Stealer: The Treasure Keeper 2023 Episode 2

Episode 2 of Stealer: The Treasure Keeper picks up with the cultural heritage team sharing a meal. Over drinks, Min-woo says that she is really enjoying working on the team, followed by Chang-hoon and Captain giving Min-woo a briefing. They have names for each kind of thief they work with: Goltong are people who steal antiques. They are middlemen buyers.

Dilbari deliver illegally obtained treasures and are clever and brave. They ferry artifacts on shipping vessels and use other smuggling tactics. The Magicians are concealment experts who help people hide their treasures. Phoenixes are personal buyers. Goldo is a thief who specializes in stealing artifacts.

Captain shows Min-woo a file of suspects but she’s focuses on one named Skunk, a man in black (Dae-myung) who leaves a bad-smelling gas behind.

Through his mask that night, Skunk is fed information about the property he is about to enter by the woman who is simultaneously surveilling the property using drones from an unknown location. Skunk refers to the woman as Ms. Lee, the woman who “sued” his cultural heritage division.

Skunk is able to see data inside his mask and checks out some info while he waits for Ms. Lee to find a point that Skunk can zip line to. She sends a drone to the building flagpole, where the drone secures a zip line.

Skunk zips down the line, and Ms. Lee cautions him not to touch the ground, or else he will get electrocuted and the alarm will go off. Skunk uses a function in his mask to estimate if he can jump across the building’s flagpoles, and then he does just that, landing safely with a spin. But then he trips and nearly falls. Ms. Lee sees through the mask’s camera and also gets startled.

Skunk has a flashback of giving Mr. Choi fancy sunglasses. The glasses actually transmitted copies of Mr. Choi’s eyes to Skunk, so that he could gain entry to the building. The box that the sunglasses were in also transmitted Mr. Choi’s fingerprints.

Inside the building, Skunk finds a room with drawers full of parchments and books, but no Jikji. Ms. Lee checks some footage that is feeding through a watch Mr. Choi is wearing. Skunk had given the watch to him previously. Ms. Lee cautions Skunk and provides information while he sneaks through the house.

Skunk starts searching for by chair next to Mr. Choi. The doorbell rings, and Mr. Choi seems startled by the noise. Ms. Lee tells Skunk to leave, but he doesn’t want to give up.

Suddenly, Ms. Lee appears next to the man who is ringing the doorbell. Ms. Lee tells him that she is lost and asks him to come with her. She creeps him out, and the guy drives away.

Skunk goes into a room with a desk and an ink pad. He uses his mask to determine that Mr. Choi was grinding an ink stick, but his mask’s moisture level detection indicates that the ink was not used for anything in the room. Skunk starts grinding the ink stick, and a secret door opens.

Skunk walks through the door and finds a hole in the ground. He starts climbing down the ladder.

Meanwhile, the cultural heritage team showed Min-woo a secret storage unit with special artifacts. These are all items stolen by Skunk. Captain says that Skunk sends the items to him. Min-woo asks Captain why he is trying to arrest Skunk if Skunk has been helping them; Captain replies that they have to arrest him because he is still a thief.

Captain says that Young-chan told him that it was Skunk who killed Chairman Yang and his men. Min-woo asks why there are documents labeled “Retrieval of Cultural Assets Illegally Owned by Those of Power” in the artifacts cabinet. Captain replies that it is a story for another day.

Meanwhile, Skunk descends the ladder and observes that the tunnel’s walls are packed with snack packaging. Ms. Lee realizes that they are to block out signals. He makes it down the tunnel to find the Jikji waiting for him. He sprays the book with his special smelly concoction (which helps preserve documents and artifacts and deter insects) and then picks the book up.

An alarm goes off, and Skunk races back to the ladder. He notices the snack packaging is crumbling and melting; he shoots his repelling device and tries to shoot up out of the tunnel, but it doesn’t work, and he falls back down. The ladder is laser-protected; if anything touches it, it becomes burned.

Unable to touch the ladder’s sides, he quickly takes out some climbing spikes and, using only his hands and arms, stabs the spikes into the tunnel’s walls of snack packaging until he reaches what remains of his repelling rope and pulls himself to the top, suffering a burn on his side, and makes his getaway.

Min-woo is walking through the woods with a flashlight when she sees a skunk burying something in a pile of leaves. She chases him, and he disappears, then vaults himself onto a tree and runs to Min-woo, but she blocks him with a flying kick. She pulls off his mask, and a cartoonish Skunk head appears. He sprays her, and she blacks out. When Min-woo wakes up, she believes it’s all a bad dream… until she smells something gross.

At Skunk’s hideout, Ms. Lee and Skunk reminisce about their first time working together and discuss stealing from a man named Chairman Yang. Ms. Lee mentions that Chairman Yang is obsessed with collecting brass coins.

At Chairman Yang’s, the cultural heritage team examine the room where Huin-dal killed him and all of his men. All of the surveillance footage has been wiped.

Yong-chan calls the captain and tells him that he will help them try to catch the suspect in exchange for a prison deal. He tells them that the suspect killed all of those people over some coins, and they hang up.

At the station, Young-chan goes to the bathroom, but the officers walk in to find that he is dead. Huin-dal leaves the police station dressed as an officer.

The cultural heritage team checks out the footage and sees Huin-dal but is not able to make out his face. An officer reports that Young-chan’s death is similar to the ones that happened at Chairman Yang’s place—the victims had small pen wounds that they bled out from.

Huin-dal makes a phone call. He says that they only need two more coins and promises to find them soon. 

Captain flips through the “Retrieval of Cultural Assets Illegally Owned by Those of Power” document. It was written by Dae-myung/Skunk, who gave it to him prior to this. A moment from the past displays Captain and Skunk on the phone, where the former says he is working on something secret.

Meanwhile, Skunk reflects on memories of his dad: his dad in the middle of a passionate phone call about recovering a lost artifact. Then a young Skunk with a clothespin on his nose watches as his dad makes the smelly artifact preservation concoction. The two of them greet each other after a long time; his parents tucking him into bed, and his dad telling him about treasures lost to Korea in a war.

Done reminiscing, Skunk is in his suit and investigating Chairman Yang’s house. He notices an indent on the wood floor and snoops around the rest of the building. As we soon find out, Captain is also lurking around at Chairman Yang’s. He is in the surveillance room and notices Skunk on the screens. He traps him in a corner and points a gun at him. Skunk puts his hands up.

Bonus Epilogue Scene: Skunk in the Beginning

It is Skunk’s first mission, Ms. Lee is doing surveillance in a van, and Skunk’s feet are frozen in his ill-prepared suit. Another day, his hands are frozen. He asks Ms. Lee to come get him before cycling through to another mission where Skunk couldn’t see through his goggles.

Batteries are missing from his glass-cutting device another time, and he has to give up. When he finally has all of his gear working, he sets off a burglar alarm, as all these failed missions show just how much of a rookie he used to be.

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The Episode Review

So far, the story seems very well developed. The little twist with Ms. Lee was also a nice surprise, although there has only been a small splash of romantic tension between Min-woo and Skunk thus far.

Let’s see if they continue to disdain each other or if love starts to blossom. It seems like Huin-dal will stop at nothing to get these coins. Maybe there is some value to them that is more than monetary. Hopefully, we will find out what that is in the next episode!