Payback, aka Payback: Money and Power, is a television series from South Korea. It ran for 12 episodes in January and February of 2023.
The series opens with Eun Yong (Lee Sun-kyung, who played the father of the rich family in Parasite) in Mongolia; he is rich enough to be buying a vast tract of land out on the steppe. Cut back to 1990, with Eun Yong a young hoodlum who is released from prison. He meets his sister, Eun Ji-hee, who has a little son named Tae-choon that Eun Yong dotes on. Faced with the need to provide for his sister and nephew, Eun Yong goes to work for a mobster, Kim Seong-tae.
Jump forward again to 1998, and Eun Yong comes under the employ of a scarier, more serious crime boss, Myung In-joo. As we cut to the modern day, Eun Yong has had success, and gone legit, starting his own financial business. He also has put his nephew through law school, and Tae-choon has gone to work for the prosecution.
Tae-choon is an ambitious and principled young lawyer. He receives an anonymous tip about stock market insider trading from a mysterious young woman eventually revealed to be Park Joon-kyung (Moon Chae-won, Flower of Evil). Tae-choon asks his uncle for help with some of the evidence, and eventually, Eun Young comes back to Korea himself to do battle. Eun Yong and Joon-kyung wind up facing off against In-joo and his minion, ambitious, evil prosecutor Hwang Ki-seok. Eun Yong and Joon-kyung know that In-joo and Ki-seok were responsible for the death of Joon-kyung's mother, Yoon Hye-rin.
Tropes:
- Age Cut: Eun Yong, having joined up with gangsters after coming home in 1990, gets on a bus full of goons to go beat somebody. He looks at his face in the window—and it's the face of an older actor in 1998, after the Time Skip.
- Amoral Attorney: Hwang Ki-seok, chief of the Special Investigations unit at the prosecution. Also utterly immoral and straight-up evil, serving his father-in-law, Myung In-joo. Episode 3 reveals that he jailed Yoon Hye-rin on trumped-up corruption charges in order to get her daughter Joon-kyung to fabricate evidence in order to destroy a political opponent. Having accomplished that, he promptly arrested Joon-kyung in order to get an advantage over Hye-rin.
- Anachronic Order: In the first three episodes, as the story flits back and forth between 1990, 1998, 2003, 2010, and 2014.
- Animated Credits Opening: Episodes open with abstract animation that is meant to suggest themes in the series, like a pile of gold coins weighing down the scales of the statue of Justice, a man driving a sports car through an urban setting, a prisoner breaking his handcuffs and escaping.
- Audible Sharpness: Played for a gag in episode 2. Eun Yong is bedding down on the couch in CEO Yoon's office. Joon-kyung, who is on the computer in the office studying, tells him that he'd better not try anything. To demonstrate her seriousness she takes a ceremonial sword off the wall and pulls it out of its scabbard, producing the usual zing.
- Book Ends: The first scene of the first episode has Eun Yong riding a horse on the Mongolian steppe, planting flags to mark out his land. The last scene of the last episode shows him back in Mongolia, once again riding his horse.
- Car Cushion: In episode 3 Eun Yong tells a story of how In-joo used to operate back in the day. He got his hooks into a businessman by offering him a loan shark loan, then deliberately short sold his client's stock, tanking the client's stock and ruining him in order to make a bunch of money. The story ends with the ruined client jumping out a window and landing on a car right next to a shocked Eun Yong, followed by In-joo walking out the same building and callously wondering why people were leaving by windows instead of the door. This was Eun Yong's Heel Realization moment in which he decided to leave In-joo's employ.
- Chess Motifs: Eun Yong and Joon-kyung are playing chess as they talk about Tae-choon and Ki-seok, and how they had to use the latter as he's willing to use dirty tricks to advance their goals. Eun Yong says that his nephew is "a pawn," the weakest piece on the board. But then Eun Yong advances his pawn to the last rank and makes it a queen, and says that in chess the weakest pieces can become the strongest. This is followed by a cut to a scene where Tae-choon is investigating the supposed suicide of CEO Oh (in fact, Ki-seok murdered him).
- Convenient Coma: In episode 7 Tae-choon comes rushing back to the hospital after hearing that Joon-kyung, who has been in a coma for over a month, has woken up. Naturally, he finds her with makeup on and her hair done as she sits in a wheelchair.
- Crusading Lawyer: Tae-choon, rooting out corruption in business and in the prosecution. He's incorruptible enough that he has a serious break with his uncle, when Eun Yong shows a willingness to work with crooked Ki-seok.
- Desk Sweep of Rage: A scene in episode 11 has In-joo, sitting in a prison interview room, staring with disdain at some unappetizing jailhouse food on a tray. Ki-seok strolls in and makes a sarcastic comment about how they have to start feeding In-joo better. In-joo then sweeps the lunch tray off the table as he screams in fury that Ki-seok will never defeat him.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Ki-seok gets roaring drunk when, after being forced out of the prosecution in episode 9 on trumped-up charges (as opposed to any of the totally real crimes he's committed), he's forced to go to work for his father-in-law as a consigliere.
