Summary
Episode 6 puts leading characters in precarious positions — it reeks of corruption and leaves morals on the table.
This recap of K-drama Netflix series Stranger season 2, episode 6 (Secret Forest) contains spoilers.
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The opening
Episode 6 opens with Yeo-jin retrieving the brown envelope — she’s been told by Chief Choi not to open it. Si-mok needs to find out what’s in that envelope. Dong-jae rings Si-mok and tells him that Officer Kim’s uncle is the former chief of Dongducheon Police Station and that they must get to him first as he holds the key. Dong-jae then gets a call from assistant Chief Sim Ui-seop and asks to meet him for a drink. Everything seems to rest on this brown envelope in episode 6 — especially at first.
Treat me as an entrepreneur
Ms Lee Yeon-jae meets the CEO of the company and asks what his ulterior motive is. He claims to not have a motive over the stock prices. He also accuses her of pretending to be financially struggling. Ms Lee wants to be treated as an entrepreneur — she wants the respect she feels she deserves: “Treat me as an entrepreneur and evaluate my ability as one to decide whether Sungmoon Daily should join hands with me or continue to side with Sung-jae”. The CEO makes a snide remark about her lipstick so she wipes it off. Both characters end their conversation musing over whether they should go back to the start.
Access the case reports
Si-mok meets Chief Kim Won-tae and asks to see the case reports but won’t tell him what for. Kim does some digging and gives Si-mok access. He then heads to the archive storage and finds case number 938 from 2018. Yeo-jin gets a call from Si-mok and she remembers the stand-off in the assembly hall. Si-mok heads to her house. It feels like an odd cold war between both characters.
Si-mok’s theory
Si-mok mentions to Yeo-jin that last summer, five people in their 20s were charged with illegally filming people in a changing room at a vacation spot — he states that there’s been a crackdown on DUIs at Gyeonggi Nambu Police Agency — “If Nambu Police Agency had handled a case that was big enough to pressure someone who’s currently serving as an assemblyman, it would’ve been all over the news, right?”. He wonders if Assemblyman Nam’s son was one of the people and suggests that there’s a cover-up which links to the crackdown of the DUIs — he also wonders if Assemblyman Nam has avoided a DUI. Si-mok always finds a way of handling plenty of data.
You already have the answer
Si-mok then talks about the restriction line on the beach where those two teenagers died in episode 1 and 2 — he states he saw the restriction line was down and did nothing about it. Yeo-jin says that as law enforcement, they cannot stop everything. As Si-mok walks away, Yeo-jin tells him that he already has the answer.
Confronting Chief Choi
Yeo-jin tells Chief Choi that Assemblyman Nam’s son failed the screening test but he was hired at a bank when the competition rate was 193 to 1. This was all before Chief Choi arrived. Chief wonders if Yeo-jin is asking if she knew about the drug dealer. She now knows Yeo-jin looked inside the brown envelope. Yeo-jin asks why Chief Choi has brought her into this. And then what follows is an intriguing conversation that puts Yeo-jin in an awful position…
We had no choice
Chief Choi goes into a rant that she had no choice of her actions in the past and that the drug dealer mentioned Nam Jae-ik’s son. Yeo-jin insists she would have had him arrested. Chief Choi says it wouldn’t have removed Nam Jae-ik’s position and they’d never be able to gain independent investigative rights. So clearly, Chief Choi is suggesting that she had to do the lesser of two evils. Yeo-jin is frustrated, wondering how they are letting this job-stealing meth addict remain untouchable. Chief Choi states they can bring him down but they need to wait a few months. She then gives Yeo-jin the option to whistleblow if her conscience is bugging her. There are not many scenes of Yeo-jin after this but Stranger season 2, episode 6 leaves her in a precarious position, especially with her morals sitting nicely in front of her.
A diagnosis
Ms Lee Yeon-jae finds out that the former chairman has intermittent explosive disorder after her team hacked into his medical records. She asks for an announcement to be released that she will be attending the shareholders’ meeting if Sung-jae and her father attend the meeting in person. She also wants protestors in front of the building before the shareholders’ meeting takes place. It’s revealed on the news that the former chairman of Hanko Group, Lee Yun-beom, has anger management issues.
The shareholders’meeting
Outside the building, protestors gather however, Sung-jae and the father send representatives — Ms Lee Yeon-jae asks for the protestors to quieten down. The first item on the agenda is Lee Sung-jae’s bylaw amendment. The meeting erupts into chaos and a 10-minute break is triggered.
Cryptocurrency
Chief Woo meets Assemblyman Nam Jae-ik. A flashback ensues between the assemblyman and Chief Choi and she asks if he thinks the police let the children from rich families go because they can’t investigate properly. Choi states she has kept an eye on his son for a long time and they have a lot of evidence. In the present day, Nam talks about rumours of cryptocurrency exchanges closing back then and puts Chief Woo in a dangerous position — “All the insiders new a long time before it was on the news. We knew the Ministry of Justice was planning on closing them, and that cryptocurrency values would plummet. So you withdrew beforehand. Did you sell everything?”. Nam then accuses Woo of covering up all traces.
The ending
The assemblyman then states that it wouldn’t look good in the public eye if they find out that a chief at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office used his wife to pull out before an inside intel. Assemblyman Nam is threatening Woo to take it to the police. Characters are moving plenty of chess pieces in episode 6 as corruption after corruption is revealed.
Kang Won-chul is then alerted that Prosecutor Ryu got a call about Assemblyman Nam from Si-mok; he wants to know if Ryu was in charge of Assemblyman’s hiring bribe case. In the middle of the night, Si-mok gets a call from the Chief Prosecutor and asks to meet. Meanwhile, at a crime scene, the police note that the car at the scene belongs to Prosecutor Seo Dong-jae. Stranger season 2, episode 6 puts leading characters in precarious positions — it reeks of corruption and leaves morals on the table.
