Myeong-Gil is not a very unique k-drama villain; in fact, he’s got a laundry list of trait that makes him fit very well with a dozen others in the specific genre that Bloodhounds fits in. Still, there’s something interesting about him because we don’t learn much about his past in the series, which solely focuses on the good guys. Unlike a lot of such characters, Myeong-Gil doesn’t have much integrity and is happy to stab someone in the back when they’re looking away. Myeong-Gil’s arc just goes from bad to worse and keeps worsening until there’s nowhere for him to go to save himself. Greed is a powerful emotion that is irrational and can take over a person’s mind and body entirely, and Myeong-Gil is the purest example of this. Myeong-Gil is great with his words and has a sharp tongue that usually does the work for him. This is why he can lead so many gangs, and he knows how to show people who the boss is, just as he made the big scar on Gun-Woo’s face when he spit on him.

The first time we meet the man, he’s using an opportunity presented due to the pandemic to his advantage and trying to invest in the hotel businesses of a large company so he can open an illegal casino business in Korea and exploit rich people. He has the audacity to lie to the heirs of the company, saying that he has worked with them previously too. When the heir, Min-Beom, denies his request, Myeong-Gil resorts to blackmail as his best bet. Myeon-Gil doesn’t waste his time convincing Min-Beom, who has connections with the government and police, instead, he thinks he’s so far above the law that he is unphased by these threats and instead comes back harder than expected. We can call him an opportunist because every time he sees a gap in the market, he’s quick to fill it up. Myeong-Gil is a great businessman, and it would’ve all turned out quite differently if he had used some of his skills for good. He uses the pandemic to exploit small businesses and make more money. We never learn why he’s trying to get so much money; of course, he wants power, but there’s nothing he’s really reaching towards. When Myeong-Gil sees Gun-Woo fight for the first time, his first thought is to recruit him for his own team. When Mr. Choi was not around and Myeong-Gil was working for him, he would rough up Mr. Choi’s clients to take their money.

We can assume Myeong-Gil may have grown up poor and had nothing for himself, which led him to a life of crime. We know that Mr. Choi knew that Myoeng-Gil had been to prison before he met him, but he still chose to hire him and teach him all the skills he could master. Unfortunately, this backfires badly for Mr. Choi, who ends up losing his life to Myeong-Gil himself, who shows no signs of remorse or even gratitude. We never hear of Smile Capital being in danger or in any kind of trouble because Myeong-Gil is thorough with his plans. Just like his backup for the hard disk and how meticulously he keeps the phones of all the people he has killed.

It is interesting to see Myeong-Gil’s relationship with In-Beom because he is obviously not a loyal person himself, having stolen from the man who taught him the ropes of it all. It is possible that In-Beom may have saved Myeong-Gil’s life or done something equivalent to that, seeing how much he cares for him, going so far as to say he’s all Myeong-Gil has. Maybe In-Beom is just his permanent bodyguard, and he has a feeling of safety around the man. On the other hand, In-Beom himself is extremely loyal to Myeong-Gil, probably because he always kept him by his side, in hard times and in good times. When he tried to kill Mr. Choi for the first time after the robbery, it was somewhat implied that In-Beom was susceptible to everything Myeong-Gil said. Myeong-Gil had complete control over In-Beom’s mind.

We do know Myoeng-Gil is a ruthless killer, and it may have been the same crime that he had been imprisoned for. We can assume that Myeong-Gil is one of those people who is intrinsically bad because even when Mr. Choi kept him close and was such a wonderful and kindhearted person, it had no effect on Myeong-Gil. Mr. Choi and his friends are just a couple of the many people he has killed, but at the end of the day, there’s never a sign of remorse in him. We even see a chopped-up corpse in the indoor aquaculture that he took Mr. Oh to. All Myeong-Gil knows is killing and threatening, never negotiating or simply talking.

If it weren’t for Gun-Woo getting the job with Mr. Choi, he would’ve never bothered attempting to take down such a big company as Smile Capital. We can assume that if it weren’t for them, Myeong-Gil would’ve continued to be the biggest loan shark in all of Seoul, and his dreams of building the casino and roughing up the rich would’ve worked out rather well. It’s interesting to see that Myeong-Gil already had everything he needed to take him and In-Beom to another country and live a peaceful life, dripping in luxury, but it is his greed that pushes him to keep going because he has nothing and nobody to bring him down from his high horse. Additionally, it’s all thanks to Min-Beom’s cousin, who is in the police force, that we can be sure that Myeong-Gil will be arrested because he became an international criminal. If it had just been the Korean police, there was always a chance of him getting out with ease because of his meticulous attention to detail.

Additionally, there was a large advantage for Myeong-Gil because Gun-Woo and everyone on his team were too kind to understand the real evil of Myeong-Gil, which allowed him to be two steps ahead of them at all times. So finally, it is his greed that gets the best of him and his overconfidence in defeating the two young boys who overtly ooze kindness. We can assume that in the end, after he was caught, Smile Capital would be audited, and he would be completely ruined, right back to square one in prison. Fortunately, Gun-Woo and the people on his side were thorough enough this time around to have no return for Myeong-Gil. He is so evil that even a rule-abiding citizen like Gun-Woo, who couldn’t ever harm any living thing, ended up threatening to kill Myeong-Gil. We can’t say Myeong-Gil was one of the stronger villains in these kinds of shows because he wasn’t so important and didn’t really have an arc in the show, but he’s definitely a terrifying antagonist.