@gayautisticraccoon you speak about projecting feelings for one person onto another person and more or less, even without saying it like that, about going for the more accepted option (aka a lifestyle as defined by a heteronormative society) even without actively making that decision or at least not making that decision with the knowledge that one is surpressing one’s true feelings.
Gaon loved Soohyun but I do think he was in denial regarding what kind of love he felt for her.
in a way I wanted to show just that, meaning that there are so many different kinds of love and that sometimes love can change into something else other than what one expected it to be but it can still be something that is not any less meaningful than what it could have been. it's simply something else. - to me, friendships or committed partnerships (no matter whether they are romantic, sexual, neither or both or something else altogether in nature) are in no way either more or less meaningful than the other, they simply are different kinds of relationships.
to be honest, I could have talked about any other fictional character and yet Gaon seemed the most fitting. in my opinion, he was never actually romantically interested in Soohyun. he always ever loved her dearly, felt comfortable and safe when she was with him and by his side, which of course shows a deep emotional connection.
though, here I think he talked himself into believing she was his first love. by not acting on those feelings, he kept their relationship vague enough because there were so many obvious signs that Soohyun was very much in love with him. I still wholeheartedly believe it was one-sided and that Gaon mistook his own feelings as him wanting to be with her romantically. however he also probably told himself he couldn't be with her because of how much he had already suffered (and that he would only drag her down with him if he tried being with her as the boyfriend she wanted him to be.)
the thing is, Gaon touches Yohan much more than he touches Soohyun and Gaon gets touched much more by Yohan in return. I acknowledge this is partially caused by them being the two main characters but here I think I also have to mention it is canon that Gaon basically takes the role of the traditional female lead - which makes Yohan the male lead and it shows that the two of them are constantly connected, be it by actions, by words or even by touch.
I have not yet mentioned the underlying tension between them, which, over time, changes from mutual distrust to mutual devotion and the want to keep the other safe.
oh and the dreams about each other... the one dream that stood out to me the most was when Gaon dreamt about Yohan performing that surgery: why would he dream about Yohan straddling and touching another man like that, while he talks in a voice that is more seductive than threatening? why would Gaon's mind come up with all that if it wasn't meant as some kind of slightly bizzare wet dream...
in the end, when Gaon thinks he has lost Yohan and when he is thus driven by his grief, he very nearly comes to the same tragic conclusion as his own mother: he very nearly ends his own life, attempting to follow the man he has fallen in love with (and I don't even know if Gaon is even aware of the depth of his feelings at that point).
long story short: I am certain Gaon projected all his possible romantic feelings onto Soohyun which wasn't fair to either one of them, though at least he never actually got together with her and ended up hurting both of them even more by forcing himself even more into trying to life a heteronormative life. in my opinion, Gaon started to let go of his comphet mindset when he got closer and closer to Yohan, emotionally and physically before he eventually ended up falling in love with him.
When Gaon finds an annoyed Yohan after they've rescued Elijah from Juk Chang's thugs, he tries to convince him that Yohan is a human being and needs to "rely" on someone to live.
The subtitles on Viki use "lean" instead.
And Yo Han does realise that he desperately wants to "rely" or "lean" on Ga On when the going gets tough in his plan. It's made dramatically clear when he very deliberately hangs on to Ga On in the break up scene.
Yohan is gripping Ga On by his shoulder but also trying to keep him in one place. In this case, with him. At his side. In his house. In his life.
As the scene progresses, he takes his hand away for a moment but is quick to lean on Ga On once more. He just can't bear to lose touch.
My gosh...there are literally no words to describe this apart from Yo Han being CLINGY here. Literally. He's only just found his "someone" whom he wants to "rely" or "lean" on. Ga On is his Someone. He makes Yo Han feel like a human being. He makes Yo Han want Someone for himself. He's Yohan's.
Alas, like the crisis point in any great love story we get this instead.
Yo Han loses his Someone. His Someone to rely on. His Someone to lean on. His Someone who makes him feel like a human being. His Anchor. His Ga On.
This show honestly. They literally showed us that words give rise to feelings that influence actions. Similarly, actions can give way to words and affect what a person ends up feeling.
