Getting their man.
"Every male citizen of the Republic of Korea shall faithfully perform mandatory military service."
— Article 3 of the Military Services Act
D.P. (or Deserter Pursuit) is a TV Drama series released by Netflix worldwide on August 27, 2021 with six episodes released. The show's directed by Han Jun-hee. It's based on the webtoon D.P Dog's Day by Kim Bo-tong, who also contributed to the screenwriting. Do note that there are differences between the webtoon and the TV version, which Bo-tong approved of.
The show takes place in 2014. An Joon-ho was recently enlisted to serve in the South Korean Army as part of his national service obligations under Article 3 of the Military Services Act. He eventually goes to the Army's Military Police. While getting used to life in the MP, Joon-ho's Sherlock Scan skills gets him tapped into the D.P. unit, which recruits both conscipted and enlisted MPs to invesigate, hunt down and detain the deserters if he goes AWOL from their respective unit, no matter the reason.
Joon-ho gets partnered up with Han Ho-yul in their anti-deserter operations. Together, the two men get their orders from Park Bum-gu as they go about their duties in plainclothes and arrest the deserters at all cost.
Critics have praised it for having social commentary on the issues of hazing and other types of bullying with the ranks of the South Korean military.
The second season was released on July 28, 2023.
The show provides examples of the following tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The first season takes place in 2014, as can be inferred from pop-culture artefacts such as K-Pop tracks and video game posters.
- The second season starts in 2015. "The Rains" confirm it when some papers were handed to Park and the year is shown printed.
- An Aesop: The people who stand around and allow bullying and hazing to happen are part of the problem, even if they rationalize it away as what happened to them, as well.
- Asshole Victim: While there are many understandable reasons for those who don't want to return to the army, the main one being severe bullying as shown frequently in D.P, the deserter of episode 3 isn't shown to be as sympathetic as others who go AWOL from the army. He is shown to be a rude and arrogant prick to his father and most people, and a user/abuser of women which makes it really hard to feel for his plight.
- Hwang Jang-soo spends his term of service brutally abusing junior conscripts. Towards the end of the first season, Suk-bong goes AWOL after the now-discharged Jang-soo with the intent to return the favour and more.
- Bittersweet Ending: Park was able to bring a USB memory stick that Ja-woon uses to manipulate evidence and frame the deserters as evil persons in "The Day". The MPs arrest him, but the judges in the court hearing recognize the significance of this and plans to deliberate to deliver a verdict on the issue.
- Buddy Cop Show: Joon-ho and Ho-yul are two MP soldiers tasked to investigate and arrest deserters when the order comes.
- Domestic Abuse: Joon-ho grew up with an abusive father at home.
- Downer Ending: The end of "Onlookers" shows that despite the scandal regarding Jo Suk-bong's activities in kidnapping Hwang Jang-soo and nearly killing him, bullying still continues. The end credits show Kim Ru-Ri conducting a massacre at his barracks after being bullied way too many times.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: The D.P. unit of the MPs is tasked to detain deserters the moment they're informed of such an incident.
- The MP's Special Duty Team gets called in after one of them goes AWOL and kidnaps Hwang Jang-soo, who's suspected of hazing a junior serviceman. Subverted when it's made obvious that they're both staffed by inexperienced conscripts and wildly inappropriate for the crisis at hand.
- Frame-Up: Judge Advocate General Gu Ja-woon planted evidence to frame Park and Im Ji-sup for corruption and abuse of power in "The Charred Remains" to force DP to stop investigating cases of deserters that may have ties to military conspiracies to cover it up.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Jang-soo is shown being yelled at and belittled by his employer during his turn at civilian life. While this implies he may have been taking out his own frustrations on his recruits in a sort of cyclical manner, nothing Jang-soo's boss does or says to him is remotely as bad as the beatings and literal torture he put his own guys through.
- Hate Sink: Sergeant Hwang and Lieutenant Colonel Chun, with the former being a bully, a coward, and a Sadist with nothing other than a flimsy excuse for acting that way, and the latter being an incompetent brown nose (and also a bully) who would rather see his own men get hurt needlessly than lose face.
