past could make him useful.

Jang Sung-cheol, played by Yang Ik-june, is a detective whose personal problems and unpredictable behavior make him difficult to read.

Han Gang-joo, played by Ji Soo, is a young man with a criminal past who becomes involved after violence reaches his family.

Then there is Noh Jin-pyeong, played by Kim Moo-yul. He’s a rookie prosecutor who enters the investigation with considerably less experience than the others.

Putting these people together creates an immediate problem. They don’t share the same history, the same motivations, or the same ideas about how far they should go.

Noh Jin-pyeong gives the group a different perspective

Jin-pyeong is one of the most useful characters to follow because he’s still trying to understand the world he’s been pulled into.

He’s a rookie prosecutor at the beginning of his career. His previous experience with violence has already affected him, and joining Je-moon’s team forces him into situations far outside the controlled environment he expected from his job.

That becomes especially important as the investigation escalates.

The people around him are willing to fight, threaten, deceive, and take risks that would normally be far outside the boundaries of legal procedure. Jin-pyeong has to figure out how to work alongside them while dealing with the consequences of their methods.

Jo Young-gook has built a difficult target

Young-gook’s position makes the investigation increasingly complicated.

He runs Hyunseung Company and has substantial influence in Seowon. Je-moon’s team begins by targeting his criminal operations, but their investigation gradually exposes a wider network of people with connections to him.

That expansion gives the drama its larger sense of scale.

The team isn’t walking into one location, finding one culprit, and wrapping up the case. Every step toward Young-gook brings them into contact with another person or organization that has something to lose.

And the deeper they get, the more dangerous the investigation becomes.

The crime story keeps pulling the team in different directions

One of the more interesting aspects of Vile City is how the characters’ personal motives become tangled up with the main investigation.

Je-moon is pursuing the people connected to the corruption case that changed his life.

Gang-joo has his own reasons for wanting revenge.

Il-hoo’s past makes him useful to the investigation while also making him vulnerable to the people they’re fighting.

Jin-pyeong is still trying to understand where he fits into all of this.

Sung-cheol operates with his own methods and instincts.

The investigation therefore keeps changing as the characters learn more about one another and about the people they’re pursuing.

The Bad Guys name, with a different story

Bad Guys: Vile City is a spin-off of the 2014 series Bad Guys, but it follows a new story with a largely new group of characters. The connection is the basic idea of using people with questionable backgrounds and methods to pursue criminals who are even harder to reach through conventional means.

This time, the story is built around a prosecutor trying to dismantle a powerful criminal network in Seowon.

With 16 episodes to work with, the investigation has room to expand from one target into a much larger conflict involving organized crime, corruption, and people inside the system who have their own interests.

For viewers looking for a Korean crime thriller with a large ensemble, violent confrontations, and a long-running investigation, Bad Guys: Vile City has plenty to work with.

Watch Bad Guys: Vile City on Amasian TV.

What if you found a serial killer’s diary and, after losing your memory, became convinced it was yours?

That is the setup for Psychopath Diary, the 2019 thriller starring Yoon Shi-yoon, Jung In-sun, and Park Sung-hoon. Yoon Shi-yoon plays Yook Dong-sik, a timid employee at a securities company who ends up with the diary after stumbling onto a murder. An accident leaves him with amnesia, and the diary becomes the only real clue he has about who he might have been.

Unfortunately for Dong-sik, the diary describes a serial killer.

So he reaches the wrong conclusion.

Watch Pyscopath Diary for free on Amasian TV

The diary becomes Dong-sik’s new identity

Before the accident, Dong-sik is used to being pushed around. He takes the blame for mistakes at work and struggles to stand up for himself. Then, almost immediately, his life becomes much stranger.

He witnesses a murder, escapes with the killer’s diary, gets hit by a police car, and wakes up without his memories.

The diary contains detailed records of murders, so Dong-sik has no reason to think it belongs to somebody else. As far as he knows, this is evidence of a life he can’t remember.

That misunderstanding drives the entire premise.

Dong-sik mistakes himself for a psychopath serial killer after losing his memory and finding the diary. The real owner of the diary is Seo In-woo, played by Park Sung-hoon.

The interesting part is what happens to Dong-sik afterward

The comedy comes from watching a man who has spent his life being intimidated by other people suddenly believe that he is capable of murder.

Dong-sik starts interpreting his own behavior differently. Small acts of confidence can take on a completely different meaning once he believes he is a dangerous criminal.

That gives Yoon Shi-yoon an unusual performance challenge. He isn’t simply playing a timid office worker throughout the drama. Dong-sik’s understanding of himself keeps changing, even though the audience knows that his basic assumption about the diary is wrong.

Meanwhile, the actual killer has a very different problem.

The real serial killer needs his diary back

Seo In-woo isn’t trying to discover whether he is dangerous. He already knows exactly who he is.

He is the real serial killer, and losing the diary creates a problem because it contains a record of his crimes. Dong-sik, meanwhile, is walking around with the diary while believing its contents describe his own past.

That creates an unusual situation where the two men are operating with completely different versions of the truth.

Dong-sik is frightened of what he thinks he has done.

In-woo is worried about what Dong-sik has accidentally discovered.

The tension between those two perspectives is one of the drama’s strongest recurring ideas.

A crime drama with a very strange sense of humor

Psychopath Diary aired for 16 episodes from November 2019 through January 2020. Its central story gives it plenty of conventional crime-thriller material, but the mistaken identity premise lets the drama repeatedly undercut that tension with comedy.

That’s also why the premise remains easy to remember years later.

A man finds a murder diary.

He loses his memory.

He assumes he’s the murderer.

And the actual murderer is trying to get the diary back.

There aren’t many K-dramas that start from quite that combination of circumstances.

Watch Psychopath Diary on Amasian TV.