About Beyond Evil
Beyond Evil (Korean title Goemul, often translated as Monster) is a 2021 JTBC psychological crime thriller set in the fictional small town of Manyang, where an old, unsolved disappearance has quietly shadowed the community for two decades. The series follows Lee Dong-sik, a veteran officer at a tiny rural substation who is widely regarded as eccentric and is privately suspected by some neighbors of knowing more about the town's buried tragedies than he lets on. When a new case surfaces, long-dormant fears resurface with it.
Into Manyang arrives Han Joo-won, a young, elite inspector from a privileged background who has been reassigned to the rural station. Sharp, controlled, and openly distrustful, Joo-won begins watching Dong-sik closely, convinced the older detective may be hiding something. The drama turns their forced partnership into an extended cat-and-mouse game in which observation, suspicion, and shifting alliances matter as much as physical evidence, and in which the audience is rarely allowed to feel certain who is testing whom.
Across sixteen episodes, Beyond Evil keeps its violence largely off the page, treating the underlying crimes in restrained, non-graphic terms while concentrating on character, motive, and moral ambiguity. As the two men circle the town's secrets and each other, the show questions how grief curdles into obsession, how easily a community can decide who is guilty, and whether anyone can pursue the truth without being changed by it. The series was a major critical success and a leading winner at the Baeksang Arts Awards.