[Limelight] A Gaze Piercing Good and Evil Amid Coldness and Passion

'The Mind Reading Evil' Song Ha-young Role Kim Nam-gil
Inspired by Korea's First Profiler Kwon Il-yong
The More They Look Into Criminals' Inner Selves, The More Their Faces Become Worn and They Feel Powerless and Lost
"Focus on the Troubles That Come While Thinking 'I Am Now You'"

A profiler is not the protagonist of a detective novel like Sherlock Holmes. They scientifically reconstruct the crime process and analyze the characteristics and motives of the suspect. When a criminal is caught, they meet one-on-one. They listen to and counsel the suspect about their life from birth to the present, conducting psychological tests alongside. Fundamentally, they have a counselor’s mindset and are skilled at forming rapport (a mutual trust relationship between interviewer and interviewee). The results obtained this way are databased and shared among detectives nationwide.

Song Ha-young (Kim Nam-gil) in the drama "Those Who Read the Mind of Evil" is a character inspired by Korea’s first profiler, Kwon Il-yong. When a violent crime such as a serial murder occurs, they thoroughly investigate how the criminal prepared the crime, the process by which the crime was committed, and how evidence was concealed and handled. Hence, scenes of attentively listening to the perpetrator’s story frequently appear.

Kim Nam-gil oscillates between coldness and passion in a lonely and painful battle. The former is overcoming reactivated childhood trauma. Even without nightmare-like memories, it is difficult to face inmates with a smiling face once you know the details of the crime. It is even more so if you have met the victim’s family to understand their characteristics. Empathizing with their anger, resentment, and despair, even when trying to separate the case from oneself, the pain is fully transmitted. It feels as if one’s own family became the victim, making it impossible to look kindly on a suspect who recounts the crime process like a boast without any remorse.

The latter is the professionalism often omitted in other movies or dramas. A profiler, on the one hand, offers the criminal, who does not introspect, an opportunity to closely examine their life. In a situation where the crime has already occurred and the criminal has been caught, the criminal struggles with how much truth to reveal. They already know why they committed the crime and what interactions they had with the victim. Whether they tell the facts as they are or not is entirely their choice.

Song Ha-young prepares for interviews with a gaunt face, swallowing dry saliva each time. The deeper she looks into the criminals’ inner selves, the more her face becomes worn out. Outwardly she appears numb, but whenever she fails to find a clue, she cannot escape feelings of helplessness and loss. However, the moment she faces a criminal, she is as sharp as a blade. With a cold gaze, she consistently peers into the cruel and dark aspects of humanity that ordinary people find hard to imagine. Like Robert Ressler, an early profiler of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, she repeatedly recalls a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche’s "Beyond Good and Evil" in her mind.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

The highlight of the tense tug-of-war is the interview with Gu Young-chun (Han Jun-woo), who killed nearly twenty people and shows no sign of remorse. Gu Young-chun rationalizes the crime results by presenting plausible reasons. He feels comforted by commonly used defense mechanisms and tries to maintain psychological balance.

"The rich make money illegally, women don’t take care of their bodies properly, and public officials live like bugs. They all deserve punishment. If not me, then who will punish them?"

Even when Gu Young-chun raises his voice, Song Ha-young does not bat an eye. However, when she hears the excuse, "Murder is just like my job," her lips tremble. She does not explode with the anger rising from deep inside. Suppressing her excitement gently, she retorts in a clear voice.

"So you only chose weak people who are less powerful than you? You know very well how pathetic that is, don’t you? You have no right to punish them. That goes for anyone. You’re just a pathetic murderer."

Kim Nam-gil revealed, "I wanted to show that fighting monsters requires being very meticulous and sometimes cunning." "A profiler is a job that must see the world from the criminal’s perspective. I focused on acting so that viewers could easily understand the struggles that come with thinking, ‘I am now you.’ In that sense, I think I worried most about how much to express. I tried to portray simultaneously not reacting immediately, collecting data, and hiding the emotional turmoil inside."

Kim Nam-gil places more weight on Song Ha-young’s growth as she changes through meeting criminals rather than simple facial expressions. Early in the drama, she creates an atmosphere of doubting and feeling unfamiliar with herself for reacting as if she empathized with things she actually did not. The driving force to empty her confused mind and endure stubbornly appears not from numerous interview experiences but from a desire to resolve the injustice witnessed in childhood victims. She imprints a kind gaze and gentle impression, sublimating trauma into a tool to reveal the substantive truth in detail.

Efforts to change others are often ineffective. However, if one tries to change oneself or achieves deep insight, a person can also change rapidly. Anyone can look into their own heart and heal wounds. They just need to realize that they have this power. Song Ha-young reaches the extreme of despair and finally understands the meaning of hope. To leave not a single unsolved case, she will continue to study tirelessly and roam crime scenes. "Science advances day by day, and there is no perfect crime in this world."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.