The Blood-Spattered Snow Suit
In 2020, Yi-gang tries to find Hyun-jo herself and is successful. However, he finds her and drives her back to Haedong Station. He then voices how easy it would have been for anyone to get their hands on Dae-jin’s gloves.
Yi-gang visits Dae-jin at the police station to ask him about why he went to Jeonmukgol on the day Da-won died and why he had the blood-stained yellow ribbons. Dae-jin tells Yi-gang to visit Il-hae, as their allocated time is running out. ..
Yi-gang arrives at the hospital to find out that Hyun-jo has been in a seizure for the past few days and is now in a critical condition. The family is likely to take him off life support soon, so Yi-gang must decide what to do next.
Yi-gang thinks that Hyun-jo’s spirit is stuck on the mountain because he wants to catch the culprit. She resolves to catch the culprit so that Hyun-jo’s spirit can return to his body before his family cuts off life support.
Yi-gang returns to Haedong Station after learning from Gu-yeong that the murders of 2020 were also committed by someone with a grudge. Il-hae, who now uses a cane and works at the ranger headquarters, makes an appearance and tells Yi-gang that Dae-jin also suspected the accidents were murders and found yellow ribbons leading away from the peak after investigating two of the 2020 murders. Yi-gang is able to confirm this information with Gu-yeong.
Dae-jin also found an empty yogurt bottle lying near a dead animal, and when the herb collector told him another was spotted in Jeonmukgol, Dae-jin went to confiscate it. That ultimately led to him meeting Da-won before she was killed.
Gu-yeong tries to insist that this could all be coincidental, but Yi-gang reveals that Hyun-jo knew who the culprit was. He says that he went up the mountain in the snow to catch them. ..
In 2019, Yi-gang is searching for her brother Hyun-jo in the snow. She finds a hiking stick that she assumes is Hyun-jo’s, but it doesn’t belong to him. The cliff edge crumbles beneath her and she falls into the abyss.
When she regains consciousness, she’s in a cave with Hyun-jo. He asks her to hold tight while he goes to find cell reception since the radios aren’t working in the heavy snow. Before he leaves, she tells him about the hiking stick.
Hyun-jo called the station for help, which alarmed Yi-gang and Il-hae.
Dae-jin picks up the phone and listens to Hyun-jo’s location. The line is weak, but Dae-jin can hear Hyun-jo’s location at Black Bridge Valley. When the rescue team arrives, Hyun-jo is already unconscious and covered in blood.
Someone wearing a ranger snow suit and black gloves stands over Yi-gang and leaves after hearing the approaching rescue team.
Yi-gang tells the police that she was hiking with her friends when they came across a cliff that led down to a ravine. She says someone else was leading them and they were hurt as a result. The officers don’t believe her and say there is no evidence to support her claim.
Back in the present, Yi-gang and Il-hae recruit Gu-yeong to help them find evidence that Hyun-jo was looking for in Black Bridge Village. They trek up the mountain with Yi-gang on Gu-yeong’s back. ..
We flashback to four hours earlier when Yi-gang first met Il-hae again. She tells him that she suspects Gu-yeong is behind the murders since the culprit was wearing a ranger’s snow suit and Gu-yeong was on the mountain when Da-won died. She lays down a plan to lure Gu-yeong, with the knowledge that she has evidence on him and then catch him when he inevitably tries to kill her for it.
In the present, Yi-gang asks Gu-yeong why he was on the mountain when Da-won went missing. He only gives a vague non-answer.
When the trio stops to rest, Gu-yeong asks if Hyun-jo told Yi-gang anything before he went to Black Bridge Village. She answers in a negative way, saying that she hadn’t been able to see Hyun-jo since the incident last summer.
The 2019 disaster prevention workshop is a reminder that it’s important to be prepared for any type of weather event. Dae-jin briefs the rangers on how to deal with the torrential downpours that can happen when clouds can’t pass over the tall mountain peak. The phenomenon is dangerous because it can’t be predicted by forecasts and the clear weather at the bottom of the mountain makes it easy to underestimate.
