Winners of 24th Director's Cut Awards announced
Note: This article contains spoilers. Read at your own discretion.
Director Lee Jeong Hyo shares what drew him to The Price of Confession and the message he hoped to convey through the K-drama.
The Price of Confession is a mystery thriller that follows Yoon Soo (Jeon Do Yeon), a woman accused of murdering her husband, and Mo Eun (Kim Go Eun), a mysterious woman called a witch, as they make a dangerous deal.
Taking on his first thriller genre through The Price of Confession, director Lee said, "I felt like I had tried a variety of things up to now, but this was my first thriller, so I thought it was something worth a try. It was also Jeon So Yeon sunbae's first time doing a thriller, so I figured the two of us could do well together. What was difficult while working on it was that, since it's a series, I had to think a lot about how to sustain tension across 12 episodes. I really tried not to let that tension slip as we moved through all 12."
As for what drew him to the script, he said, "When the first offer came in, I was in a meeting with the production company and heard the logline: 'Unnie, I'll confess that I killed your husband. Instead, you kill someone else for me.' I just couldn't let that go. It sounded so interesting."
Regarding the development of the script, he explained, "In the script I first received, the culprit was unknown, but the lines between good and evil were very clear. Even then, the identity of the culprit was left covered. Certain things were ambiguous. But if good and evil are too clearly drawn, there isn't enough tension to go till the 12th episode, so we did a lot of work to make things blur, making viewers constantly wonder who the culprit might be. Each time a new character appeared, we shaped it so that viewers would suspect, 'Is it that person?'"
In the K-drama, Mo Eun takes revenge by killing the parents of Go Se Hoon (Nam Da Reum), who sexually assaulted her younger sister and drove her to death. Regarding why Mo Eun kills his parents before killing Go Se Hoon, director Lee said, "I think it stems from a desire to take revenge on the entire family. Since it was the couple who helped their son get away with the crime he committed, she must have thought she needed to kill all of them. From Mo Eun's perspective, she probably wanted to wipe them all out."
Speaking about Mo Eun's emotional arc, he added, "When she saw the footage of her sister being assaulted, she must have wanted to protect her, but that frustration and futility eventually pushed her toward revenge. The grief of losing her family must have built up little by little and turned into vengeance. And while working at Go Se Hoon and his wife's dental clinic and witnessing their behavior, that feeling likely grew even stronger."
Why did the real culprit appear so late in the story? "The central theme of The Price of Confession was how to resolve prejudice, and to preserve the characteristics of the thriller genre, we chose ambiguity. The reason the real culprit appears only at the end is that we hid him for the fun of the genre. If you rewatch it, you'll notice that Attorney Jin Young In (Choi Young Joon) makes certain remarks for a reason. Some viewers may have felt distracted while thinking, 'Is that person the culprit?', but we didn't think it was all that out of the blue. That’s why we revealed it later. That's how twists work, after all. He added, "And you can't really justify murder. Just as Yoon Soo (Jeon Do Yeon) says in her line, killing someone for those reasons is something that can never be justified. So we didn't want to give it any sense of justification."
When asked whether there was concern about the series seeming to glorify murder, he replied, "Because this story about prejudice that began from the tragedy of two people, the overarching focus is on how prejudice forms, changes, and transforms, so I didn't think of it as glorification. I saw it more as the motive that led to certain actions."
"When I asked the writer, 'How should we convey the theme of this work?' he said it was a story about prejudice. He wanted to show how prejudice against the two women comes about, how it intersects and evolves, and how it tightens around them. And also explore how prejudice can push an ordinary person so far.... The goal was to make viewers feel the danger of prejudice and how it can ruin people."
Regarding the significance of Mo Eun and Yoon Soo's first meeting at Yoon Soo's wedding, he said, "We also gave it a lot of thought, but I think the writer's intention was clear. He wanted to highlight a connection that existed within ordinary life before the incident occurred. They met while living happy lives, and then [things] drifted away at the end of the crisis."
The Price of Confession is streaming on Netflix.
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