Review and Recaps: Jirisan episode 9 (also known as ‘Cliffhanger’ or ‘Mountain Jiri’)

The episode starts with panicked Da-won running away from the murderer and then getting up to find that it was one of the rangers who was chasing her. And if you were expecting to see the murderer face just like me…No, we are not shown the murderer’s face yet. Da-won laughs at how the person scared her and asks what he is doing.

On the other side, Yi-gang is waiting near the entrance of the mountains. She calls Da-won again and again and the day passes. She then sends her a text and asks her to call if she sees the message. At this time, Gu-Yeong comes out from the forest.

Yi-gang enquires him if he saw Da-won anywhere in the mountains. He is confused about why Da-won is in the mountain during her Day off. Seeing Yi-gang perplexed they plan to send a search team the next day to the area.

The search team looks into various places around the region where Da-won’s last phone signal came from but they have no luck finding her. Yi-gang asks Gu-Yeong to order a search in the Hurricane lily habitat. Ga-Yeong asks if she is again into the twig marks and all those insanities and then asks her if she sent Da-won for that only. Seeing Yi-gang speechless infuriates him and he shouts at her and asks when she would stop such things.

Yi-gang defends that these marks only helped them find the missing hiker who was not found for months by thousands of rangers. Gu-Yeong then orders for a search in Hurricane lily habitat. The search team goes to the location and they don’t find anything but another mark.

The search team sends the pic of the mark and Yi-gang decodes the mark to be the pebbly road near Haebawi rock(3Km from Hurricane lily habitat). The search team then goes to the pebbly road. The Search team finds a pink color phone covered in blood there and it is confirmed by Yi-gang that it’s indeed Da-won’s phone.

The police then ask the rangers to send the phone to them to test the evidence. Now that her phone is found Gu-Yeong orders the rangers to search rocky ridge and pebbly rocks. Yi-gang says Da-won can’t be in rocky ridge because she advised her not to go there since the detour would be dangerous.

Gu-Yeong then says that if someone is stranded they might not think rationally and you know that. Yi-gang nods at that. At this time the police officer comes in and asks if they could contact Captain Dae-Jin. Both Yi-gang and Gu-Yeong are confused now and the officer informs them of the audio that Da-won recorded lastly. The recorded audio has the voice of Captain Dae-Jin and indeed he was the one who was following her the previous day.

The recording has Da-won telling that he is surprised and Captain Dae-Jin asking her why she is in the mountains during her day off. Dae-Jin then hides the yogurt drink he has in his hands and tells her that he will accompany her to the ranger station since that region is confusing. Da-won respectfully denies the help and says she can go by herself.

Yi-gang is fully convinced that the murderer is none other than their captain. All the clues point to him- he is on leave whenever a victim is murdered and the recording of Da-won. She tells Gu-Yeong and officer Eung that Captain has his base duty in the baektogol but why would he go to Jeonmukgol. Gu-Yeong is not ready to listen to her and at this time Captain Dae-Jin enters the room asking what is happening there.

Everyone remains silent. At this time, I felt very bad when the rangers finally find Da-won lying on the rock and her head bleeding . one of the rangers announces that she has no vital signs and was presumed dead.

Yi-gang breaks down hearing it and even the search team rangers cry after seeing one of their colleagues found in such a state. We are then shown Da-won’s hand holding the black gloves of the murderer. Captain Dae-Jin is seen sad too.

Da-won’s body is brought down and sent in an ambulance. Officer Eung informs that the death might be due to a fall from the rocky ridge.
Officer Eung asks Dae-Jin to come for an inquiry. Gu-Yeong tells the officer to talk about that later if he is asking for an inquiry only because of the recording. The officer then tells him that it is not only the recording but also he found the hand gloves of Dae-Jin in the hands of Da-won. (I strongly feel Dae-Jin is not the murderer and someone is setting him up.)

Yi-gang breaks down completely now and asks Dae-Jin why did he kill Da-won and other victims. She then asks whether he was the one who tried killing Hyun-Jo too. Captain Dae-Jin silently gets into the police car.

We are shown Hooded Hyun-Jo lying in the mountain and a drop of tears dripping from his eyes. He then gets up and goes to the mark near the old oak tree. He senses someone has changed the mark sign from what was earlier. At this moment the old man who collects illegal herbs sees Hooded Hyun Jo again and runs as fast as he can. Hyun Jo chases him.

At the Headong ranger station, Gu-Yeong tells Yi-gang that he doesn’t know what happened on a snowy day during Hyun-Jo and her accident and why they went uphill during the dangerous time. He has no clue why she is accusing captain Dae-Jin and why she sent Da-won to the mountains but from the day she came back, everything is a mess. He then asks her why she came back and leaves the room. Yi-gang is devasted and looks at the desk of Da-won and thinks of her memories and cries. At this time the old illegal hiker comes running to the room and tells her he saw Hooded Hyun Jo. Initially, Yi-gang is not in a mood to listen to him but as soon as she hears that Hooded Hyun jo told the man that he did not leave the mark near the old oak tree, she is intrigued and tries to ask him a question.

The man runs away saying he only came to tell the message and thought that if he didn’t relay the message he would die. Yi-gang immediately calls the ranger who found Da-won’s body and asks if he restored the camera near the dead old oak tree.

The ranger denies seeing any camera and on asking if he saw Da-won’s notepad in her rucksack, he says he handed over everything to the police and he didn’t see anything. Even officer Eung deny seeing any notepad.

We are shown the murderer looking into Da-won’s notepad and the camera that was installed near the old dead tree. And we are also shown how the murderer pushed Da-won on the rocky cliff and took her phone and left it in pebble path.

