Hide (2024) K Drama Episode 3

Episode 3 of Hide begins with Moon-young hearing the gunshot as she reaches the site. Sung-jae shoots Jin-woo but runs off when Moon-young calls out that she has called the cops. She asks Jin-woo who him and he says Sung-jae before passing out.  

The next day, Jin-woo sneaks out of the hospital and tells Moon-young to go to a house in Haean village. She learns that the owner is the homeless Hwang Tae-soo who was sponsored by Chawoong Welfare Foundation. Geumshin is in charge of the development and housing of the homeless in the area and has teamed up with Chawoong Welfare. 

Moon-young questions Chawoong Welfare’s secretary and learns that Hwang Tae-soo was personally referred to the charity by Sung-jae. Another candidate he had vouched for was Oh Young-sik who later got in trouble with the cops for having a burner account.

Meanwhile, Detective Baek wonders if Jin-woo’s shooting is related to Sung-jae’s life insurance payout. Chawoong Law Firm is overrun by debt collectors forcing their way in but he shows up and stops them. He tries to get more information on Jin-woo from Manager Go but she acts shifty.

Sung-jae’s father, Cha Woong acts as a guarantor for the debt. Assured, Moon-young tells him that Sung-jae’s life insurance policies don’t cover suicide and something is off. However, he tells her not to look into it.

A flashback shows a young Moon-young about to jump from a cliff but Sung-jae, who happens to be her classmate stops her. At present, she wakes up to an intruder in the house. Nothing is missing and Baek finds it odd that it happened twice. He suggests that she and Jin-woo may have killed Sung-jae to get his life insurance payout and she punches him. 

Back at the station, Baek continues to look into Jin-woo. A colleague recalls him making a scene while trying to get them to look for a missing person – Hwang Tae-soo. Meanwhile, Moon-young puts up new CCTVs and locks while Yeon-joo and an old man watch from afar.

Moon-young continues to look into Sung-jae’s files and finds a photo of him with Hwang Tae-soo and Jin-woo. Jin-woo shows up and agrees to come clean as she took his bike after the shooting. 

It seems that CEO Ma is behind the Haean villager’s death. Sung-jae asked Jin-woo and Kim Yoon-sun to cover but she backed out and CEO Ma had her killed. Sung-jae is trying to stop Jin-woo because he is searching for Tae-soo. The last he’d seen the two was when Sung-jae had offered to sober up a drunk Tae-soo before his next sponsor approval meeting. While CEO Ma beat up Jin-woo, the Chawoong Welfare pin he found was Tae-soo’s. While Jin-woo tried to report Tae-soo missing, Sung-jae was watching from outside.

Jin-woo believes that Sung-jae killed Tae-soo and used it to fake his death. Moon-young refuses to believe it but wonders if Myung-hee gave the wrong DNA to confirm the corpse’s identity. She goes home to find CEO Ma. He has the shoe box money which is just 5 million won. He reveals that he had trusted Sung-jae with 7 billion and now it’s gone. She needs to give him 6.5 billion in a week and he threatens her by picking up Bom from school.

Yeon-joo watches it all and keeps insisting she can help. A scared Moon-young politely dismisses her and leaves. Yeon-joo talks about how lively Bom is with the old man who lives in her place.

Meanwhile, Moon-young asks Shin-hwa’s help in doing another DNA test on Sung-jae’s corpse. She then goes to one of the banks Sung-jae took a loan from and learns that he created accounts for the homeless sponsored by Chawoong Welfare. There are 13 accounts personally managed by Sung-jae and one is of a Kim Woo-shik. At home, she sees a contract fee of 7 billion from a KK International CEO who is named Kim Woo-shik.

She calls out CEO Ma for using homeless people to launder money with Sung-jae. He tries to call her bluff but she tells him that legally he cannot do anything unless he has evidence that he gave Sung-jae 7 billion. There seems to be none and he is furious. As Moon-young leaves, a woman watches her.

Moon-young tells Jin-woo that his group was used for money laundering but doesn’t care as he only wants to find Sung-jae. She offers to give him the latest bank withdrawal record of “Tae-soo” if he gives her proof that Sung-jae is alive.

He gives her a phone number that “Tae-soo” opened after Sung-jae died. She also gets the DNA report and turns out the corpse is not Sung-jae’s. She confronts Myung-hee and also shows the phone records of “Tae-soo” who has been in constant touch with her. It seems that her husband doesn’t know and Moon-young threatens to tell him till Myung-hee gives in.

She sends Moon-young back to Tae-soo’s place where a man waits for her. A flashback shows Sung-jae crying as he puts the drunk Tae-soo behind the steering wheel and puts on his wedding ring. He gets out of the car and starts it. As the car falls and explodes, Sung-jae watches from above the cliff. At the end of Hide Episode 3, Moon-young turns to see Sung-jae.

The Episode Review

Anyone lost with all that money laundering and burner accounts scheming? With every answer we get, they drop even more questions. It’s like an itch we can’t scratch but it has us hooked, that’s for sure.

So from what we can gather, Chawoong Foundation and Geumshin are in cahoots. Sung-jae opens burner accounts for the homeless people who are part of the welfare scheme to launder money for Geumshin.

The latest it seems was that Ma needed to launder 7 billion and Sung-jae did it using Kim Woo-shik. But he then withdrew that 7B for himself and faked his death by killing Tae-soo. But the big question is why? We also don’t know who that mystery lady is and if she is Yeon-joo, what is her endgame?