The Dongcheon Gang: Additional Infos
I managed to dig a little deeper into the series and find several additional pieces of information about Dongcheon, many of which come from the famous information panel that the drug squad displays in its offices.
To start with: The logo of the Liber is the Dongcheon's, slightly modified (yes, they kept the two snakes intertwined but in a stylized way).
(Or how to taunt the authorities)
Next, here's what the information board says and what it tells us about the gang !
They seem to have little information about Mujin... on the other hand, Taeju has a hell of a criminal record !
Mujin:
The table shows that he has never been arrested for drug-related or violent offences, and in red it states that Mujin claims to have no connection with the real leaders of the Dongcheon gang.
We can therefore assume that Mujin is lying to them openly, given that he appears to be at the top of Dongcheon... but if the gang is old, as we will see later, perhaps Mujin is not actually the big boss ?
(It would be very funny to see him having to answer to a kind of ‘council of elders’ who, like bitter old men, would spit on his decisions and say that the younger generations are weak.)
Taeju :
Taeju is described as the "current second-in-command of Dongcheon" (it can easily be assumed that Donghoon was the previous one).
The red line describes his role within the gang, where he would manage its administrative tasks. The lines below tell us that Taeju has a criminal record :
That he did 1 year in prison following a conviction for assault in 2013.
That he served a six-month probation period following another assault in 2017.
I really liked the theory of someone who assumed that Donghoon could have "sold" Taeju by giving the information that led to his imprisonment.
I can't imagine Donghoon selling Taeju for fun – even if he seemed less close to him than to Mujin – so I imagine that Donghoon could have done it to avoid Mujin ending up in prison ?
An organigramme of the organization ?
Failed, that's what I had hoped when I saw the shape of the paper:
BUT !
I managed to get information about the characters below. Originally I thought that they might have been the previous leaders of the organization... until I recognized Mango on the far right. And I have the impression that the man on the left could be one of the "high-ranking officers" that we see during the duels. The other two men are unknown.
So here's what I managed to get from Google Translate (and if people know more about Korean, please, correct me if I'm wrong!)
The top line shows their names: the first is Lee Jin Su (thanks again, mizldrizl!) and the second is Daniel Choi. For the other four, the series does not reveal their full names as they are cut off by the camera or hidden by Pildo (although the third one looks a lot like Mango... but I can't really see Mango as a high-ranking member of the organisation 🤔).
Lee Jin Su is described as "Dongcheon Advertising Manager" and the line below it reads "2017: Total Sales Increase."
The second one is labeled as "Dongcheon Smuggling Chief" and the line below it reads "Hanyang Expeditions Representative"
(To be verified, as translators have difficulty translating these texts)
I have the impression that the first two are two of the high-ranking officers I introduced to you in "Dongcheon Organisation – Part 1"?
If so, it would prove that Dongcheon's top brass are managers of important parts of the organization.
The organization's past
To start with : I have the impression that Taeju was definitely Mujin's little favorite, since we see him accompanying them many times in old photos.
(And since he is not yet wearing his luxury suits, we can assume that he could have been a recruit or a young soldier then.)
It can also be assumed that the organization has been around for some time. First, because of the ring, which seems to be a clearly established symbol of legitimacy: Mujin is the only one to wear it and it is engraved with the Dongcheon logo.
But also because of old photos. As said above, I had hoped that the black and white portraits displayed on the wall could be old portraits of former leaders (well, failed). But there is an old photo on the wall :
As @mizldrizl explained in a comment, behind the photo we can see a series of Chinese characters: ‘東天派,’ which means ‘Dongcheon Gang’ (and Dongcheon, 東天, means ‘eastern sky’). This confirms that the gang is relatively old, since colour photography was developed in the early 19th century (colour techniques already existed in the 18th century – notably with the Lumière brothers – but the processes seem to me to be more complex for ‘general public’ use).
We can also assume, since the gang's name is in Chinese, that it may have Chinese origins? (All this makes me want to write a post about the origins of Korean mafias, if I can find enough information about them 🤩 )
