An unimaginable and massive lie has begun. Both Yoo Yeon-seok and Seo Hyun-jin have such great public images, so I naturally assumed their drama characters would be on the good side too. Yoo Yeon-seok has played villains in the past, but his overall image is very sweet and kind. Since he's been showing a very friendly side on recent variety shows, it was hard to even imagine him giving off such a calculated, villainous vibe. Honestly, when I heard these two were cast as leads, I was pretty sure they’d play a sweet romantic couple. Or, just going by the title "Liar," I lightly guessed it might be a remake of a typical Japanese mystery romance drama.
But when I actually watched the first episode, it wasn't that soft, mushy vibe I had expected at all. The plot itself flowed in such a mysterious direction that my brain couldn't even begin to guess, instantly pulling me in. As soon as I watched episode 1, I clearly understood why the drama's title is such a straightforward "Liar." Even looking at the official poster, the characters' expressions and the tagline hid some rather ambiguous and complex words. Looking back now, I think all of that was highly calculated bait from the production team to confuse the viewers.
If you look closely at the text on the poster, actress Seo Hyun-jin calls herself a 'woman who claims the truth.' As a viewer, we still don't know exactly what horrible thing happened in the drama, but her words carry a firm meaning that she is telling the pure 'truth' without a single lie. On the other hand, actor Yoo Yeon-seok is described as a 'man who speaks the facts.' This is where the nuance gets really ambiguous and gives you goosebumps. At first glance, truth and fact might feel like the same word, but even without opening a dictionary, we instinctively know that the underlying meanings of the two words are definitely different.
For example, when we witness a shocking incident with our own two eyes, we can state exactly what we saw as a 'fact.' However, that doesn't mean the fragmented fact we stated is the perfect 'truth' that penetrates the entire incident. A fact is ultimately confined to the individual's perspective, so even for the same event, people can testify by highlighting completely different aspects. It's just like how blind men touching an elephant describe it entirely differently depending on whether they touched the leg or the trunk. It makes me reasonably suspicious that there might be a terrible misunderstanding or a clever distortion hiding inside the 'fact' Yoo Yeon-seok is stating.
Approaching it with this logic, a fact is a fragmented piece that can be told differently by anyone depending on the observer's subjectivity. If so, can we really assert that the 'truth' Seo Hyun-jin claims is the only one in the world? This part can also change completely depending on human psychology. Because in reality, it's quite common for a belief someone firmly held as the truth their entire life to suddenly crumble overnight and be proven a lie. So, while the two leads are now tensely claiming their own facts and truths, the fact that their arguments clash and never narrow down might just be a natural result of human nature.
The character Kang Ji-sun, played passionately by Seo Hyun-jin in this drama, is a contract school librarian. On the other hand, Min Joon-ho, played with heavy presence by Yoo Yeon-seok, appears as a highly recognized, skilled cardiothoracic surgeon at a hospital. These two people, who have completely different social standings, accidentally run into each other at school because of Min Joon-ho's son, and they start feeling attracted to each other even in that brief encounter. The gentle and charming Min Joon-ho subtly expresses his interest first and politely asks Kang Ji-sun out on a date.
Kang Ji-sun, who initially politely declined his date request out of some inexplicable pressure, eventually opens up to his manners and persistence and accepts. After having dinner at a nice restaurant, the two finally end up coming together all the way to Kang Ji-sun's house. Of all times, it suddenly poured rain that day, and Kang Ji-sun couldn't just send away a rain-soaked Min Joon-ho, so she let him into her house for a moment—and that's when a terrible, irreversible incident occurred. How did a romantic night between two people turn into the scene of such a tragic incident? I couldn't hide my sadness and frustration the whole time I was watching.
The shocking incident blows up the very next morning. Waking up late, Kang Ji-sun immediately reports to the police that she was raped by Min Joon-ho the night before. According to her claim, they were drinking together when her memory suddenly cut off, and she says Min Joon-ho secretly drugged her glass to make her pass out before committing that horrible act. From this point on, sitting in front of the detective, the facts and truth about last night that they each convey begin to clash perfectly. Actress Ok Ja-yeon plays Detective Lee Hwa-young, and even she shakes her head, saying this case is a clever mix of lies and facts, making it hard to grasp the reality.
Looking calmly at the case from a third party's perspective, first of all, Min Joon-ho is a man with too much to lose. Looking at his social status as a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, the general consensus is that there's no way he would go as far as using drugs to commit such a reckless crime. Moreover, during the investigation, the situation takes a sharp turn when it's revealed that Kang Ji-sun had claimed to be a victim of a very similar sex crime in the past and received a large settlement. Once the past record of Kang Ji-sun was brought to light, even I couldn't help but temporarily cast a suspicious glance, wondering if she was trying to extort him.
Backed into a corner, Kang Ji-sun steps up to voluntarily take a lie detector test to prove her innocence, insisting that she is indeed the victim of a terrible crime. However, contrary to her desperate pleas, the situation mercilessly continues to flow only in Min Joon-ho's favor as the suffocating second episode comes to a close. Just like the drama's title 'Liar', who among the two is the real monster telling bold-faced lies and putting on a perfect act? Or is it that a third party off-screen, whom we totally didn't expect, is intervening and thoroughly playing both of them? It's a situation where suspicions just keep leading to more suspicions.
Looking it up, I found that this drama 'Liar' is based on the popular thriller drama of the same name that aired in the UK in 2017. According to reviews from people who have already seen the original, they reveal the answer to who the real culprit is quite early on and deal with the fierce psychological warfare after that, which made me seriously contemplate looking up the ending. Above all, top-tier actors Yoo Yeon-seok and Seo Hyun-jin reunited for the first time in 10 years since 'Dr. Romantic', but who could have imagined they'd be tangled up in such a spine-chilling battle for the truth? Even with the meticulous eye I've developed from digging into the text of over 3,000 books, it's just not easy to tell which of these two is really lying. Although the viewership ratings for episodes 1 and 2 started off a bit modest at 1.9%, my intuition from writing consistently for 20 years tells me the future plot development will be much more interesting. Who do you guys think is telling the truth?
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