![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieWhile still eagery and anxiously waiting for IRIS eps, I was thinking - despite all the tragedy and horror Hyun Joon went through after he was framed and abandoned, once that happened this is the first time in his life he is not IRIS puppet but someone who actually has agency. Before that, whatever he did really didn't matter.
His path was set from the moment the Voice persuaded his parents to join the nuclear project (which is why I think this is so well-written - I was trying to puzzle what would need to change in order for Hyun Joon to have had an unscrewed-up life and this is how far back you have to go. No 'if X only talked to Y' or whatever easy solution).
Because his parents joining in led to them being killed by IRIS. In fact, the only reason Hyun Joon survived was because Baeksan seemed to have a sense of irony and enjoy the prospect of eventually employing a guy whose parents he killed to do his organization's work. I bet if at any point between then and his NSS recruitment Hyun Joon would have shown a troubling curiousity about his past, he would have been dead. And then he got 'recruited' into NSS when Baeksan decided time was ripe. Once again, Hyun Joon may think he has a choice but he does not - I bet if he refused, Baeksan would arrange for him to go home in a body bag. In chunks.
And then he got set-up and abandoned to die. Once again, there is nothing he could have done to stop this. He may he been set up sooner because he started wondering about his past or because he was dating Seung Hee (who for some reason is very important to Baeksan) but the point remains that he would have been set up sooner or later, whether he got interested in Seung Hee or not, whether he ever tried to remember his past or not - the organization isn't keen on potentially problematic loose ends and uses everyone ruthlessly. Even if they, improbably, thought he was 100% secure, then all that would happen to him is that they would try to groom him to be another Sa Woo and the moment he baulked, he'd get a bullet in the back of the head.
So yes, once he became the hunted, tortured, everyone-wants-to-kill him guy, it's only then he finally became free. Scary.
In other IRIS news, I am so anxious about his fate! I keep reassuring myself that Lee Byung Hun has always got happy endings in his dramas (even in Beautiful Days, where he is an icy workaholic with an awful family who melts for a plucky orphan artist with leukemia (!!!!), it all ends happily, and in All In as well, where he starts the drama by going to jain for arson which killed a few people, and later voluntarily joins the mob, mowing down rival gangsters in order to get to his wedding on time). So - they can't break the streak? But then I start thinking that he's died plenty in his movies and I get...awww, hell, I am insane.
ETA: Preview for ep 20. Am I going insane or is that mysterious barely-glimpsed woman assassinating the President...Seung-Hee? !!!! ???? WHAT! Oh, FUCK. This is going to be another Shiri. I can't take it. I can't!
His path was set from the moment the Voice persuaded his parents to join the nuclear project (which is why I think this is so well-written - I was trying to puzzle what would need to change in order for Hyun Joon to have had an unscrewed-up life and this is how far back you have to go. No 'if X only talked to Y' or whatever easy solution).
Because his parents joining in led to them being killed by IRIS. In fact, the only reason Hyun Joon survived was because Baeksan seemed to have a sense of irony and enjoy the prospect of eventually employing a guy whose parents he killed to do his organization's work. I bet if at any point between then and his NSS recruitment Hyun Joon would have shown a troubling curiousity about his past, he would have been dead. And then he got 'recruited' into NSS when Baeksan decided time was ripe. Once again, Hyun Joon may think he has a choice but he does not - I bet if he refused, Baeksan would arrange for him to go home in a body bag. In chunks.
And then he got set-up and abandoned to die. Once again, there is nothing he could have done to stop this. He may he been set up sooner because he started wondering about his past or because he was dating Seung Hee (who for some reason is very important to Baeksan) but the point remains that he would have been set up sooner or later, whether he got interested in Seung Hee or not, whether he ever tried to remember his past or not - the organization isn't keen on potentially problematic loose ends and uses everyone ruthlessly. Even if they, improbably, thought he was 100% secure, then all that would happen to him is that they would try to groom him to be another Sa Woo and the moment he baulked, he'd get a bullet in the back of the head.
So yes, once he became the hunted, tortured, everyone-wants-to-kill him guy, it's only then he finally became free. Scary.
In other IRIS news, I am so anxious about his fate! I keep reassuring myself that Lee Byung Hun has always got happy endings in his dramas (even in Beautiful Days, where he is an icy workaholic with an awful family who melts for a plucky orphan artist with leukemia (!!!!), it all ends happily, and in All In as well, where he starts the drama by going to jain for arson which killed a few people, and later voluntarily joins the mob, mowing down rival gangsters in order to get to his wedding on time). So - they can't break the streak? But then I start thinking that he's died plenty in his movies and I get...awww, hell, I am insane.
ETA: Preview for ep 20. Am I going insane or is that mysterious barely-glimpsed woman assassinating the President...Seung-Hee? !!!! ???? WHAT! Oh, FUCK. This is going to be another Shiri. I can't take it. I can't!
