No. of Episodes: 8
Released Year: 2024
Main Plot
The Frog is a suspenseful psychological thriller about Gu Sang-jun, a man living alone in a quiet countryside pension, whose life changes when a mysterious guest, Jae-man, arrives. What begins as a calm encounter soon turns into a tense mind game filled with guilt, secrets, and revenge, revealing the dark side of human nature.
Main Cast
Kim Yoon-seok as Gu Sang-jun
Yoon Kye-sang as Jae-man
Go Min-si as Moon Hye-rim
Lee Jung-eun as Yoon Bo-min
Episodes summary
Episode 1: The Shadow of the Past
The first episode of The Frog, a Korean drama, has an eerie vibe right from the start and it is established by the mysterious portrayal of a vinyl record going around on a turntable, which is in turn followed by violent hints, such as a drowning, a dead person being buried, and silence of screams. In the depths of the woods, Jeon Yeong-ha resides in loneliness on his far-off holiday home, having isolated himself from the world following the death of his wife. He passes the days in relative obscurity while only his faithful companion Yeong-chae pops in to interrupt his stillness to assist Mr. Yeong-ha with errands and business.
On a muddy wooded road, Yeong-ha finds a stalled automobile one day. The mom, Yoo Seong-ah, and her little son, Si-hyeon, appear to be lost within. Yeong-ha tells them that the road ahead leads nowhere and assists them in freeing their car. Soon after, Seong-ah rents a cottage of Yeong-ha’s. She is very polite but her quiet and mysterious character disturbs him. He brings her to the basement for his collection which is not a common practice for him, when she shows interest in his vinyl recordings after spotting his turntable. In a delicate way uniting the two periods, she picks a Bobby Bland record that had the same song as the opening of the show.
The narrative opens in 2001 where Gu Sang-joon and his spouse, Seo Eun-gyeong, are operating a quaint little motel named Lake View Motel. Then one night, Eun-gyeong’s world is turned upside down when we see her panicking and on the phone with the police. Her voice is hoarse and trembling with horror and evokes a sense that something ungodly is taking place in the dark. The officers arrive at a gruesome crime scene: in a room, a motel guest – later identified as serial killer Ji Hyang-cheol – has brutally murdered victims, leaving blood and body parts everywhere. When Sang-jun walks through the police line to witness the massacre firsthand, he is shocked and devastated. His shaking hands and cheeks convey the trauma that will be left behind by that incident. Although this plot seems unrelated to Yeong-ha’s, visual similarities such as the record player, the lake, and the rain imply a secret connection between the past and present.
In the current timeframe, as Seong-ah and Si-hyeon get settled in the cabin, a strong downpour strikes. Yeong-ha’s daughter Ui-seon calls him and asks for permission to bring a male visitor. Even if reluctantly, he agrees. As thunder rumbles outside and the spooky mood intensifies, Seong-ah listens to a Bobby Bland record. Not long after, Yeong-ha sees her again — walking alone on the same desolate road with the same sense of timelessness. When he returns to the cabin, he discovers an envelope that he did not notice before containing $1,000 in cash and still playing on the turntable (though he still did not know this) a record. But after stopping the turntable, he sees blood unexpectedly on his fingers — blurred by his memory of blood on the record cover which he can’t erase. A freezing epiphany takes hold, and when Yeong-ha stares at the blood on the vinyl, in that very moment he knows that something has gone wrong. The episode concludes ultimately asking if the quiet present of Yeong-ha is somehow associated with the violent past that occurred within the motel and what it binds ultimately with a bloody record and a mysterious woman.
Episode 2: Cleaning Away the Truth
The next episode of The Frog opens with the scene of a rain storm in the woods. Yoo Seong-ah makes dinner for her son Si-hyeon. She is working to be calm while in the back of her mind, she has a fearfully unsettled presence just under the surface. The young child Si-hyeon asks, “When will dad come home?” curious in innocence. Seong-ah’s response suggests that feeling like dad is not coming home is not completely normal. This ominous vibe continues into the evening when Si-hyeon plays outside with his toy dog. The atmosphere turns darker when the children are playing outside, and the camera focuses on Seong-ah, who has both blood on her hands and in her hair, and the record begins to play again. The scene transitions to Seong-ah walking outside and into the rain with a blank stare, which was unreadable. The scene and her look leave the audience in total confusion and the protagonists, we are uncertain whether Seong-ah is the victim or perpetrator of the horrific act we just witnessed.
After meeting Seong-ah, Jeon Yeong-ha begins to feel more nervous and suspicious. He nearly runs over Captain Yoon Bo-min, a recently transferred police officer, while driving down the wooded road. Yeong-ha swiftly dismisses her offer of a tissue when she spots blood on his hand, claiming it’s nothing serious. The short yet tight exchange implies that both characters are concealing something. Yeong-ha, unable to get rid of his uneasiness, watches footage from the dashboard camera of Yeong-chae’s automobile, which was parked outside earlier. Although what he sees is not immediately shown in the episode, his reaction – frozen, pale and shaken – tells us that it is something terrible. He decided to hide it instead of informing the police.
After reassuring himself that there is nothing dangerous happening, he shits the door to the basement, cleans the record player, wipes the blood off the vinyl record and burns towels. This scene demonstrates Yeong-ha’s developing moral conflict; he is both afraid and oddly protective of whatever sinister secret is being revealed in his house.
In order to tie the past and present together, the episode also carries on with the flashbacks to the Lake View Motel killings in 2001. After the brutal disclosure of the killings in Episode 1, Gu Sang-jun and his wife, Seo Eun-gyeong, are shown weeping. With the media and police at the motel, Eun-gyeong is upset and distraught outside with police cars and lights flashing, as Sang-jun is left with the guilt of renting the room to Ji Hyang-cheol, the murderer. In the months that follow, their marriage continues to decline; Eun-gyeong moves away from the motel and feels happy in another town, and Sang-jun continues obsessively cleaning the motel in his effort to erase the memory and evidence of the night. Both of these trajectories describe how guilt and anxiety can be felt through time as if Yeong-ha’s actions were remembered back-in-the-day and in the present tense.
Captain Bo-min’s personal connection to the prior case is exposed in the present. She seemed to be still troubled by what transpired at the Lake View Motel years ago, as seen by her perusing newspaper clippings and old photographs of the crime site. She is bound to the same tragic web that seems to circumscribe Yeong-ha’s cabin by this element.
Headlights blare in the dark as rain strikes the cabin, and suddenly, Seong-ah appears from a scarlet car moving forward, unsettlingly and quietly calm. With his heart thumping and thoughts racing, Yeong-ha freezes. Where is Si-hyeon and what is she planning? It is clear from the eerie hum of the record that the past is far from over.
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