- Exact Progress Bar: In episode 4, Han-na is desperately trying to download something from her computer onto a memory stick, even as Ki-seok's goons are raiding the place. The scene cuts away before revealing if the progress bar on her computer got to the end.
- Flashback: Many, beginning with the first episode where a series of flashbacks sketch out how Eun Yong went from adolescent criminal to rich businessman, while his nephew Tae-choon became a crusading lawyer.
- Glasses Pull: Yeong-jin does this in the last episode after he finally breaks and confesses to his part in the murder of CEO Oh.
- Grave-Marking Scene: A couple of times during the drama, either Joon-kyung or Eun Yong visit her mother's grave. The denouement in the last episode has them leaving flowers, and Joon-kyung's business card, telling Mom that Joon-kyung is CEO of Mom's resurrected company.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Tae-choon is offered a deal by Lee Su-dong that would involve Tae-choon earning a lot of money and power, if he'd just let Lee off the hook. Tae-choon declines, but he's rattled by the confrontation. He later asks Joon-kyung, "What do you do when you have to be a monster to fight the monsters?"
- Hospital Gurney Scene: Joon-kyung in episode 6, as she's rushed into the hospital after being stabbed in the middle of the street by In-joo's goons. She's left in a coma.
- How We Got Here: The series opens with Eun Yong as a rich businessman making a major land purchase in Mongolia. His life up until that time then plays out in a series of flashback segments.
- Idiosyncratic Wipe: In episode 8 a lot of Split Screens show the activity as Eun Yong and his people manipulate the stocks that In-joo was manipulating, causing him to suffer financial disaster. The split screens end with Eun Yong, in the middle of a three-way split screen, reaching out and pushing the other two screens to the side.
- Lady Drunk: Eun Yong made enough money to set his sister up with a bar to run, but things didn't go completely swimmingly, as Tae-choon the teenaged student routinely came home to find his mother passed out on the floor. Episode 3 reveals that her alcoholism got so bad she suffered from "alcoholic dementia." She cannot recognize her grown-up son and still thinks he's a teenaged law student.
- Meet Cute: How Eun Yong and Joon-kyung met back in 1990, as shown in Episode 2. He was two days out of juvie, trying to keep his nose clean, when he saw her on a train car facing down three violent thugs all by herself. He joins her in the fight, and that's how he meets her mother Yoon Hye-rin too, when CEO Yoon shows up and gets the both of them out of jail.
- Parking Garage: Eun Yong goes to the parking garage in episode 4, which turns out to be a bad idea. He is hit by a car driven by Jin-ho and his henchmen, who are working for In-joo.
- Ponzi: In-joo's latest investment scheme, as Eun Yong, who knows him well, explains to the prison guard. In-joo is promising a 24% rate of return from a fake mutual fund, and using a reputable bank as cover.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Ki-seok does this in episode 5, punching his reflection in the mirror in rage and slicing up his knuckles, after he has been suspended from the prosecutor's office on charges of corruption.
- Rooftop Confrontation: In-joo manages to finagle his way out of prison for a few hours to meet CEO Oh, on top of a roof somewhere. This confrontation ends with In-joo pushing Oh Chang-hyun off the roof to his death, with a fake suicide note typed by Ki-seok in Oh's pocket.
- Self-Immolation: Oh Chang-hyun, the CEO of GMI Bank and a deeply corrupt figure, is giving a press conference for his new book in the first episode when an anti-corruption protester lights himself on fire. This causes Tae-choon's boss Prosecutor Park to stop hesitating and agree to Tae-choon's corruption probe.
- Significant Haircut: Eun Yong hears that his old friend, CEO Yoon Hye-rin, has died under suspicious circumstances. He evidently isn't satisfied with the explanation of suicide, as he's boarding a plane to Korea at the end of the first episode. He had shaggy hair and a beard in Mongolia, but as he's coming back home to Korea to confront the bad guys he's gotten a shave and his hair is neatly trimmed.
- Smart People Play Chess: Joon-kyung sees the super-fancy chess set with gold leaf in Eun Yong's apartment and says that she plays chess too. The remaining episodes occasionally show them playing chess as they make their plans.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: In episode 2 when In-joo and one of his flunkies discuss what to do after Eun Yong has defeated their short-selling scheme.
- Title Drop: In episode 2, as Eun Yong, at Yoon Hye-Rin's grave, comments that he doesn't believe it was suicide and he must avenge his guardian's death.Eun Yong: You should always pay back what you owe.
- TV Telephone Etiquette: In Episode 4, Tae-choon calls Eun Yong on the phone. He tells him to "Get results" (about getting the bad guys) and then immediately hangs up.Eun Yong: He sure does take after me.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The main story is set in 2014.
- You Are Number 6: Eun Yong is only called "4816", his inmate number, when in prison for murder. It gets a little weird when he makes the prison guard his flunky, and the guard starts calling him "4816, sir."
