Recap Korean Drama "Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area (2022) " Episode 4

Episode 4 of Money Heist: Korea starts with The Professor teaching the group how to treat gunshot wounds. Rio is the one person who isn’t in the mood to play doctor, and heads back home.

Rio, as we see, inherited his wealth from his parents and lives a pretty unfulfilled life, getting drunk and attempting (and failing) to woo women. The Professor and Tokyo track him down after he bails on them. The Professor convinces him to return.

A gunshot and a blood spatter; we return to the present with all of our group scrambling back inside the Mint, with Youngmin in a desperate state. With the Mint Director bleeding out, it falls to Tokyo and the others to remember their training and try to bring him back.

It’s a desperate situation, something that eventually sees Woojin communicate with the Professor and agree to bring in medical personnel to make sure the Director doesn’t die.

Woojin is under a lot of stress though and outside, she speaks to Captain Cha. “This is not the time to blame yourself,” He says. Instead, Cha decides he should go into the Mint himself, disguised as one of the medics in order to scope the place out. He also has a bag ready – complete with masks and outfits. If it wasn’t initially clear what’s happening, Cha is going in through the front while a rabble of soldiers are going to slip in undetected and blend in.

Denver, Moscow and Tokyo head down to the basement and check on Misun, who’s also not doing too well either. Her leg looks awful, and she hands over a note to Denver to give to Youngmin; she actually wrote this in the previous episode before Helsinki found her.

While the Director prepares for surgery, Berlin allows him to talk to his wife on his phone. Denver is in attendance, and clenches his fists in anger when he hears the guy gush over how much he loves his wife.

At the same time, Captain Cha is fixed with special glasses that allow him to see everything inside the Mint. He prepares to head in with the other medics. Meanwhile, four officers, disguised as hostages, sneak in though the vents.

Unfortunately, Cha is caught out by Berlin during surgery given his accent and that he’s not shaking like the other doctors. Cha decides to go off-script, admitting that he’s a police officer here to check on the medics and make sure they’re not harmed.

This is, of course, all a big diversion to make sure they’re not caught out on the feint operation they have going on.

The professor is always one step ahead though and notices Cha’s glasses could be the clue here. He realizes this is all a big diversion and immediately informs Rio that there are men breaking in somewhere inside.

With the surgery complete, the medics head into the main atrium… and notice everyone has changed their masks. Cha is shocked and everyone scrambles to abort the feint operation going ahead. Cha bursts outside, screaming that they call everything off.

The attackers do back off.. but do so with the Professor’s “Trojan Horse.” This happens to be in the form of Cha’s phone, which they manage to bug and hack into. The Professor can hear everything the police are talking about now, making sure he’s one step ahead of the game.

Speaking of which, Berlin heads down to the basement and realizes Misun is still alive. A big standoff ensues between the two groups, with Nairobi showing up and turning the tables. She also has the note Youngmin gave Denver, something that fell out the latter’s pocket during the surgery incident.

With Misun going into shock, Rio decides to do the surgery, removing the bullet wedged in her thigh. He’s the only one who doesn’t shake while doing this, as it turns out he actually went to med school. This also explains why he had no interest in the Professor’s surgical talks.

Rio speaks to Tokyo in confidence after removing the bullet. He has big plans to buy a beautiful island and leave when this is all over. He invites Tokyo along and tells her that he’s no longer going to act like a kid anymore. As for Tokyo, she plays hard to get and leaves.

With Misun alive, and growing closer to Denver as a result, the others have Berlin tied up and decide to kick him out of the group, leaving him tied up to a chair and alone. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” Berlin says to himself as the others leave.

However, there’s a further twist in the tale to come. It turns out one of the soldiers actually managed to stay inside the Mint.  This guy has broken into the ranks of the hostages, sending a coded message to those outside in the process.

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The Episode Review

So the fourth episode starts to deepen the ties, with the familiar surgery subplot in the original series brought into focus here. The cat and mouse game between the police and the Professor has always been the more intriguing element of this show and that’s especially the case here.

Seeing how the Professor has managed to stay one step ahead of the police is certainly a nice touch, although as we saw with the original too, there’s always variables in this plan that are unaccounted for. In this case that falls to the mole infiltrating the hostage ranks.

All the familiar character ties are here, although the chemistry between Rio and Tokyo isn’t quite as strong as it could be. Some of that may be down to the focus of this series, which is far less involved with Tokyo (despite what the opening of episode 1 would have you believe) and more spread out among the entire group.

Either way though, this has been an enjoyable watch, even if it is basically a trip down memory lane with a Korean flair.