Sorry folks...the cursed episode 12 got me once again when I rewatched.
idk what the full implications of this observation are yet, but it's so interesting how yohan starts the series with faking a hand injury to garner public sympathy...and ends the series with a legitimate injury, which does garner sympathy, but is from gaon.
because it means that gaon is an integral part of making yohan into the myth and the man. yohan thwarts an assassination attempt in prison, which makes him superhuman to the eyes of the public, but he's only there because gaon put him there. yet gaon humanizes yohan too, through direct appeals (don't go somewhere you can't come back from) as well as repairing yohan's relationship with his family, the thing yohan cared for above all else. so gaon makes both sides of yohan.
this reminds me of the biblical interpretation where jesus chose judas to do what was necessary for his ascension and humanity's salvation except gaon saves yohan too
so i finished my rewatch of tdj with a friend and i mentioned how i had so many brain gremlins about the dike app and she was like ‘so write it’
so
i actually don’t know if this is the kind of content this fandom goes for but if it is let me know, may or may not be planning one of these for my name whenever i finish that
actually the dike app is one of the most integral and least talked about part of the live court show because it enables the mob justice that the elite wanted to satiate while also revealing the flaws in democracy and justice systems through holding people accountable in this essay i will
As a disclaimer, I am not Korean, nor do I claim to have any expert knowledge of the Korean Justice System. I am coming at this analysis from a Western perspective and I make no claims on the singularity or exceptionalism of the arguments I make here. I will not be touching on the ethics of having a live court show to a large extent, nor will I be speculating on why the DIKE app was designed the way it was on a software level. I am simply pulling at a lingering thread that the show left hanging and seeing where it goes.
To begin with, let us examine the premise on which the live court show was created. The opening of the pilot introduces us to a future dystopian Korea where the President is announcing the start of a live court, where the trials will be live-streamed for the entire nation to see. The people of Korea will be able to act as a jury for this new court by voting live as it airs via an app they can download onto their phones. This news comes at the end of a speech about the state of the country, including the Gwuanghwamun Riot, which he states is the culmination of public outrage due to ‘ungrounded propaganda against the privileged.’ (Ep. 1) Throughout the course of the episode, it becomes clear that the members of the caucus view the live court show as a distraction for the public, or at the very least, a method of satiating their need for progress. The live court show will have ‘the entire nation take part’ in the restoration of ‘law and order,’ which fulfills this need. The President’s speech is played over footage of the riot. We see people throwing things, breaking things, smashing windows and destroying property. The parallels drawn between the riot and the formation of the live court show effectively connect them as two acts of mob justice. One is the more expected version; an angry group of people enacting violence in a public space in protest. The other, more obfuscated. Yet both are what can be described as ‘baiting crowds,’ crowds that form with reference to quickly attainable goals. “The crowd is out for killing and it knows whom it wants to kill.” (Cannetti 49) The live court show takes the crowd’s destructive wrath and arms it in a different way, under the legitimation from the ruling party and the notion of justice, the killing is done with silent violence, or at the very least, an abstracted one. The live court show functions as a government sanctioned mob justice. The real executions of the sentences are carried out by the crowd witnessing them. The DIKE app enables this by providing the casting of the vote and bearing witness to the sentencing. In this way, the hunger of the crowd is satiated and its ire redirected.
Of course, a crucial aspect of the baiting crowd and the roar of mob justice is that the mob is out to kill and it knows whom it wants to kill. The live court show can only offer targets for the mob that it selects, and herein lies another aspect of its creation. The cases are selected by the presiding judge and, at least in theory, the members of the caucus. As such, the mob only has power when it is given to them. Voting for the outcome of the trial then becomes a poor man’s currency that can only be used in a rich man’s game; there is an illusion of justice being carried out when it is completely under the caucus’s control which cases get chosen and what the sentence will be—we see the Prosecution offering sentences for each trial and the choice of which cases are tried comes up many times throughout the show. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer is not worth much when the question has already been crafted for you—there is a reason that you can object to a leading question in court. From the caucus’ perspective, they can satiate the hunger of the crowd by offering them a say in what happens to the defendant, but the defendant is someone they choose whose sentence will be passed by someone they can control. The public does not have as much power over the execution of their justice as it may seem. Of course, this assumes that they are able to control the presiding judge, but examining the live court show by itself, there is a logic behind its creation. Once the baiting crowd has attained its victim, it disintegrates; “rulers in danger are well aware of this fact and throw a victim to the crowd in order to impede its growth.” (Cannetti 52) As such, the live court show is used as a method of control instead of freedom, a way to calm and distract the roar of the public when its voices grow too loud by projecting the illusion that they are being listened to.
