The hit Netflix Korean drama D.P. is back with a second season of six episodes. The season picks up where it left off with the return of the central characters from the first: Jun-Ho, Ho-Yeol, Beom-Gu, and Captain Ji-Seob. While we didn’t particularly love this season, especially in comparison to the first, we still went through the whole thing pretty quickly. If you wish to read our complete review of Season 2, here is the link. Just like D.P. Season 1, the second one also ends with a mid-credit scene; this one is not as surprising but quite hard-hitting too. We’ll be breaking that down and also the real ending of the show, so read on to know it all.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the show?
Both Jun-Ho and Ho-Yeol are struggling to deal with the events of their last deserter pursuit. Suk-Bong had shot himself in the face, while Jun-Ho had tried to stop him in the end. Suk-Bong had said he had to do something to bring about change, but since he would be gone, Jun-Ho should take the responsibility. This is weighing down on the soldier, who is clearly seeing things and taking all the pressure on himself. On the other hand, Ho-Yeol has been on medical leave for about 3 months now, and he’s become mute from the trauma. Physically, he’s okay, though, and Beom-Gu wants him to return soon. Earlier, Beom-Gu refused to sign papers that classified Suk-Bong as mentally ill for shooting himself and threatening other Military members. Jun-Ho is seen doing petty work on the outside during his break and then being forced to fix the boiler when he’s back in the military.
For D.P., since Ho-Yeol is out of action, one of the higher-ups assigns Jun-Ho (who isn’t even a sergeant) as the leader and a new member, Se-Ung, to the D.P. Se-Ung isn’t really interested in doing any of the actual work, though; he just wants to get out of other military duty, and the D.P. is the best way to do so. He’s unbothered when Jun-Ho tries to teach him the ropes. Jun-Ho watches some of his teammates beat up his friend and senior, Gi-Yeong. Because he’s been hallucinating Suk-Bong, he really thinks it’s upon him to save such people. He asks his seniors why they would hit an innocent guy, and they give some lame reasoning. For the first time, Jun-Ho pushes back physically, but before something crazy happens, Se-Ung spots them, and Jun-Ho asks to be hand-cuffed because that’s part of his duty. Jun-Ho gets punished and runs around the track with heavy weights on his shoulders all night. Captain Ji-Seob convinces Beom-Gu to sign the papers, maybe because it will reinstate him. That’s when they hear about Kim Ru-Ri, the man who used his gun on fellow soldiers in the room when they were all just relaxing (yes, the mid-credit scene of D.P. season 1 is finally addressed). Ho-Yeol finally gets out of bed after he sees the news about Ru-Ri. He has a little digital tablet where he writes down his answers to people’s questions.
Ru-Ri’s case
Four months earlier, Ho-Yeol had met Ru-Ri because he was a friend of Suk-Bong. He hadn’t paid enough attention to him and didn’t realize that Suk-Bong’s actions could cause a chain reaction of sorts. To get over his guilt, Ho-Yeol decides to make a return to D.P. Considering many people were injured, and two people were killed, Seo-Eun, one of the military captains, makes an announcement to the press about their pursuit of Ru-Ri. He’s armed and at large, posing a public threat. Jun-Ho is keen on helping and heads to Ru-Ri’s mother’s home. He finds protesters surrounding the house, and one of the women, whose son had died, slaps Ru-Ri’s mother after she shows no sign of remorse for what her son did. Instead, she talks about how much trouble he was having in the military and all the bullying that went on. It so happens that the guy who was troubling him the most was the one who had died, but there’s more to the story. Jun-Ho meets Ho-Yeol at the site, and they get up to date with each other.
Seo-Eun is Ji-Seob’s ex-wife, and it suffices to say that they don’t get along very well. Ji-Seob’s division, i.e., where Jun-Ho is, is known as the 103rd division, and since they’re close to the case, they want to help, but Seo-Eun doesn’t agree. Instead, she makes a plan to lure Ru-Ri in with footage of his mother being manhandled by the media. Ru-Ri victimizes himself in the media, but when he sees the footage of his mother, he throws all caution the wind and rushes home. Ru-Ri has a grenade and a hostage with him, and Seo-Eun, who works under Gu Ja-Woon, awaits his instructions on what to do. He tells her to make the call, and she tells her sniper to get ready. But Ho-Yeol uses his tablet to start a live video to keep Ru-Ri safe, and then he starts to speak again. He yells at Jun-Ho to come and help him. Ultimately, it’s Ru-Ri’s mom who is able to talk him out of hurting anybody, and as Seo-Eun and Ja-Woon reach the location, everything is already resolved. Acting as the hero of the day, Ja-Woon takes the grenade from Ru-Ri’s hand and raves about their success. Of course, Ru-Ri will be apprehended. At the end of the episode, we see that Suk-Bong has actually survived the gunshot and lies in bed at the hospital. He watches the news and cries because his friend didn’t end up getting hurt.
