Busted S1E3 Recap: Kwangsoo, a Murderer

In this episode: Kwangsoo wakes up in his Jeju Island guesthouse to discover a bloody murder scene… and he looks like the main suspect. He goes on the run, and the team must try and figure out the truth and get to him before the police do.

Episode 3 Guest Stars

(I apologize for the not-necessarily-flattering quality of these photos – I mostly work with GIFs, so it’s a little harder to screenshot good images than I thought. But the aim is really just to give names to faces here.)

An Important Note

I’ve tried my best to summarize everything in these recaps, but sometimes there are parts of an episode or the overall story that aren’t clear to me. I’m in Korea, so I have Korean Netflix – they have English subtitles for all the dialogue, but not necessarily all of the captions and titles they put in the show. I’m sure that sometimes I miss things, and sometimes I may arrive at the wrong conclusion. But I’ll make sure to highlight the parts where I’m confused or not certain about certain details.

***WARNING!*** THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE EPISODE/SERIES AHEAD. These recaps are written summary style – I’m writing as if I’ve watched these episodes for the first time, but this is primarily aimed towards people who have seen the series before and want to refresh their memory or find answers to certain questions. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SERIES AND ARE PLANNING TO, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Episode Recap

So far, we’ve seen that each episode of Busted! has an introduction revolving around a certain member of the team. It appears that Kwangsoo is pretty special though, because this episode is ALL about him. After the events of last episode, K told the team to spend the night in Jeju for some rest and relaxation. They were clearly left to their own devices, because Kwangsoo wakes up in a guesthouse all alone. It seems like there was drinking involved, because we can see bottles of alcohol and he was passed on his own floor.

As Kwangsoo chugs some water, he quickly notices that his hands and clothes are covered in blood… then discovers a bloody knife. When he spots a dead woman on his bed, he grabs his car keys and flees. Meanwhile, K contacts the rest of the detectives to inform them of the situation. He asks them to figure out what happened and try to find Kwangsoo before the police get him. (They cannot call him because he lost his cell phone.) They go to the guesthouse to inspect the crime scene, and Minyoung recognizes the dead woman as the same one she saw last episode. It appears that the woman tried to indicate her killer as she was dying by writing initials in blood – and it looks an awful lot like “Lee Kwangsoo.”

The message reads “이 ㄱ ㅅ”, and Kwangsoo’s name in Hangul is “이광수.”

The team searches Kwangsoo’s bag that he left behind, and they find a receipt for a sashimi restaurant. (He paid almost 500,000 won – which is a LOT of money for a meal.) When they go there and ask the restaurant owner about him, he immediately becomes very angry – apparently Kwangsoo was there with a friend the night before, and they got very drunk and caused a lot of problems at the restaurant. The team must repair the damages and piece together what happened that night. Jaewook and Sehun go fishing to replace the dozen fish that Kwangsoo killed. I was a little alarmed when the subtitles said he killed a bunch of fish, but the flashback makes it look like he was drunkenly splashing around in the fish tanks – so I think the fish died as a result of that, and not because of any intentionally cruel actions (if that makes sense).

Jaesuk and Sejeong are tasked with finding the key to the bathroom that Kwangsoo threw away. They find a hidden message in the super expensive bill that he paid, and follow some clues to discover the key is in the fish tanks. (Like I said, I think this is probably how the fish died because he was splashing the water around before throwing the key in.) When they open the door, they find Kwangsoo’s journal with a photo of the murdered woman. There’s also a message that alludes to killing someone, but this turns out to be a red herring because Kwangsoo was really just griping about Jaesuk.

Jongmin and Minyoung walk around the area and ask different people if they saw Kwangsoo and his companion. They are eventually directed to Lee Kiwoo, who confirms that he met Kwangsoo the night before. They got along right away, so they spent the night drinking together. He takes them to the cafe he and Kwangsoo went to after the sashimi restaurant, and mentions that a friend of his joined them there. The cafe has a daily raffle where they pick the winner from a bowl of business cards; Kiwoo’s card is on the winner board, so he won the prize last night and therefore has an alibi. He also says that he stayed at his grandfather’s house overnight, which is the place where they initially met him.

Meanwhile, Kwangsoo is still on the run. He calls his phone in an attempt to track it down, and a woman answers. She tells him to come get it at the guesthouse he went to last night (not the one he stayed in), but he can’t remember where that is. He checks the random notes he wrote on his arms and deduces that he went to Couple Guest House. It turns out to be the wrong place because it’s all-women, which means he wouldn’t have been allowed to visit there. However, there’s an amusing interlude which somehow ends up in a weird dance-off with an actor named Lee Myunghoon who claims to be the real “Prince of Asia.” (This is a reference to Kwangsoo’s nickname and the funny creak dance that he created – I think on Running Man.) Most of the fangirling guesthouse occupants comically reject Kwangsoo, but one stays long enough to direct him to where he’s supposed to go – Bubble Guest House.

