much as i like a good "Kim Dokja needs therapy" take (hell yeah he needs therapy, his therapist and his therapist's therapist and his therapist's therapist's supervisor will have a lot to say about his therapy in their therapy), it's interesting that the final monster of ORV, in however an understated way, is actually whatever form of society South Korea has.
after all, KDJ's obvious CPTSD and dissociative disorders aren't innate to his psyche; nor was he victimized by a freak meeting with a serial killer or lost his parents in a tragic accident. his, as he put it, is a vulgar and common tragedy, something that probably happened to hundreds if nor thousands of people around him: his mother was pressured (by the threat of social ostracism and probably poverty) into staying with an abusive drunk, his father was enabled and implicitly encouraged to be a destructive, abusive pater familias full speed on the way to family annihilator; not a single authority figure through KDJ's life stepped in to protect him from paparazzi or from bullies or from rumors or from neglectful caretakers, no mental health services were offered or provided, no support extended, and compared to this the workplace exploitation was almost matter of fact, although it falls into the same pattern. and there's nothing to say that KDJ is particularly unlucky, or unique, or singulary. it just a thing that happens: violence rolls down and down and down the hierarchy, and somebody is always left on the bottom.
and so it's very interesting to me to think about how the world looks after the scenarios. presumably post-finale the main powerhouses standing are South Korea (because the KimCom protected a lot of it and freely shared their information and access to infrastructure with other incarnations), China and India (one top incarnation each respectively, and enough power to show up as allies in the final showdown). USA went under, we don't know what went down with EU, and personally i'm going to headcanon that Russia has finally splintered into little individual countries and they're still figuring it out. it's a completely new landscape, political and sociocultural.
and South Korea was mostly shaped, in the intervening years, by:
Lee Sookyung and her ex-con women group (i presume most of them were behind bars for the same reason she was, 'too much' self-defence after prolonged family abuse);
Han 'Preventive Murder' Sooyung, who in canon went after human traffickers and such as a form of stress relief;
Jung "Sword Justice" Heewon, who had very tangible reasons to take sexual violence very seriously;
and Yoo "Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove" Sangah, who apparently added to the sentiment above some serious political acumen.
so it's going to be a very, very different South Korea that KDJ will wake up in, one hopes. and maybe, just maybe, it'll do him a lot of good.
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