How far are you willing to go to keep your deepest darkest secret hidden?
Perhaps being a person least expected to commit a crime and require to have such secrecy would not attract too much attention. Someone who blends into the crowd and if anything, is totally ignored by society.
(Slight spoilers ahead)
Oh Ji Soo (Played by Itaewon Class actor Kim Dong Hee) is an introverted high school student who excels in his studies. He lives alone in a small apartment claiming to work a regular supermarket job. However, from the offset, we discover his secret work as the head of a self-owned security company for a group of female escorts. With his identity hidden, the only contact he has with the girls is via Lee Wang Cheol (played by Choi Min Soo) their protector who ensures their safety with the girl’s clients. With Ji-Soo’s voice disguised and his face not shown, not even one of his classmates who is an escort Seo Min Hee (played by Jung Da Bin) knows she works with Ji-Soo. He can also contact the girls and Wang Cheol through an app he developed, where he accepts, declines and blacklists clients who request for an escort.
Ji Soo’s alias is “Uncle”, which he uses to be as discreet as possible, but it doesn’t take long until a bored rich student in his class soon discovers Ji Soo’s dirty little secret. Bae Gyu Ri (played by Park Joo Hyun) becomes bored of her strict rich lifestyle, being forced down the path of taking over her parent’s talent agency and instead seems to want to get into a little trouble and take risks. Gyu Ri takes Ji Soo’s business phone and manages to figure out his passcode and uncover his illegal after school business. Ironically, both characters are a part of a citizenship social club at school, as they discuss social matters and school responsibilities with their homeroom teacher Jo Jin Woo. Ironically, one issue included what they would have to do if they discovered a student was involved in prostitution…
Not knowing what else to do, Ji Soo decides to let Jin Woo in on the illegal business. But doing so only increased the risks which were already high…
It is visible that Gyu Ri has a further negative influence on Jin Woo but also has a similar thought process as she suggests involving friends she knows and wants to expand the ‘business’, which obviously leads to much higher risks.
They say if you want something doing, it’s better to do it yourself…
Trying to balance out a stereotypical student lifestyle and work in this illegal trade proved difficult from the start, which likely explains why Ji Soo stayed solitary. At school, he was an easy target to pick on by highly reputable bullies in his class, your stereotypical smoking, gangster, god-complex wannabes. One of them being Kwak Ki Tae (played by Nam Yoon Soo) who plotted a bag search after taking a used cigarette to a teacher and claiming he found it in a bin. He also planted an inappropriate object in Ji Soo’s bag, hoping it would be taken out of his bag and he would be bulled by his class.
However, us viewers know their teacher would find much much more than just that planted object…
“Extracurricular” is similar to some other dramas where the “protagonist” who is depicted as the centre stage antagonist of the show, makes us as viewers wonder if we should sympathise with them and if they will receive some sort of redemption arc due to them being the main character… One example of this is “Stranger’s from Hell” where we slowly see the protagonist Jong Woo turn into the antagonist, making us question whether we should abandon our morals and sympathise with him or realise his corrupt character and intentions.
Ji Soo’s activities are without a doubt illegal and become worse when it involves his underage classmate, who eventually is forced to leave by Ji Soo. It somewhat made me glad when the police started to become suspicious of the activities occurring. But through the suspenseful close discovery scenes where Ji Soo was close to being caught, the drama really puts the viewer in a position where they don’t want Ji Soo’s illegal activity to be found out. Especially after we are introduced to some emotive storylines involving Ji Soo and his poor excuse of a father after he steals all of Ji Soo’s money.
However, “Extracurricular” also teaches us that no matter how stable a person may seem on the outside, it is not a reliable representation of how they feel on the inside. As a lot of emotion is repressed inside a person and a metaphorical mask is worn to disguise feelings of hurt and despair…
The suspenseful drama “Extracurricular” can be watched on Netflix!