- Hero of Another Story: D.P. personnel are tasked with multiple deserter cases.
- Institutional Allegiance Concealment: Since D.P. operates under utmost secrecy to prevent the deserter/s from learning that their MPs are onto them, they mostly operate in plainclothes when they're not on standby in their base.
- Jurisdiction Friction: D.P units from respective cities butt heads on who gets to lead in the op. In one episode, an D.P. operation was called off officially because of interference from their superiors.
- The end of the season has civilian South Korean police officers insisting that they take charge of the manhunt after Suk-bong kidnaps Jang-soo, since the latter is now a civilian. They also criticized the MP commander for deploying the SDT and wondered if they'll really shoot a deserter even if he's from the MP.
- Myth Arc: The second season centers on a Government Conspiracy within the South Korean military and it suggests that they want to keep cases of deserters being abused under wraps to prevent public criticism from affecting its morale.
- Never My Fault: Lieutenant Colonel Chun refuses Sergeant Park the men he needs to apprehend a deserter safely, but does so implicitly, through Captain Lim. When the deserter subsequently escapes and one of the MP's gets seriously hurt in the struggle, he screams at Captain Lim like he genuinely believes it to be his fault.
- The South Korean military prefers that they kill deserters if they are confirmed to be armed and dangerous. Some DP soldiers/officers don't like this approach since it'll just make things worse. What makes this worse is General Ja-woon wants to do this solely to protect the military's reputation.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In the Season 1 finale, Sergeant Park Bum-gu and the usually feckless Captain Lim Ji-seop both try to talk down their Glory Hound commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chun Yong-duk, from deploying the Special Duties Team for a potentially lethal confrontation with a runaway Suk-bong. After the incident passes, Bum-gu is disciplined, while Ji-seop is transferred to another unit.
- Old Cop, Young Cop: Downplayed. Joon-ho and Ho-yul are pretty close to each other age-wise, but the latter has more experience, and is more streetwise, casual, and cynical, while the latter is more analytical, straight-laced, and idealistic.
- Product Placement: Expect to see Hyundai, Kia and Renault Samsung vehicles.
- Roof Hopping: Joon-ho and Ho-yul have to sometimes jump over roofs while running around streets and other high places to pursue their targets.
- Rogue Soldier: The majority of suspects in the South Korean military D.P. needed to apprehend if he goes AWOL while doing his national service. It gets worse if some of them are wanted for even murdering their fellow MP.
- Running Gag: Joon-ho tends to introduce himself by saying his full name when someone calls for his name/attention.
- Shrouded in Myth: In-universe, no one knows what D.P. means.
- It's revealed in-universe that D.P. means Deserter Pursuit when a new MP soldier was questioned by a veteran MP soldier on the acronym in "The R
- Shown Their Work: The show really depicts the bad things going on for South Koreans who enlist in the army as part of their national service obligations.
- Shout-Out: "Military Dog" mentions One Piece when Bum-gu and Ho-yul speak to Ru-Ri. The former is implied to have at least read the manga when the latter asked if he knows about it since he refers to the POI as Zorro.
- Title Drop: D.P.'s the name of the MP unit meant to go after deserters.
- Wham Episode:
- "Military Dog": Suk-bong went AWOL from his guard post. What's worst is that he's an MP, which could bring scandals to the unit.
- "Onlookers": Suk-bong's attempted suicide didn't do much to bring reform to South Korean national service. His friend, Ru-Ri, massacres his bunkmates in their quarters.
- "The Day": The evidence showing that the South Korean military manipulated evidence to blame misconduct on the deserters was provided by Park. However, the verdict also confirmed that Kim Ru-ri needs to be in prison. And Park's arrested by MPs for leaking classified information.
- Wham Shot: After a scene where Woo-seok's sister asks Joon-ho what he intends to do about the bullying her brother went through before he deserted and killed himself, he enters marching formation with his unit... but stands still while they march off, after which he runs in the opposite direction, apparently making a break for the fence.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Suk-bong rightly points out to Private Ahn and Sergeant Park that literally everyone in the unit, including them, knew about the brutal hazing that was going on but did absolutely nothing about it.