Jang Sung-Min’s case
Queer people have always been mistreated in the military, whatever country it may be, and this case happens to be of a drag queen. Born Sung-Min, Nina renamed themselves after the main character of Anton Chekov’s “The Seagull,” a character they desperately wanted to play in school. 10 months before Ru-Ri, Ho-Yeol had gone to a nightclub with Sung-Woo (a terrible guy, if you had to remember from season 1). They were there to get Sung-Min, a deserter, back to the military, but to Ho-Yeol’s surprise, Sung-Min was one of the queens. In fear, Sung-Min had picked up a blade and accidentally cut Ho-Yeol in the stomach.
Now, Ho-Yeol is afraid to go after Sung-Min again because of what happened back then. Sung-Min had found work at a bar in Incheon while working a day job at a garment factory. They had changed their name to Nina to sing jazz at the bar. Sung-Min had gotten these jobs with the help of a gang, and the detectives at the police department sent Jun-Ho and Ho-Yeol to do the dirty work so they could catch them. It’s a double-sided relationship, and the detectives and Beom-Gu work together. After a lot of running and chasing, Jun-Ho is able to find the bar where he surprisingly meets Yeong-Ok (who was the girlfriend of deserter Hyeon-Min in D.P. season 1). She tells Jun-Ho that Nina had gotten a free ride to London to play Nina in an experimental musical. There’s some chemistry between the two of them, but Jun-Ho quickly leaves after she says she’ll buy him a meal for the money she owes him. He’s happy to see her doing well.
Later, Ho-Yeol and Jun-Ho meet at the airport and find out that Nina never made it to London but instead tried to run away because their fake passport didn’t work. They had fallen and hurt their head before running out of the airport. Ultimately, tracing their steps, Ho-Yeol and Jun-Ho find the body of Nina on the bridge. Another day, another person Jun-Ho could not save. Now that there have been two massive cases, Suk-Bong and Ru-Ri, that make the military look shady, a human rights group attempts to reopen old wounds.
The G.P. case
Ji-Seob receives a thumb drive that contains secret military documents from Seo-Eun, who has been dismissed and is now a lawyer. Na Jung-Seok was Ji-Seob’s friend back in the day. One night, while he was posted at the guard post in North Korea, he had a drink called Ji-Seob. It was in the middle of the night, and Ji-Seob had not paid much attention to him, but the next day, Jung-Seok died from a land mine explosion. Now, Ji-Seob takes Jun-Ho to see what actually happened there and reinvestigate the case. The captain there seems ill-equipped to answer their questions and doesn’t give them any real information. Ji-Seob determined that Jung-Seok had died of some malpractice, and the military had covered it up.
Ji-Seob finally finds the subordinate who supposedly stepped on the mine that Jung-Seok ultimately died because of. It so happened that Ji-Seob actually had the wrong picture. He was so sure that his friend would never be bad to his subordinates that he couldn’t imagine that it was actually an accident that Jung-Seok had stepped on a landmine. But Jung-Seok had been harassing his junior, A-Hwi, at the time, and A-Whi, too, had been injured in the incident. A-Hwi had pushed Jung-Seok down because he was tired of being pushed around in the military for four years. Ultimately, A-Hwi would’ve been reprimanded for standing up for himself because it may have caused Jung-Seok to angrily step on the mine and not realize it, so the G.P. covered it up. But Ji-Seob had already beaten-up A-Hwi to make him spill the truth, and it was all recorded on CCTV footage. This whole time, Ja-Woon and his subordinate Min-U were setting up Beom-Gu and Ji-Seob because they were acting up and trying to “save” the military using the thumb drive.
Hye-Yeon (Deserter Woo-Suk’s sister; he had died from inhaling charcoal in the previous season by using a lighter handed over by Jun-Ho) is the person fighting on behalf of the human resources department and blames the government for all the incidents that have taken place.
