Gyeongseong Creature K-Drama 2023 Episode 2 with Park Seo Joon and Han So Hee

Episode 2 of Gyeongseong Creature begins 1 year back at Ongseong Hospital. Sachimoto applies for a job and is given a new book on anatomy. It turns out the Japanese are striving to elevate the medical standards of the country and Sachimoto’s job is to draw these new creatures, which have been created through experimenting on humans.

It’s tough going, to begin with, especially when he sees the caged men and women, along with the experiments first-hand. One of the cleaners admits that you become numb to this eventually but will he?

And that leads us nicely back to the present, where Sachimoto struggles to compose himself in the face of such a hideous monster. Its limbs protrude out of the cell bars and try to touch him.

Meanwhile, the sleuths set out to try and find intel on Myeong-ja. Chae-ok shows up at the Japanese command post. She breaks in and remains undetected as she creeps over the rooftops. She spies a young lady passing a document to a Japanese man who takes off along the street. Chae-ok gives chase and notices him dropped off at a lavish house called the Spring Hall Office further in Gyeongseong.

In the morning, Tae-sang finds himself confronted by the brash man from the previous episode trying to sell his “porcelain” pot. Things get intense, especially when guns are drawn and a fight looks set to break out. The man is confident that Tae-sang is going to be raided and have everything confiscated by Ishikawa if he’s not careful.

The sleuths show up and inform Tae-sang about what they’ve discovered. Through interrogating one of the guards, Chae-ok discovers that she may have been taken to Ongseong Hospital. This would lead one to believe that she’s being held somewhere (ie. in the cages in this strange lab).

Tae-sang tries to formulate a plan but with both Chae-ok and Jung-won doubting him, he decides to prove them wrong. He heads off to visit his friend Jun-taek and pays him off in order to get his ID and a way into the hospital. He also gets disguises for the pair of sleuths, and Chae-ok’s outfit mesmerizes him with her beauty.

Tae-sang shows up in the waiting room, and Mr Gu serves as a distraction while Chae-ok breaks into the records room. She only has a limited window of time and things take a turn for the worse when a man spies what she’s doing. Things are tense, but then Jung-Won shows up and manages to calm the situation down. It seems like the man is actually part of the resistance too, in a nice twist of fate.

Tae-sang and Mr Gu continue their acting gig out in the waiting room, with Mr Gu pretending that everything is fine suddenly when the two sleuths leave the record room. It’s a rather amusing scene but it’s quickly counteracted by the drama over in the testing lab. The creature is growing, and it’s starting to kill the various guards too. Lt. Kato is mesmerized by its strength, but it now seems to be growing tentacles that protrude out and suck the life force out of the humans.

As we soon find out, the hospital also serves as a military ward and the basement is where all the experiments and chaos we’ve been seeing have emanated from. The man helping them is very much a part of all this. His brother was taken a year back to Seodaemun Prison. They transferred him to Ongseong and that’s why he’s part of the resistance movement.

When the sleuths leave, sirens suddenly wail inside the hospital. Everyone is forced to abandon the place, with the nurses there visibly worried and scared. While everyone leaves the building. Lt. Kato decides to initiate “Level 4” and calls on his men to bring out the nitrogen.

The cell is blasted with nitrogen to try and keep the creature docile. While they blast it with jets of nitrogen, the creature is asleep. However, it lets off anthrax while it does, further protecting itself. After putting it inside a nitrogen-laced steel cell, the creature is brought up to Level 4 and a brand new cell.

Some of those spores drift across to the various cells holding the different men and women, and those who touch them end up burning and singing their flesh. This seems to explain the dead bodies at the start of episode 1, which may have been killed by this very defence mechanism.

All of this is unbeknownst to Chae-ok and Jun-woong, who end up watching from outside and scouting the place. There are guards all over the place so it’s not going to be easy to break in. Chae-ok manages it though and she spies a whole bunch of dead bodies being piled up outside by the guards. This is as a result of the anthrax attack from the creature.

Tae-sang finds himself conflicted by his feelings and he decides to head off and do right by Chae-ok. He’s going to try and track down and find Sachimoto. He’s very much infatuated with the girl, something that Mrs. Nawol can tell straight away. She encourages him to do this and do right by her.

In the morning, news breaks that Ongseong Hospital is now closed indefinitely due to a deadly disease. More soldiers arrive, sandbags are piled up and the hospital itself is under military supervision. News of this reaches the Golden Treasure, and Tae-sang makes a bold decision. He chooses to head out and find Chae-ok. However, he’s stopped by one of the nurses, the same one who encouraged him to leave earlier in the episode.

She hands over a note from Chae-ok, who’s still trapped inside the hospital. The note simply reads “We found Myeong-ja.” It turns out this nurse is also part of the resistance, and she calls on Tae-sang and the others for help.

The Episode Review

The historical setting is really helping to drive the idea of this show forward, with the clear division involving the Japanese and the Koreans. It makes sense to have this creature created by the Japanese, as they cling to the last shreds of hope in World War II. It’s such a clever way of adding in the fear and tension from the war, but also adding in an alt-historical setting that feels real and like a plausible scenario that could have taken place.

The characters are great in this and it’s clear that Chae-ok and Tae-sang are going to slowly form a romance as time goes by. With Chae-ok stuck inside the hospital in Gyeongseong Creature Episode 2, it would seem that we’re going to get a scenario similar to Sweet Home, with our characters desperate to escape from this monstrous creature.

Either way though, there’s enough here to make for a really solid drama and the next episode should be quite an enticing affair.