A Shop for Killers (2024) K Drama Episode 4

A Shop for Killers Episode 4 starts in a court where Jin-man is being questioned. A lawyer asks him if he saw the defendant killing civilians. The defendant is a man who looks at Jin-man with a sinister smile. The scene suddenly shifts to the phone call Jin-man got right after his mother’s funeral.

A man named Jun-cheon tells him that ‘Bale’ is still alive and after his family. Jin-man drives to the hospital but gets caught in a literal jam when a truck rams into his car and a group of people start shooting at him.

At present, Seong-jo’s men are spread out in Jin-man’s warehouse when the lights go out. Min-hye starts taking them out one by one. She kills everyone except the leader, Mr. Kim, who is the only one who can hold his ground against her. However, she gets him in the end too.

In the storeroom below, the man named Brother throws handcuffs at Ji-an and tells her to put them on Jeong-min. Instead, she takes him by surprise and holds him in a chokehold till he passes out. She removes his mask.

A flashback shows a slightly younger Ji-an with a boy named Jun-myeong. They were dating and one day, Jun-myeong tries to kiss her when he drops her off. Before he can, Jin-man and Pasin interrupt them and demand the boy show his license for driving a bike.  

Later, we see Ji-an working at a restaurant while a group of students from her school sit nearby. Jun-myeong enters but leaves once he sees Ji-an there, disappointing her. She comes home and berates Jin-man for behaving oddly with the people around her, like her friend Min-sook and her tutor.

But turns out, he had a valid reason for each of those times. Still, Ji-an feels like Jin-man’s locking her up. He agrees to let her move out if she can hit him in the face once. She assumes he’s joking and then asks if her parents really died an ordinary death. He avoids it and tells her to hit him. She tries but, naturally, fails.

At some point later, Pasin teaches Ji-an to work the forklift in the warehouse. She uses the opportunity to try and hit Jin-man but fails again. Pasin ends up stopping her going after her uncle and, at Jin-man’s orders, he makes her pass out. Ji-an is rightfully furious when she wakes up.

Afterwards, Ji-an goes to Pasin’s Thai restaurant and asks him to teach her how to fight, a martial arts style known as Muay Thai. He agrees to do so for 50,000 Won a week. He takes her to a room in the back and they start training immediately. A montage of the training follows — Ji-an gets better and stronger even though she’s still unable to hit Jin-man.

One day, Ji-an comes across a group of boys cornering her old friend from school, Min-sook. Min-sook runs away and Ji-an becomes their next target. She uses her new skills to knock down two boys and Jin-man appears to take care of the third. The police, called by Min-sook, come soon after.

On the way back, Jin-man drops her off at Pasin’s restaurant. But Ji-an finds the police there as well as a group of people from whom Pasin had borrowed money. He seems to have run away.  

At present, Ji-an and Jeong-min find a set up of security cameras in the storeroom. There is footage from multiple places including her school and the bathroom. She rounds on Brother and asks how long he’s been watching her. He says they need to urgently go help Min-hye since more bad guys will be there soon. When Jeong-min puts the light on, Brother cowers as the brightness hurts him.

Ji-an gives him a hooded jacket and demands an explanation. He starts to give one but Jeong-min interrupts and tells Ji-an he’s only trying to evoke her pity. When Jeong-min is distracted, Brother runs off, yelling at Ji-an to not trust Jeong-min. She chases after him but ends up falling down a chute into a small room. Brother closes the trapdoor above her. Down there, Ji-an finds another set up of computers featuring camera footage.

Upstairs, Brother makes the lights go out and sneaks up on Jeong-min, tasing him and then locking him up to a wall. He then speaks to Ji-an directly through the cameras and tells her to open a drawer to her right. Inside, is a handover guide for transferring ownership of Murthehelp from Jin-man to Ji-an.

She consents to the transfer and, as the new owner, orders Brother to get her out. But once she’s out, she takes his gun and orders him to release Jeong-min. Brother reveals that Jeong-min is the reason Jin-man died.

Ji-an makes Brother release Jeong-min anyway. But she still points her gun at both of them, unsure whom to trust. She agrees to hear Brother’s side of the story. As per his instructions, she moves to open a video file but Jeong-min dissuades her. In an attempt to convince Ji-an, Jeong-min says he was the one who told Jin-man she was in the school basement all those years ago.  

A flashback shows a thirteen-year-old Ji-an holding a small kitten. Jin-man agrees to let her keep it but warns her that she must take responsibility if he dies as well. At present, she sees Min-hye in one of the security cameras and tells Brother to go give her guns and medicines. Before leaving, he gives Ji-an a pair of sunglasses as a gift.

He reaches the warehouse and Min-hye recognises him. Downstairs, Jeong-min gives Ji-an a hug and thanks her. But it’s really an excuse for him to inject her with a sedative. He admits he was also the one who locked her in the school basement back then. Before she passes out, Ji-an looks at the sunglasses. A flashback shows young Ji-an crying over the kitten, who died. At present, she asks Jeong-min who he is.

An epilogue shows Seong-jo and his team receive a fancy new gun that can be remotely operated at the end of A Shop for Killers Episode 4.

The Episode Review

A Shop for Killers Episode 4 makes things a notch more interesting by adding fodder to the mystery. We now know that Jin-man testified against someone and that someone probably took revenge on his family. There is also the addition of Brother, whose identity and hinted backstory build the show’s intrigue.

And the twist that Jeong-min is really the bad guy! Considering his previous timid behaviour, this is a really good twist to the tale. It also makes the viewer question why his story was accepted with no evidence at all.

A Shop for Killers also has a distinct style to the show. The montage of Ji-an’s training, accompanied by lilting music, is really fun to watch. Watching Min-hye take out the armed men one by one was an absolute joy as well. The camera work, the editing and the direction all work together in a smooth flow. It elevates the already intriguing story with its sleek visuals and gives the show a distinct character.