An Jun-Ho’s case
Jun-Ho has the thumb drive and is determined to do the right thing with it. At the shop, he finds out that it can’t be copied, but the shop owner gives him a trick that can be used to replace the chip in the drive and switches it out. Jun-Ho reads some of the documents in there related to the deserters he had tried to catch and is shocked by the findings. Elsewhere, Seo-Eun signs up as Ru-Ri’s attorney. She also hands her card to Hye-Yeon because they’re on the same side now. Jun-Ho calls Hye-Yeon and tells her to meet him at the Columbarium, where her brother’s remains are kept. Beom-Gu and Ho-Yeol know that they need to catch Jun-Ho before Ja-Woon’s side does. But Jun-Ho’s father wants money, so he shares his details with Min-U.
Jun-Ho’s condition keeps worsening, though, as he looks like someone who is going through a lot. Min-U assigns an army of people to try and catch the one man as he takes an intercity train. In his determination, Jun-Ho fights them all off but is too weak to run. Min-U comes in and beats him up further. Beom-Gu intervenes and stops him, only to be slapped himself. But this allows Jun-Ho to escape. But he’s met by Sung-Woo, who is here for revenge and will do anything to get Jun-Ho in trouble. In the Columbarium, Hye-Yeon finds the lighter as evidence in her brother’s booth, realizing it may be Jun-Ho she’s been talking to on the phone.
Sung-Woo complains to Jun-Ho about how his life was ruined because of him while Min-U checks the thumb drive. Jun-Ho had played them all and the thumb drive contained nothing. At the same time, Ho-Yeol gets his hands on some dirt to blackmail General Ja-Woon and stall him while they find Jun-Ho. Sung-Woo has Jun-Ho under arrest, but he’s informed by Min-U that Jun-Ho is not under arrest anymore, thanks to Ho-Yeol. Beom-Gu and Hye-Yeon meet and wait for a call from Jun-Ho. The only way he can repent for giving her brother the lighter is by doing the right thing with the thumb drive. They devise a plan to deceive everybody, including Ho-Yeol, so that they can successfully win the case against the government.
At what cost does Jun-Ho get to do the right thing?
Ji-Seob goes to court in support of Seo-Eun as she stands against General Ja-Woon, who is representing himself. Seo-Eun needs to prove that all of the deserters made their big mistakes because of the system and not for personal reasons. Elsewhere, Ho-Yeol and Jun-Ho get into a physical altercation so Ho-Yeol can take the thumb drive to the court. Sung-Woo joins the fight, too but is thrown out quite quickly. Ultimately, Jun-Ho tells Ho-Yeol that he doesn’t have the thumb drive. At the same time, Ji-Seob stands as a witness instead of Ru-Ri because he’s been warned by the general not to say anything.
Ji-Seob claims that there is evidence that the man who had died from Ru-Ri’s shot in the knee had been alive for one hour until the ambulance came too late to save him. He had died waiting for help. He admits that in such a case, where the location is remote, an order from the higher-ups has to be given to call for a helicopter. This wait is what caused the man to die. He brings out the point that all these kids come to the military to save their country, but there’s no one (i.e., the country) to stand behind them when they’re in need. Just then, Beom-Gu reaches in time to hand over the drive as evidence. It proves the facts that Ji-Seob has mentioned, and the judge announces that the plaintiff’s claims have been accepted, but some individual cases would be tried separately (that is, Ru-Ri’s and other such deserters who may have been at greater fault).
By handing over the drive, Beom-Gu gets himself arrested for releasing undisclosed material from the military. Jun-Ho can’t believe yet another person is taking the fall for him, and both he and Ho-Yeol cry profusely, seeing their mentor go down this way. Later, from the correctional facility, Beom-Gu admits to Ji-Seob that he took the fall himself because there had to be someone to look after the boys, and it had to be Ji-Seob. D.P. Season 2 ends with a promise to meet again between Jun-Ho and Ho-Yeol, who has finally been discharged. On his way out of the city, Jun-Ho sees Jang-Soo, who had been a bully in the military and the reason Suk-Bong had tried to kill himself. He had taken Jang-Soo hostage, and now Jun-Ho sees him leading a completely normal life with friends. Jun-Ho wonders if the people he met in the military will remember him. What kind of impact has he had on them, and has he really made a difference?
What Happens In The Mid-Credits Scene?
Before D.P. Season 2 fully ends, Jun-Ho gets a visitor from the military. It’s Suk-Bong who has healed well now and has come to show Jun-Ho that his hard work did indeed pay off. Jun-Ho gives him a teary-eyed smile of happiness to see that he’s going to be just fine.