So we’ve discussed what the live court show was created to do, now let us examine what else it does. Regardless of which judge presides over the live court, there are consequences to live streaming a trial for people to vote on. One important aspect that has yet to be covered is the visibility of the live trials. These trials are designed to be seen, they are designed to be interactive, they are designed to be open. But within that, there are shadows created—some intentional, some unintentional—that undermine that sense of visibility. I make a point of saying visibility and not transparency because as discussed earlier and evidenced in the show, while the trials are indeed visible, the machinations going on around and behind them are anything but transparent. We as the viewing audience have more of an insight into their nature than the in-show public would thanks to the privilege of the fourth wall and we still get misled. When it comes to systems of power, visibility and transparency are two very different things, and while transparency serves to place the power in the hands of people who use the system, visibility in many ways serves to take that power away from them.
When the live trials take place, they can be seen on screens everywhere in the nation. We see them in public squares, on television networks, and on the DIKE app itself. The public watching the trial can vote and immediately see the results of their vote on the graphics, totaling the votes from the DIKE app and displaying the total number of votes and their respective percentages. The consequences of voting are immediately visible. What this does in turn is make the effects of disciplinary power immediately visible, or as Foucault would describe it, “it is the fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection.” (187) The reason that the threat of the live court show is so prominent is because it puts the focus of the entire nation on the defendant, rendering them the most visible person. This is the mechanism that traps you in the disciplinary web.
There are two aspects, however, to an effective system of surveillance that Foucault describes. One is visibility, the other is unverifiability. (201-2) The defendant knows they are on trial. They know the trial is being live-streamed. They know that people are watching. They know that their verdict is going to be decided based off of the votes cast by people on the other side of phone lines and mobile apps. But they can’t see them. In a strange inversion of the Panopticon that Foucault describes, “in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen,” (202) the defendant is in a circular room, seen by all, whereas the mass outside is able to look its fill without ever being seen. The DIKE app enables what Foucault calls “a principle of compulsory visibility,” (187) where the power is dispersed among numerous anonymous and temporary observers, each of which has the ability to judge and control the fate of the defendant. There is no way to verify the existence of this power; even during the trial in Episode 3 where the individual videos and testimonies are called in, there are no checks, no verifications—this is something the trial hinges on—and yet it works. Because the risk of the defendant being surprised and the anxiety over the awareness of being observed is so heightened, the system works. Episode 3 is the clearest illustration of this principle in its entirety, but the implications stretch out over the rest of the show. Because of the nature of the DIKE app and its role in the live trial, it creates a constant field of visibility. It turns each person into the observer of themselves, knowing the constraints of the power. If everyone in the country is your jury, how must you comport yourself to avoid an undesirable verdict? You must first be arrested and convicted before you stand trial, that’s true, but the ever-present threat the live trials pose are far more effective at creating an atmosphere of discipline. As such, it breeds a loyalty to the crowd and a disloyalty to the individual. If the allure of the crowd is to disappear into one of the anonymous observers, to become part of a mass that forgets everything but the roar of the next collective kill, then the other side of that is the threat of being under the observatory’s roof, of being the one with all the eyes that cannot be seen. If those are the only two options, it makes sense that the public would eagerly look the other way when another body is thrown into the live court, or do the dirty work of eliminating the caucus’ rivals for them.
Or, at least, it would had the caucus not chosen to prop up a judge who had a personal vendetta against all of them, but we all make mistakes.
The truth of the matter is for the first few episodes, the live court show works exactly as it is supposed to, it’s just aimed in a direction the caucus doesn’t want, namely, at them. The public is satisfied with the sentences Yohan delivers, the defendants are most decidedly not. Public support for the live court show continues to grow, even through controversial decisions and escalating stakes. And the live court show grows more and more powerful to the point where it becomes instrumental in overthrowing the caucus itself. Hurrah.
