Ominous Signs
Episode 3 of Jirisan drops us back into the cliffhanger that episode 2 left us with. Yi-gang hears Dae-jin approaching and drops the bunch of files the ribbons were hidden under in her panic. She’s able to right everything before he arrives and he goes to his desk, putting down a pair of eerily familiar black gloves. ..
On the mountain, a woman appears who does not see the person coming. Gu-yeong calls out to her and she turns around. When she reaches the station, she lets Yi-gang know that she installed an automated sensor camera above the rock arrangement as per Yi-gang’s request.
A monk rings a large bell on a mountain. A hiker tells his companions that there are apparently 28 worlds on top of ours, and the sound of the bell opens the ghost world. A woman joins them and tells them about the ghost of a blood-soaked man that people have spotted recently. According to her, everyone who spots him dies. ..
The ghost in question is Hyun-Jo, who has a vision of an empty yogurt bottle floating down a river and a man seizing while foaming at the mouth. Hyun-Jo makes its way to Mang-bawi Rock and finds Da-won’s rock arrangement. Its face is finally revealed and we’re left staring at Da-won. He recognises the arrangement as a signal from Yi-gang and moves one of the sticks to a new position.
Yi-gang and Hyun-jo head to the Baektogol Valley restricted trail in search of help. They are met with resistance from the local shamanic community, who believe that the two strangers are not from around here and are not authorized to be on the trail. The two eventually find themselves in a fight for their lives as they try to escape. In the end, they succeed in reaching safety and return home with new knowledge about shamanism and its dangers.
The group arrives at Baektogol and are joined by Gu-yeong and Il-hae. Sol also arrives to observe the shamanism in action. The rangers, very chaotically, start breaking up the gathering. As the commotion dies down, Hyun-jo approaches a little girl who was with the group. She delivers to him a prophecy that he is destined to roam the mountain even after death. In the stream she kneels before is a strange talisman that even Sol has not encountered before.
Hyun-jo is told by Sol that the Baektogol Valley is a place of great yin energy and has been known for its many horrific events. The valley is full of crosses and stone pagodas to represent the many people who have died there without graves.
Il-hae reveals that Hyun-jo was in the top of his cohort for the ranger test but volunteered to come to Mount Jiri (which is usually avoided for its rough terrain). He’s the opposite of Yi-gang, who was the lowest and apparently hated the mountain.
Yi-gang downs a whole bowl of sweet potato makgeolli, which makes Gu-yeong and Il-hae nervous. She takes off with Hyun-jo in tow. Hyun-jo wants to know why she became a ranger if she hated the mountain, which makes her launch into a drunken rant about her relationship with the mountain at each age beginning at age six. ..
On the mountain, an old woman sets out food offerings at a cluster of stone pagodas. She is overcome with emotion and lies down at the base of a tree covered in bullet holes. In her sleep, she dreams about her mother and how they used to spend time together.
Hyun-jo looks over the ruck march request and sees that the document mentions Baektogol, which causes him to have a vision of the valley at night while someone falls and an empty yogurt bottle is dropped. Before Yi-gang can question him, the phone rings with a request to check on Granny Geum-rye, who isn’t answering her phone.
We cut to Granny Geum-rye, still asleep. A person wearing black gloves places a second yogurt bottle next to the one she already had among her offerings.
As they head out, Yi-gang explains to Hyun-jo that Granny Geum-rye lost her mother as a young girl at Baektogol and goes up the mountain many times a year in commemoration. The pair arrive after nightfall at the spot where Granny Geum-rye had been resting. The food offerings, bar the two bottles of yogurt, are there, but Granny Geum-rye is nowhere to be found. Hyun-jo asks about the bullet riddled tree and Yi-gang explains that there was a civilian massacre a long time ago.
Yi-gang tries calling Granny Geum-rye, but she doesn’t answer. Hyun-jo wants to search Baektogol because of his vision, but Yi-gang is openly cynical. He’s about to go alone, heading in the wrong direction, when Yi-gang relents and shows him the way. ..
Captain Kang finds himself in the company of a group of soldiers, led by Lieutenant Choi. Choi recognises Captain Kang and addresses him as “Captain Kang”.
Lieutenant Choi asks Hyun-jo if he was discharged because of an incident that happened in this very place. Hyun-jo changes the topic to Granny Geum-rye. Yi-gang pulls up a picture of Granny Geum-rye in a pink backpack and Private Ahn identifies it as the same one. Private Ahn recounts how he saw a person fiddling with a pink backpack when he fell behind earlier in the day. In a flashback, it’s obvious the person is our gloved culprit. ..
