| Jin Seon | |
|---|---|
| |
| Information | |
| Korean Name | 선우 진 |
| Status | Alive |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 17[1] |
| Relatives | Dongsoo Seon (father) Migyeong Seon (cousin) Unnamed uncle Kyun Yoon (Girlfriend) |
| Occupation | Student |
| First Appearance | Chapter 0 |
Jin Seon (선우 진, Seon-u Jin ; "Seonwoo Jin") is the main protagonist and the son of the murderous CEO Dongsoo Seon.
Appearance
Jin is a scrawny teenager with pale skin, brown hair, and a blue right eye. Because of the "accident" during his childhood, Jin's left eye was substituted with a reddish-brown glass eye, which he hides with his irregular bangs. Due to his brutal nature while dealing with bullies and other opponents, Jin will occasionally appear bruised and cut from his fights.
Many characters make note of his good looks, mentioning how "cute" he looks when approached.
Personality
Jin is very reserved and quiet, but not hostile. Due to his naïvete from his upbringing, he can be rather incapable of reading the atmosphere or picking up on certain social cues. As a result, he comes off as very innocent and awkward, as shown by his lack of knowledge on any "adult stuff", such as pornography. Despite his seemingly harmless appearance, Jin has learned to be a very good actor, which his father uses to his advantage to lure in his victims.
Even though Jin wants to be righteous and well-meaning, he has a sociopathic side that emerges in times of intense stress or anger. When this trait shows itself, he shows no fear, uses rather foul language, and his face turns dark and menacing. When provoked into extreme rage, Jin shows no remorse or hesitation for any violent actions he may commit in this state. He is also prone to outbursts, breakdowns, or temporary lapses of fear when he is questioned about his father, hears mention of his father, or he notices his father in action.
History
Sometime after his recovery, Jin witnessed one of his father's murders. Forced to help his father dispose of a young woman's body, Jin started hate and disgust for his father and his criminal actions. Those feelings would increase the more Jin helped his father in his murders, to the point that he didn't consider as his father, but rather as "a demon".
His role in Dongsoo's crimes would varied, from luring young women to his father's apartment, acting as an excuse to bypass police forces during their escapes, and even knocked women unconscious with a wrapped mallet.
Not much of Jin's childhood is revealed until the final chapters.
Do not read the below part if you have not read up to Chapter 90, as it contains major spoilers. You have been warned.
Jin is about to kill his father until he helps him recall what actually happened the night his father allegedly pushed him off the hospital roof. A flashback occurs in which Jin's mother is shown. One day, a young Jin splattered with blood entered the kitchen. Jin's mother, worried, wiped the blood off only to find no injuries. She asked him what he was doing and he claimed that he was playing with his father. At the time, Jin's mother was confused; as she wasn't aware of what they were doing. However, an incident occured where Jin's mother collapsed in shock when she saw the body of a spider, its legs arranged neatly beside its detached body at the entrance of the door where Jin was playing. It is then that she began to grow suspicious of Jin and Dongsoo.
Jin's mother found "The Room" one day, where Dongsoo and Jin had been cutting up a woman together. Shocked and horrified, she immediately grabbed her son and left, but began to see her son as a demon, a little child with black eyes and a horrid smile. She was so distracted by this hallucination that she accidentally drove into a truck and crashed the car.
Jin's mother woke up in a hospital room with Jin next to her, but all she could still see was a demon. She hugged Jin and began to cry, and when asked by him, she assured him that there was no reason. A few days passed, and she instructed Jin to not call his father out of her increasing paranoia and mental instability from what she had witnessed in "The Room". However, Jin disobeyed her instructions and called Dongsoo, and he texted Jin's mother to tell her that he was coming. Jin's mother was horrified and threw her phone off the hospital roof, just as little Jin came up to meet her. Jin's mother proceeded to try to convince Jin that what Doongsoo was doing was horrible and not normal, and that all the women that they had murdered were just like her; they all had families and loved ones. To this, Jin simply answered that they were strangers, so their deaths didn't matter. Jin's mother, with one final attempt, interrogated him, asking him a series of questions: "Do you really enjoy playing with Daddy?" and "Do you love Daddy?", both to which he answered yes. Her final question was "Do you love me?" and Jin answered "Yes, even more than Daddy." To this, Jin's mother responded by throwing him off the roof, where he came to the realization that in order to make his mother stop crying, he would have to change himself. It is here where he wiped his memories of willingly helping his father kill innocent women and replaced it with the false memory that his father threw him off the roof and that Jin never harmed anyone.
Plot
Prologue
Dongsoo giving permission to watch Jin.
While Jin is watching the news on TV with his tutor, they announce some particular kidnappings and disappearances that have also been blowing up on social media. It is noted that the abductions were not usually about money. The tutor then shuts off the TV, ending their break and saying that they had to get back to work. However, Jin didn't pick up on this, as he seemed to have been dozing off. He snaps out of this when his father punches him in the head, scolding him about how he should listen to his teacher when she's talking to him.
Jin understands this, relieving Dongsoo in the process. He tells Jin's tutor that he's going on a business trip in the Philippines, and that she is free to watch over Jin as well as the right to scold him should she need to. After they exchange their final goodbyes and Jin gets one last lecture from his father, Dongsoo finally leaves.