The whole course of the show is Yohan’s journey to vengeance or justice—take your pick—on the caucus for what happened with the church fire. But one thing that goes overlooked in the main drama of the show is the notion of accountability. The notion of accountability and Yohan’s character make up a significant amount of the plot points, especially considering Gaon as the viewing audience’s main character. The live court show under Yohan’s jurisdiction is about holding people accountable to their actions: Ju Il-do and his contaminated water supply, Lee Young-min and his abusive actions, Nam Seok-hoon and his sexual assault charges, and Jukchang and his vigilantism. In Episode 3, we have the line: “I will see to it that no case is overlooked,” and we see the public respond to it. Additionally, it’s clear Yohan understands that the live court show is mob justice. In the same episode, we see Gaon realizing why Lee Young-min’s trial needed to be open to draw out the testimonies from the people watching, and we see Yohan encouraging the Prosecution to change the indictment from simple assault to habitual assault, saying that “if you take too long, all this fury may be directed at the Prosecution next.” (Ep. 3) Later, in Episode 13, during his confrontation with the President, we have the line: “I will summon you to the live court show and expose all of your schemes, until the angry citizens turn this place into a sea of fire and drag you out by the collar, like a dog .” Mob justice is volatile, easily redirected, and as we’ve seen, a force unto itself. The DIKE app becomes the vessel through which it is carried out; the streaming of the slum riot in Episode 13 is successful because of the DIKE app, as is the climactic showdown in Episode 16. The technology created by the caucus has become its downfall by enabling the very observation and visibility it was supposed to divert. And here we see the DIKE app divorced fully from the live court show; the live court show was created and run by Park Du-man, a member of the caucus, shut down and to be replaced by an emergency court instead, whereas the DIKE app became synonymous with Yohan, the PD, and the platform where the public can vote and have their voices heard.
But Yohan isn’t just holding the caucus accountable, it’s everyone. As mentioned above, the live court show has ethical questions I will not be looking discuss here, but it provides a layer of abstraction to the votes people cast within it. There’s only a certain amount of resonance and/or personal investment you can get from tapping a button on your phone, even if you can directly see what’s happening. Even if the sentences are pronounced after the verdict, you’ve still cast your vote, you’ve still had a hand in deciding the fate of the defendant. This comes to a head in Episode 14, when every vote cast raises the voltage on the electric chair until the defendant is executed. The exact consequences, implications, and ramifications of this I will not be discussing, but the distance between the traditional concepts of mob justice and the distanced, often guiltless versions present in newspaper readers and those who participate in cancelling people on line is closed rapidly. In this forum, the DIKE app quite literally becomes the hands and fists of the executioner’s crowd, enabling the mob to kill Jukchang with their own hands. In some ways, this is the recognition of the extreme proposed by Foucault’s analysis of Panopticon, where the inmate is subject to the perils of being in the disciplinary web. In the act of holding the public accountable for the votes they cast and the consequences of participating in the system, we see the crowd start to disintegrate. We see people starting to question whether or not this is something they should be doing, we see a mother yanking the phone away from children who keep voting for Jukchang to die. When a personal connection is formed, when you are no longer part of the crowd and are instead an individual, the anonymity of the crowd no longer protects you and thus, you are no longer safe in the disciplinary web. As soon as you become visible, the system no longer benefits you.
But is that true? It isn’t the system of the live court show the public has faith in, it’s Yohan. We see this in how the public reacts after Gaon’s press conference where he says it was all rigged; they do not care. Three times over the course of the series, Yohan puts himself—or is put—in the center of the courtroom, on trial for the mob to serve their justice. And yet, every time, he isn’t a defendant, he’s a person. The mob has every reason to treat him no differently than the other people that have been caught in the disciplinary web, and yet, they don’t, because mob justice is volatile and easily redirected. A central theme in the show is that democracy is inherently flawed because people can be easily manipulated. Justice systems too are subject to people with agendas, and agendas change. It’s not a coincidence that the reason the public lose faith in the systems that brought them the live court show is the man who made himself appear as a person in front of it.
On a textual level, this is what the live court show and the DIKE app do. But, metatextually, what purpose does it have in the show itself? Well, for one, it helps to reinforce the idea that we are all, at the end of the day, just people. The systems we have in place are manipulated by people with the privilege to do so but that also means there are ways to fight them as a person. Getting lost in the crowd is one of the major allures of it and trying to think as a person in a crowd is difficult. But if we all think as people and not crowds, that’s how we move forward. Crowds disintegrate, people are left. And we see this; we see it in the way the PD chooses to help them livestream the slum riots, we see it in the people in the Dream Home project that choose to put themselves at risk to help Gaon get the footage, we see it in the intern who opens the door for Lawyer Ko and the others to help them go live. Episode 16 is a realistic portrayal of what would happen: the mob is satiated and the systems roll back into place, ready to forget the lessons they’ve learned from the violence. But human beings are not systems, they’re humans, and nothing human is ever perfect. There are simply too many people for this to be forgotten and for the real legacy of the live court show to disappear into oblivion. There will always be at least one person left alive to tell the story.
