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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast: Park Shin-hye, Kim Jae-young
Latest Nielsen rating: 13.6 per cent
Kang Bit-na, portrayed with demonic sass by Park Shin-hye, continues to lord over the courtroom in the entertaining horror-tinged vigilante drama The Judge from Hell. But is she still able to master her own emotions?


That is the question the cola-swilling judge must be beginning to ask herself after steadily losing control of some of her bodily functions throughout the middle episodes of this series.
She is briefly admitted to hospital after not being able to control her heartbeat one evening, and she is utterly distraught later on when her eyes begin to fail her as she cries for the very first time in her long demon’s life.
The common element binding all these moments of physical frailty is the presence of hunky detective Han Da-on – played by Kim Jae-young – whose acts of selflessness, which Bit-na initially found irksome, are now making her experience some unfamiliar emotions.
These feelings are bound to get in the way of her work on Earth, which involves remanding the irredeemable souls of 20 murderers to hell, but her quota may be the least of her worries if her underworld superiors learn of her growing emotional outbursts.

One of her helper demons is convenience-store clerk Lee A-rong, played by Kim A-young, who in reality is the demon Gremory – played by Jeong Ha-dam – whose speciality is condemning demons who are starting to get a little too in touch with their human sides.
Among her victims is a member of a secret monthly demon cooking class meet-up, who she discovers has begun dating a human.
Given A-rong’s close proximity to Bit-na, who has difficulty not drawing attention to herself at the best of times, a collision seems inevitable.
Until episode eight, The Judge from Hell follows a fairly straightforward episodic formula. Bit-na identifies an irredeemable murderer and conspires to let them walk free from her courtroom and into her demon’s trap, while the morally unshakable Da-on, who has learned her true identity, tries to stop her.

That interplay reverses quite dramatically when the show’s episodic structure and traumatic backstory finally catch up with each other. This is an inevitable moment in any K-drama that begins with a vaguely episodic structure, but rarely has the switch been so effectively made as here.
After sending yet another of her freed murderers to hell, this time a demented company chief executive in a nighttime amusement park, Da-on does appear briefly to get the better of Bit-na by dusting sulphur in her eyes and temporarily stripping her of her demonic powers.
But at that moment, he is called to the scene of a murder, that of senior detective Kim So-young (Kim Hye-hwa), who took care of him as a child and has now been killed by the notorious “Killer J”, who massacred his whole family many years earlier.
When Da-on reappears in front of Bit-na, his tune has changed completely. Not only does he ask Bit-na to track down Killer J, he wants to be the one to kill him, and he doesn’t care if that means being sent to hell alongside him.

Bit-na is delighted to welcome this voluntary lamb to the slaughter, but as she slinks confidently away, her smirk gives way to tears that streak her face.
This pushes the show in an exciting new direction, and it was probably about time something like this happened since its premise, initially very amusing, was beginning to get a little repetitive.
There is nothing like witnessing the comeuppance of evil-doers, and seeing it delivered by a giddy Park Shin-hye is a delight. But there are only so many schizophrenic killers and demented mothers she can dispatch with a taste of their own medicine before it gets old.
Of course, in a world full of demons, one should also expect the occasional angel, and we now have one in the shape of Bit-na’s elderly neighbour Oh Mi-ja (Kim Young-ok).

Mi-ja occasionally intervenes to help people without their knowing it and goes about with a glimmer in her eye that suggests she has more of an inkling of what’s going on on Earth than the demons downstairs.
Whether elderly angels and judicial demons will call in reinforcements and duke it out in a fight between good and evil remains to be seen, but The Judge from Hell has set the stage for a compelling final few weeks, during which the moral compass of at least one underworld figure is bound to waver.
The Judge from Hell is streaming on Disney+.


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As demon Kang Bit-na, Park Shin-hye struggles to control her body and emotions in The Judge from Hell as she sends murderers’ souls to hell


As demon Kang Bit-na, Park Shin-hye struggles to control her body and emotions in The Judge from Hell as she sends murderers’ souls to hell.