The mallet behind the painting.
After that, Jin and the teacher engage in small talk. The teacher first acknowledges on how Jin's dad goes on business trips often and then moves on to discussing Jin's personal life, even bringing up the topic of his mother. Jin seems to get a little bummed out by this, but does not visibly show it. He suddenly mutters certain dates, such as last year's January, the end of April, and the beginning of December. He asks the tutor if she is aware of the meaning of these dates, and is heavily relieved when he sees her confusion. He then asks to go to the bathroom for a bit, and the tutor tells him to hurry back so that they can study.
Jin after knocking the teacher out.
In the bathroom, Jin goes to a painting on the wall above the toilet and removes it, revealing a niche with a large mallet placed inside it, wrapped in several layers of bandages. Jin attempts to pick it up, but accidentally drops it, making a loud noise as it falls to the floor. The tutor calls out to see if he is alright, but Jin lies and says that it's nothing. He comes out with the mallet and mercilessly knocks the teacher out, getting a few bloodstains on him in the process. He later states that the same dates his father went on business trips were the exact same dates that women had disappeared from their area.
Sometime after Chapter 30:
There is a small scene shown in which Faye is holding a bloody hammer, revealing her to be the other murderer responsible for the two deaths that Jin's father didn't commit. Dongsoo immediately identifies her during his visit at the convenience store where Kyun works and threatens her against trying to kill Kyun. Faye, who is already highly jealous of Kyun, is provoked by this, leading her to cut the convenience store's circuit breaker during a dark and stormy night, abducting Kyun in the process. Jin panics and desperately attempts to look for her, running outside. Faye, who is waiting with her hammer, takes a surprise swing at Jin, which he just manages to dodge after seeing her reflection in the window he was looking in. However, she does not miss the second time and manages to knock him out. He is tied and gagged and placed across from Kyun, who is also tied and gagged.
When Jin wakes up, he realizes that Faye is indeed the serial killer of the two cases that his father didn't have a hand in. Faye attempt to provoke him by telling him that she will "give him an eyeful" before he dies and begins stripping Kyun. However, Jin does not look. Faye is annoyed and asks him why, but he cannot talk because of the gag, so she removes it, threatening to kill him if he screams. Jin tries to fool her by saying that he is "sick" of seeing Kyun's body, having seen it many times already. Faye asks him if they have "done it", and Jin falsely claims that they have had sexual intercourse. Faye falls for this and mutters about how kids are such brats these days.
Jin continues by telling Faye that he would much rather see her body because he feels that her underwhelming appearance has "much more to offer", and flatters her by saying how pretty she is. Faye is caught off guard and leaves to go shower and change. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Jin had a piece of glass with him from the window that Faye had broken and he quickly cuts his bonds but pretends to still be tied up.
While Faye finishes up getting ready for Jin, she suddenly starts thinking more about what Jin said and grows annoyed after realizing that he could've been lying. She comes back and states that she will kill him, but not before he kills Kyun first. Jin then attacks her while her back is turned, and after a short fight ensues, Jin finally manages to overpower her. Just as he is about to kill her with her own hammer, Kyun awakens and mentally reminds him that if he ever becomes a "bad person", she will "smack him". Jin gives in and slams the hammer next to Faye's head, scaring her so much that she passes out.
Jin and Kyun then proceed to call the police, and Faye is arrested and held in custody, where she remains, wondering just who - or what - Jin and Dongsoo are.
Some years after Dongsoo's death and his incarceration, Jin is seen serving time in a juvenile detention facility where he has one more year left of his sentence. He smiles as he reads the letter Kyun wrote to him.
After leaving juvenile detention he visits his mother at the hospital along with Kyun Yoon
Abilities
Having been physically handicapped due to his childhood accident, Jin is usually at a disadvantage whenever he gets into a fight. However, due to his underlying sociopathic side, which is quite intimidating to people, and Manny Kim's training, he fights with an increasingly merciless and brutal attitude, enabling him to defeat slightly stronger opponents, as seen when he fought Beau Park[2] and Faye Kim.[3][4]
Possessing a good level of dexterity and is an extremely convincing actor and liar.
It is later shown that he knows Kyun well enough to be able to guess what she seems to be thinking, based on her facial expression.
Quotes
- "I've got nothing. I don't have a single good memory... Nothing."[5]
- "School is a jungle. Manny Kim is a Lion at the head of the food chain.(...) Pann Han is like a wolf wandering by his side.(...) Beau Park is a Hyena.(...) And me...I'm just a weak herbivore at the bottom of this jungle."[6]
Notes & Trivia
- Written in Korean, Jin's full name is 선우진. The initials of his name (ㅅ,ㅇ, and ㅈ) are also the initials of "살인자," which is a Korean word for "murderer".
- Jin's psychopathic tendencies probably stem from his upbringing with his murderous father and the countless immoral actions he perceived and had to commit.
- He thought what his father did was normal until his father's "work" was talked about in school and news.
- It is speculated that Jin wouldn't have paid the price for what he did under the criminal defense of DURESS (the act of committing violence in fear of one's own life or their family's lives or physical harm). Jin's father was a serial killer and he could've easily eliminated Jin at any moment he became a threat to his "operation". This would easily come under Duress in court and Jin would be cleared of all charges.