The Worst of Evil (2023) K Drama Episode 1 with Ji Chang Wook & Wi Ha Joon

Episode 1 of The Worst of Evil starts with a flashback from 1994, 2 years before the present time when Park Jun-mo and his wife Yoo Eui-jung go to have dinner with Jun-mo’s family. At dinner, Jun-mo’s brothers and father berate him for being a lower-ranking police officer, unlike his wife. In private, Eui-jung asks Jun-mo to forget about the comments made by his family members.

Around the same time, Jung Gi-cheul, a small-time DJ at a local club, is hired by a gangster who runs illegal businesses. Jang Kyung-chul (also known as Sergeant Jang) asks him to bring in more of his friends who are native to Gangnam to join their team of gangsters. He tells Gi-cheul that he will soon make the latter the owner of a nightclub in exchange for his hard work for their gang. Gi-cheul agrees to work for the gangster in exchange for a promotion.

After working as a goon for Sergeant Jang for a year, Gi-cheul runs and manages a hotel but does not gain the respect of the people he is working for. Gi-cheul asks his boss to promote him as he promised but he is insulted by Jang’s minions. He talks to Jang directly and asks him to fund his drug business. Jang badmouths Gi-cheul and asks him to stay within his limits, insulting him.

Gi-cheul feels agitated by Jang and starts hatching a plan to eliminate him. He hires a convicted knife wielder and offers him the chance to run two nightclubs if he manages to kill Jang and his men. Gi-cheul tricks Jang and his entire crew into boarding a hotel for one night to celebrate a team outing. There, Gi-cheul and his men team up with the knife wielder and his men to defeat Jang.

The altercation leaves Jang at the mercy of Gi-cheul, his friend Tae-ho, and the knifer. Tae-ho beats Jang up while trying to take off the gangster’s watch and Jang ends up using Tae-ho’s knife on him. Gi-cheul is furious by the death of his friend and kills Jang brutally.

Gi-cheul then goes to Jang’s boss – Song Dong-hyuk and lies to him, stating Jang had fled because he had joined hands with Jaegeon Group’s leader – Sung Ki-soo. 

Dong-hyuk knows Gi-cheul had killed Jang and his family out of personal vengeance but strikes a deal with him nevertheless. Gi-cheul asks the old man to invest in his business in exchange for a monthly revenue of 50 million won. Gi-cheul then meets an old woman named Professor Yoon whom he had sent to China to smuggle gold into South Korea.

That night, a woman overdoses on some drugs and falls off the balcony of a nightclub. The issue concerns the Korean Prosecution and they seek help from the Japanese Narcotics Control Department. The prosecutor, Chang-sik, learns that a Japanese drug dealer had revealed that the purest form of drug to exist was imported to Japan from South Korea. 

They also discover that the dealer was murdered by a South Korean gang member for snitching information to the cops. In order to reveal the truth about this gang, Prosecutor Chang-sik asks Detective Do-hyung to look for a guy from the police tenacious enough to be a mole. Do-hyung meets Jun-mo and asks him to join the operation, but the cop initially refuses.

Chang-sik shows up at Jun-mo’s police station and tries to convince him to join their operation as an infiltrator. He tells Jun-mo that if the operation is successful, Jun-mo will have a sizeable promotion. That night, Jun-mo thinks about the offer and the comments from his family members regarding his position. He agrees to join the operation the following day and meets Do-hyung.

Jun-mi poses a condition to Chang-sik and Do-hyung, telling them that he would agree to be a part of the operation only if they promise to bump his rank up not once but twice. Chang-sik agrees to fulfil Jun-mo’s demand and the cop starts learning about the group that he was going to join as an infiltrator. 

Do-hyung and Chang-sik familiarise Jun-mo with the members of the gang who were responsible for the pedalling of the purest form of meth known as Gangnam Crystal in South Korea. Jun-mo also learns that Gi-cheul has now taken Sergeant Jang’s place and is the leader of the Gangnam Union men’s club.

Chang-sik tells Jun-mo that the people in Gi-cheul’s team were not strangers but his college alumni who treated him like their brother. Knowing it will be difficult to make Gi-cheul’s gang snitch due to the brotherly bond they share, sending a mole into the gang was their only option to crack it.

After his best friend Tae-ho was killed at the hands of Sergeant Jang, Do-hyung suspects that Gi-cheul had something to do with it. Chang-sik tells Jun-mo that the men’s club – Gangnam Union had taken over every bar and nightclub in Gangnam and that they were sure it had something to do with Gangnam Crystal.   

Jun-mo is sent into the gang as Tae-ho’s fake cousin – Kwon Seung-ho and asks him to find out the Chinese or Japanese seller who was providing Gi-cheul and his group the ephedrine for them to make the crystal meth. He asks the prosecutor and the detective for permission to go ahead with the infiltration on his own.

Jun-mo shows up at ‘Sikgaek’, one of Gi-cheul’s restaurants, demanding to see him in person. He causes a scene there, prompting Gi-cheul to show up at the restaurant with Gi-cheul coming face to face with Jun-mo.

The Episode Review

The show looks really good from the first episode itself and I am more than excited to see Ji Chang-wook in an action role with this one. This episode opens us to the major characters in the drama and from what we can already see, Gi-cheul loved his friend Tae-ho dearly which is why seeing Jun-m0 with a watch similar to what his brother wore may have riled him up.

Since this is a crime thriller drama set in the ’90s, it’s natural for the show to have characters smoking but from what we can see in this episode, there were hardly any scenes where the characters weren’t smoking/holding a cigarette. I wonder what the intention behind this decision was other than to show that both cops and gangsters smoke a lot!

Keeping those things aside, it’s intriguing to see Wi Ha-joon as the villain in this show after seeing and enjoying his  bad guy avatar in Little Women.