And, well, we all know what people are like about a good story.
Obviously, I make no claims that any of these are complete thoughts, nor are they fully fleshed out, but they were bonking around my head for a little too long for it to be comfortable and I haven’t personally seen anyone talking about the DIKE app like this yet so! Thought I’d throw this out there, see what people thought.
When you think about it, Sun-ah's real victim turned out to be Gaon. While she wanted Yohan to be lonely, to lose all his support systems, to lose his power, he never really did. Gaon, though, lost it all. He lost Soohyun, he lost his mentor/partial parental figure and he lost Yohan and Elijah. He has minimal power in a system that now he understands as broken. While Sun-ah was adamant about hurting Yohan and rise to the top, it was Gaon who paid for it.
wait I'll expand on this later (or maybe not let's see) but one thing I've realised is that in this show white is not innocence. it's vulnerability.
everytime we see characters wearing white it's us seeing them without inhibitions. I noticed this first with cha kyunghee: she used to meet yohan dressed in white and in her white car. she used to meet him when she couldn't scheme against him anymore, kind of like a last resort.
in the scene where the family has breakfast, they're all wearing light clothes: they're not on-guard, they're relaxed, they're in a place where they don't need put up any pretences or anything.
in the concluding scene in ep 15: sunah's wearing white. the extent of her power is out in the open, she seems to be hiding nothing more.
anyway yes losing my mind and if I turn out to be an idiot because of this . well. then I am
I really dont get why people are mad at ga on for 'betraying' yohan/leaving the mansion. Yes yohan is a very tragic character and yes you do feel bad for him sometimes and yes he is my favourite and yes all the flashback scenes are very sad, but like. Does it not make sense that ga on would choose his best friend who has been there for him through the most difficult parts of his life over his morally dubious superior who he's known for comparatively far less time? Who has openly admitted to manipulating and him being fully willing to stoop to even more drastic methods to have him on his side?
Yes we see that yohan has come to value ga on perhaps more than he originally intended to, but that doesnt erase the fact that what they had ultimately had its origins in yohan's scheming and manipulation. Ga on defintely also came to care for both elijah and yohan, but everyone has their limits. No matter how much he had become attached to them does it not make sense that upon reaching that limit (ckh's death and yohan and soo hyun's reactions), and when faced with the prospect of losing what is most familiar to him (and, as k said, even losing himself) ga on chose to leave?
If they ever want to go back to what they had before, something has to change drastically, and that change has to come from yohan. Because as helpful as he has been it's not ga on's duty to fix yohan or his family. I think he has definitely set the ball rolling, but if he wants to step away because he feels staying around yohan is making him a person he doesn't want to be, he is fully within his rights to. It's not even fully about about soo hyun. Yes it's sad for yohan and elijah and even for ga on himself, but in no way is it ga on betraying them.
i know there's a ton of conflicted feelings and takes as to the overall message of the devil judge and the ending (that is truly the beauty of media we can interpet it and have our own opinions on it of course). but maybe its just the romanticist in me that sees the devil judge at its core as a message of hope.
yes there will always be greedy, selfish individuals in power and corrupt systems that fail their people. there will be loss and grief and darkness and war.
but as individuals we exist together on this planet and we can choose to love and fight and care and show kindness. just as in the devil judge it doesn't always have to be a big gesture, a grand revolution to save the ones we love. at the core was the message of found family, of forgiveness, of humanity in all its shades.
sometimes its just the small acts of kindness, the choices we make day to day that gradually change a system. we aren't all going to be revolutionaries. but we can be lights, we can shine even in the darkness (the people in the medical facility who helped gaon, jinjoo at the end assisting the youth, the group of people who fought back and held up their flashlights in retaliation, soohyun being gaons shoulder to cry on as she listened to music with him in that bar, the seemingly simple yet impactful act of gaon making warm meals for the kang's and making their cold house feel like a home).
