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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Kim Nam-gil, Lee Hanee, Kim Sung-kyun
Latest Nielsen rating: 10.1 per cent
Kim Nam-gil’s unorthodox priest Kim Hae-il is back to exact his particular brand of divine justice in The Fiery Priest season two, returning to Korean broadcasting channel SBS five years after the original hit series.
Kim’s priest is still surrounded by the timid but hard-headed detective Goo Dae-young (Kim Sung-kyun) and the ambitious prosecutor Park Kyung-sun (Lee Hanee), but this season the action heads south as Hae-il investigates a dangerous drug ring in Busan.


Joining the shenanigans this time around are Bibi (The Worst of Evil) as undercover police officer Gu Ja-young, Seo Hyun-woo (Uncle Samsik) as crooked Busan prosecutor Nam Doo-heon, and Sung Joon, who recently shared the screen with Kim Nam-gil in Island, as the vicious gangster Kim Hong-sik.
As fans of the first season will remember, Hae-il is far from your usual priest.
He has some anger management issues, to put it mildly, and while he does his best to temper his outbursts, he allows himself to vent – with his fists – when he is faced with evildoers. He happens to be very handy with those fists as he used to be an intelligence agent.
At the beginning of season two, Hae-il is still engaged in the same push-and-pull of piousness and pugilism, only this time he is at a temple, dressed in Buddhist robes.

A group of tattooed bad guys drives up to the temple, having found some pretext to burn it to the ground in some condo redevelopment scheme. What they do not count on is Hae-il’s monk, who soon starts to beat the living daylights out of them.
Mid-fight, the show gives up any pretence of a new religious focus. In a slow-motion shot, Hae-il drops his robes, revealing his priest’s cloak and collar underneath.
Following this action-packed opening salvo, Hae-il returns to his church in the Gudam district.
His motley crew there include Sister Kim In-kyung (Baek Ji-won), Father Han Sung-kyu (Jeon Sung-woo), muscly Thai delivery driver Song Sac (Ahn Chang-hwan) and convenience store clerk Oh Yo-han (Ko Kyu-pil), all of whom share Hae-il’s hot temper.

Among his flock is also the student Lee Sang-yeon (Moon Woo-jin), who is accosted by some people one night who shove drugs down his throat. Their plan is to make him addicted and come back for more, but what they do not know is that Sang-yeon has a heart condition.
The next morning, Sang-yeon collapses during Hae-il’s service and falls into a coma.
With the help of his crew, Hae-il soon finds and beats up the perpetrators, but the buck does not stop there. He discovers that they are connected to a drug-dealing network operating across the country, but originating in Busan. He packs his bags and heads to the source.
Meanwhile, prosecutor Park Kyung-sun is busy busting a drug crime in America, where she spends the first two episodes, before applying her narcotics expertise to her home country when she returns.

Just as other recent popular shows such as Strong Girl Nam-soon have, The Fiery Priest season two invents a debauched Korean nightlife awash with drugs.
Revellers openly pop pills in a bustling Busan nightclub, where an assemblyman’s son goes on a drug-fuelled rampage, stopped by the police while hovering over an unconscious woman with a broken bottle.
Despite being caught red-handed, the son gets off, thanks to the help of the oily prosecutor Nam Doo-heon. This earns Doo-heon, who is also in thick with the Busan drug trade, a big political favour, which he uses to quash the drug investigation in Gudam that kicks off after Sang-yeon falls into a coma.
When Hae-il later stalks Busan’s neon-lined streets, druggies are sprawled across the tarmac and scoring in every alley.

Sensationalised drug-taking notwithstanding, the show mostly delivers as a vibrant action comedy, centred around Kim’s foul-mouthed and grinning priest, but filled with a wide array of colourful characters.
The first episode largely takes place in Seoul, but by episode two the action has moved to Busan, a colourful city known for its laid-back coastal atmosphere, which proves to be a strong match for the series’ tone.
Broad and undemanding, this new coastal adventure for Korea’s most wound-up seminarian should prove a welcome return for fans of the first season.
The Fiery Priest season two is streaming on Disney+.


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Korea’s most temperamental priest returns for a second outing, this time delivering his unique brand of divine justice to criminals in Busan


Korea’s most temperamental priest returns for a second outing, this time delivering his unique brand of divine justice to criminals in Busan.