I genuinely have no idea what’s happening here.

When Kwangsoo arrives at the correct guesthouse, he finds the woman who has his phone (Lee Gukjoo). She confirms that he drank with her last night, and she gives him all the details when he remembers and repeats the compliments he gave her. He goes through his phone and finds a selfie of him, Kiwoo, and the 3rd man that has been mentioned. Gukjoo says Kwangsoo had told her about meeting these men, and how they formed “the Brotherhood of Lee” because they all had the same last name. After meeting Kiwoo at the restaurant and going to the cafe, Kwangsoo came to this particular guesthouse to give a ring to Gukjoo’s roommate – it was a message from one of the other Lees. This roommate then left after Kwangsoo and never came back. She shows him a photo of her roommate, and he realizes that it’s the murdered woman.

The Brotherhood of Lee.

The third man we haven’t met yet is Lee Changmin, who sends Kwangsoo a text inviting him to meet at Hallim Park. Kwangsoo contacts the team and tells them to meet him there. It turns out that Changmin is a food blogger, and he’s doing a live stream eating broadcast at the park. The issue is that he’s constantly moving around the park, so the team has to watch his livestream and try to track him down as he goes from place to place. As an added complication, the police are there looking for Kwangsoo – which causes many funny moments where he unsuccessfully tries to keep a low profile. And he does end up being straight up chased by the police a few times, too.

A montage of Kwangsoo attempting to be “inconspicuous.”

Eventually, the whole team successfully reunites and manages to talk to Changmin, who reveals some important information. He says Kwangsoo and Kiwoo both left the cafe before him, which catches Jongmin’s attention because Kiwoo had said the opposite. Kiwoo also asked Kwangsoo to deliver the ring to his girlfriend – the murdered woman. And he gave Changmin his business card and asked him to enter it in the cafe’s raffle for him… so that alibi no longer matches up. Finally, Changmin says that Kiwoo was staying at the same guesthouse as Kwangsoo – NOT at his grandfather’s like he had claimed. Everyone returns to the scene of the crime and explores further. They realize that the comforter on the bed had been turned down, so part of the victim’s dying message was obscured: it actually says “Lee Kiwoo.”

“Lee Kiwoo” is “이기우” in Hangul. The “우” was written sideways, so that’s why it initially looked like “ㅅ” without the comforter part.

So from what I can understand, the here is the timeline of events. Kwangsoo met Kiwoo at the guest house, and they went out and got really drunk together. They then went to the cafe, where they met Changmin and drank some more. Kiwoo gave Kwangsoo his couple ring and asked him to return it to his girlfriend. He then gave Changmin his business card and went home. Kwangsoo went to see the girlfriend and drank with her and Gukjoo, then returned to his guesthouse and drank with Kiwoo until he passed out on the floor. The girlfriend recognized the ring Kwangsoo gave as a sign that Kiwoo dumped her, and went to the guesthouse. The two argued because she didn’t want to break up. (When the team finally catches up to Kiwoo later, he says something about her being a stalker and not letting go.) Kiwoo then murdered the girlfriend, then framed Kwangsoo and texted Changmin reminding him to enter his business card for the contest – giving him an alibi.

Personally, I’m a little confused by this reveal. Because when we see the flashback of the murder, it doesn’t look premeditated at all – and seems that Kiwoo’s drunken state contributed to things. But Kiwoo clearly went to great lengths to have an alibi in place and to involve both Kwangsoo and Changmin… so it’s also implied that he’d planned it all along? Everything seems way too convenient otherwise. Plus Kiwoo certainly doesn’t seem remorseful at the end of the episode. So I guess we’re officially going with the “premeditated murder” train of thought, but I think it could have been made clearer.

Anyway, the team still has to arrest Kiwoo now that they know he’s the killer. They search his room in the guesthouse and find a notepad – it’s blank, but it has impressions from the note he must have written before that they can see by shading them in with a pencil. They discover that it’s an address for a pier with the time 7:30, and deduce that he’s planning on taking a ship as his means of escape. Unfortunately, Jeju Island is super big. (I know this from experience because it literally took me two hours to get to one of the main tourist attractions from my hotel.) So by the time they arrive, they only have 30 minutes to track him down on this giant dock.

Sadly, the team ultimately fails to apprehend Kiwoo. He manages to cleverly hide himself among all the shipping containers, and doesn’t show himself until the very last minute. They give chase, but he manages to get on the boat (which is apparently headed to Canada?) before they can stop him. Since they don’t have the proper documents for traveling, they are not allowed on board. So they have to watch in frustration as a smug Kiwoo sails away scot free.

Next episode: the team investigates the death of a high school student, and the actor group 5urprise makes a guest appearance as the young men in the victim’s life.

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NOTE: All photos and GIFs are screenshots or screen captures from Busted! Episode 3 on Netflix. Nothing belongs to me, and all images are used here for illustrative purposes only.