As the soldiers settle down for the night, Private Ahn carefully sips from a yogurt bottle he conceals in his sleeping bag.
They find a backpack with a bag of Common Rustgill inside. The mushrooms are extremely poisonous and can kill if ingested in large enough amounts.
Meanwhile, Granny Geum-rye stumbles and falls. When she looks up the scene before her is a fiery landscape. A line of people wearing hanboks are gunned down. Among them are her younger self and her mother. Granny Geum-rye covers her ears to block out the guns and doesn’t hear Yi-gang’s incoming call.
Fortunately, Yi-gang and Hyun-jo hear the ringing and follow the sound. Granny Geum-rye is approached by the apparition of her mother and takes her hand. When the pair reach her, she has passed away. Hyun-jo administers CPR in vain while Yi-gang has a mild panic attack. ..
While they wait for assistance, Hyun-jo tells Yi-gang that a sergeant died under his watch at Baektogol among the stone pagodas. A flashback shows us Hyun-jo leading his men in a ruck march on the mountain. One of the men, Kim Hyun-su, is limping behind the rest. When they stop for a break, Hyun-jo is made aware that Hyun-su hasn’t been seen for about 30 minutes. They search for Hyun-su, and we realise this is the same flashback Hyun-jo had earlier. When they find him dead by the pagodas, already injured but still alive, Hyun-jo falls to his knees and breaks into tears as he screams in grief. ..
Hyun-jo tells Yi-gang that his visions began after that night, and he’s come to view them as a gift. A call from Lieutenant Choi interrupts them. Private Ahn is missing, and they need help. ..
Private Ahn fell ill and went away to vomit but never returned. They found traces of his vomit at the entrance to a nearby forest but couldn’t search the forest without becoming lost themselves. Yi-gang explains that it’s a climax forest full of similar-looking trees. After receiving instructions from her on how to avoid direction illusion, they renew their search.
Private Ahn begins to seize and foam at the mouth, and from his perspective the forest is red, and the gloved man watches him. In reality, soldiers stream through the trees and call for a medic helicopter.
Yi-gang accompanies her grieving grandma to Granny Geum-rye’s funeral. Outside, Gu-yeong tells Hyun-jo how Yi-gang found the bodies of her parents herself. ..
Hyun-jo goes to see Yi-gang later that night about his visit to a recovering Private Ahn. In a flashback, Hyun-jo calls Private Ahn out on the lie he’s been telling about drinking bad river water. Private Ahn admits that he received yogurt from the gloved man by Granny Geum-rye’s backpack.
Hyun-jo rehashes his earlier vision, which also showed someone collapsing after having the yogurt, but at Baektogol instead of the forest. Yi-gang still doubts him, especially after his vision didn’t lead them to Granny Geum-rye. Hyun-jo rehashes his earlier vision, which also showed someone collapsing after having the yogurt, but at Baektogol instead of the forest. Yi-gang still doubts him, especially after his vision didn’t lead them to Granny Geum-rye. Hyun-jo rehashes his earlier vision, which also showed someone collapsing after having the yogurt, but at Baektogol instead of the forest. Yi-gang still doubts him, especially after his vision didn’t lead them to Granny Geum-rye. ..
Hyun-jo returns to the pagodas at Baektogol and realises that his vision was of Hyun-su’s last moments, and strangely, someone has rebuilt the pagoda he smashed into that night. He comes to the conclusion that Hyun-su was murdered by someone who has continued to kill people on the mountain.
The Episode Review
In episode 3 of “The Gloved Man,” Chuck and the team investigate a serial killer who has graduated from re-tying ribbons to actively poisoning people with spiked yogurt. The man is smiling like an old-timey villain as people suffer, and we have a bona-fide serial killer on our hands.
The show is pointing a glaring neon arrow at Dae-jin with the ribbons and the gloves. But it’s equally likely that he’s a red herring positioned to distract us from the real culprit. ..
Private Ahn’s perspective of the red-filtered forest and the gloved man, who no one else saw, hinted that the serial killer plot could merge with the fantasy side of things in a way that is more substantial than just having Hyun-jo act as a supernatural tracking device. So far, the only other person who openly acknowledges, and even encourages, the mountain’s supernatural side is Sol.
In the lighter moments of the episode, the rangers’ shenanigans with the shamans and Yi-gang’s drunken rambling helped to balance out the darker parts of the episode. Hopefully they all make it out of this in one piece. ..