Later, Gu-yeong explains to Hyun-jo that Yi-gang’s parents were in Mujin station when it was swept away in the 1995 Dowon Valley flood. He also reveals that the other people at the station left messages for their loved ones in a logbook, which was kept dry in a safe, but Yi-gang’s parents wrote nothing.
Il-hae greets the Wildlife Ecology Evaluators for Mount Jiri Cable Car led by Geun-tak. They’re joined by Gye-hee and his environmental organisation team before beginning their hike up the mountain.
The lottery ticket girl continues her search for an unidentified man among the stone pagodas on the nearby slope. She has been looking for him for some time now, but she has not found him.
The yearly rites for the Dowon Valley flood victims are back around. Hyun-jo helps with preparations, and he notices a picture of the 1995 Haedong Village Volunteer Rangers. Among them is Choil Il-man, the dead snake-catcher. Two of the other men, Kim Jin-deok and Lee Jong-gu, were murder victims that fell from cliffs.
Hyun-jo goes to find the logbook that the Mujin station flood victims left behind. The logbook was updated by ranger Kim Nam-sik. He lists Dae-jin, Yi-gang’s parents, an old hiker couple, three college students, Il-man, Jong-gu, and Jin-deok as the other people at the station with him.
At 9:40pm, the station is flooded and there is still no sign of a rescue team. Half of the people, including Dae-jin, the volunteer rangers, and the college students, chance the flood waters and go down the mountain while the others stay. By 10:00pm, most of them have been rescued but there are still some people unaccounted for. ..
Nam-sik tells those left behind that he’ll put the logbook into the safe for people to find. The old man asks to write a message to his family. Nam-sik offers Yi-gang’s father the opportunity to do the same but he declines. Nam-sik has already written his own message.
Hyun-jo flips to the back of the logbook to find Nam-sik’s message, addressed to his son Hyun-su. Hyun-jo uses his army connections to check the name of his junior’s father. It is confirmed that Kim Nam-sik is Hyun-su’s father. Hyun-jo realises that all the murder victims are connected to the 1995 flood. ..
Yi-gang tells Sol that she’s there to see Gwigam Rock, the huge carved surface she sits beside. She explains that she’s been coming to the temple every year for the past few years, and each time, she asks Sol if she can see it. But each time, Sol tells her that it’s not possible because it’s too dangerous.
She doesn’t answer when I ask her what’s going on. She seems to notice the change in the air and soon enough, there’s a loud siren blaring across the mountain and the village.
The Episode Review
Many viewers will come out of this episode frustrated with the slower pacing, especially at the start of the 2019 timeline. But, where murder-mystery momentum was sacrificed, we got summer levity interwoven with Yi-gang and Hyun-jo’s love/hate connections to the mountain – it was enjoyable to languish in the sun with them for a time. ..
Hyun-jo and Yi-gang have a lot of chemistry in 2019. This drama doesn’t have a genre tag, but their romance is one of the best on TV right now. ..
In 2020, Yi-gang has to save Hyun-jo before he becomes brain dead and clear Dae-jin’s name. She’s set on Gu-yeong being the culprit but it’s equally likely that he’s another red herring since he was on the rescue team when the culprit was in the cave with her. ..
The 1995 flood has thrown the investigation into a tailspin as detectives try to figure out what could have motivated the killers of three people and a goblin in the Black Bridge Valley. Add in the 1991 Black Bridge Valley murders and it’s enough to send anyone’s head spinning.
The contradiction in Yi-gang’s story was that his spirit didn’t tell him who the culprit was. If his spirit had communicated this information to him, it would have been through Hyun-jo, the herb collector. However, Yi-gang claims that he doesn’t remember her name and may be experiencing ghostly memory loss. This discrepancy needs to be filled in so that the story can make more sense.