Yi-gang decides to visit the mountains herself in a wheelchair.
She crosses the bridge with her wheelchair and when it comes to climbing the steps she uses her arms and hangs the rope nearby and tries to move forward. She fails at that and then tries to crawl as she speaks in her mind – “I need to see Hyun-Jo. The one that I trusted the most. My colleague who cherished the mountain with all his heart. I must see him. Hyun-Jo. Answer me if you’re up there. Tell me what you saw and what you know.”.

It’s 2019 now, Hyun- Jo is carrying a hiker in a piggyback, and Yi-gang is visibly annoyed by the hiker. As Hyun-Jo drops the hiker at the foot of the hill, the hiker says he is well now and walks on his own.

It seems the hiker has lied that his leg is sprained and used Hyun-Jo to carry him. Yi-gang starts to fight with him but Hyun-Jo stops her. Yi-gang presses Hyun-Jo’s leg as he grunts in pain and she scolds him for not listening to her and carrying the hiker on his own.

As soon as they are finished with the first hiker another announcement comes that another hiker has sprained their leg and very few rangers are available on that day. Yi-gang is annoyed since only they both are working too much.

Hyun-Jo gets up and holds her hand for some time. Seeing her confused he explains he is holding her hand as a repay for pressing his legs. They both then continue their work.

One of the many rangers who were on leave that day are Gu-Yeong and Yang-sun. Gu-Yeong is training her for hiking as he promised to her. They both reach a top of a peak and since it’s her first time, Yang-sun is emotional and speechless at the top of the cliff. Gu-Yeong says if they came at the sunset then both sun and moon would be at the same horizon and the view would be spectacular.

She says this is the first time she feels like a ranger and always she used to feel like a burden at work. Gu-Yeong defends her and says thanks to her they are mobilizing easily because she prepares everything at the office.

He then promises her to take all the parts of the mount jirisan in the coming time. They settle and have snacks that Yang-sun brought. Yang-sun informs him that her mom is coming to the town and wants to meet him. He accepts the meeting but it seems he is thinking about something.

It’s the Mountain spiritual ritual time and promotion exam month. In the monthly plan calendar, we are shown captain Dae-Jin is at night duty for the week. Yi-gang says to Hyun-Jo that this ritual time would be so hectic and they are going to work day and night.

Hyun-Jo says that the mountain spirit should save people and there should not be any accidents. Yi-gang tells him that her grandma used to say before the mountain spirit there would be an evil spirit coming. Earlier she used to think it’s all nonsense until she saw Hyun-Jo.

The chief of the JIrisan national park( who resigned due to the potato bomb incident.) is now a tourist guide. He teaches the student who visits mountain the vegetation in the mountains and all stuff. Captain Dae-Jin comes and meets him and asks him how to resign from his work.

It seems the captain is pretty depressed seeing so many deaths in the mountains considering he should be the one saving them. The ex-chief looks to be pretty close to him and advises him not to give up and work harder to prevent those accidents and deaths.

Captian then shows him a visiting card saying the person – Yang Guen tak (president of mount jirisan cable car promotion committee) has again come to the mountains. . The ex-chief says now the mountain spirit will be infuriated.

The president, Guen-tak is having a campaign and asking people to sign a petition to install cable cars in the mountains. The ex-chief comes and scolds installing cable cars will destroy the mountains more and ecology would be disturbed.

It seems they are not on any good terms and the ex-chief says he will never let cable cars get installed in the mountains and asks the president if he forgot the Black bridge village. Guen-tak who was arguing till now stops and remains silent.

In the Haedong village, the commoners discuss they should talk to the president and make him install the cable cars in their village instead of Jingye-re. Yi-gang’s grandma watches them and says how they have forgotten about the black bridge village incident and have become greedy. Her attention is then captured by the mountain spirit ritual that started that day. Everybody in the village enjoys the ritual. while everything was going alright, to everybody’s fear the mountain spirit flag falls during the ritual.

In the mountain, a middle-aged hiker seems to be tired of the hiking and sick. She waits for help since her phone has no signal. A young man passes by and rudely asks her why in the first place she started hiking if she is so weak. He tells her that he can’t call the rangers because he is doing illegal hiking and offers to help her on his way back.

Yi-gang and Hyun-Jo reach home to find that all their teammates took leave during the busiest days of work and are simply chilling. Hyun-Jo stops Yi-gang from fighting anymore when she finds Gu-Yeong at home. Gu-Yeong took leave saying he is visiting his ancestor’s grave.

When Yi-gang gets inside her home, her grandma makes her sit and says how the mountain spirit flag fell which is a bad omen so there might be a ghost in the mountain. She restricts her from going to the north region – DeokSeoryeong especially black bridge village. Yi-gang thinks it’s all nonsensical and leaves.

The illegal hiker who earlier didn’t help the lady is doing a youtube live near the very same black bridge village that Yi-gang’s grandma warned. He seems to be a YouTuber who does vlogs of haunted places of Korea and introduces his audience to the haunted village of jirisan.

He informs that the village was well maintained until 1991 when the national park was established. After 1991 the entire village which has 15 families vanished. There were rumors that the families are moved to the mountain foothills after that there had been 3 deaths in the nearby villages.

As he speaks he sees some kind of light nearby and tells the audience. Creepy light follows him and the man runs for his life seeing that something chasing him. The episode ends here.

I feel that the light that was chasing the man at the end of the episode was his stunt for his youtube video. Let us check if I am correct in the next episode. From his story, I also feel that the murderer might be from this village. Because the villagers might have been moved to the foothills and after that, the murders started. And Se-wook (the accomplice of the murderer who died) also stayed at the foot of the hill. I don’t know if I am connecting the dots or if I am wrong. Let’s check that out in the coming episodes.

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