Sumona Sinha, Silchar, Assam

‘Truth’, it is easy to lie but if one knows the beauty of truth, they will always follow the path of truth. It is seen from childhood, we are always taught to tell the truth, and speaking the truth always provides us with immense peace and satisfaction. When someone lies the conscience of that person pokes him every time that he has spoken a lie, and this disturbs the inner peace of the person. Nothing is more important than inner satisfaction and peace. Dependant (피고인) also known as Innocent Defendant stars Ji Sung, Um Ki-joon, Kwon Yu-ri, Oh Chang-seok, and Uhm Hyun-kyung.

Plot

The drama portrays the story of Park Jung-woo (Ji Sung), a renowned prosecutor at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. One day after waking up, he learns that he was accused of murdering his own family and found himself a convict on death row. Suddenly his life took an unexpected turn from being a prosecutor to a killer. He was suffering from temporary amnesia and couldn’t remember what really happened on that day.

After finding himself in jail he asked everyone where his wife and daughter were and people told him that he killed them. No one believed him as they think that Jung-woo was pretending to have amnesia to avoid getting punished. He kept repeating that the last thing he could remember was attending his daughter’s birthday and after that, he went off to sleep.

He wasn’t ready to accept the fact that he had killed his own family and wondered about the reason behind his life. So one day, Jung-woo asked his prosecutor friend to take him to his house where the murder took place; he wanted to see if he could remember anything. He tried every means possible to remember anything but he failed to achieve his goal.

As time passed by, he too started believing that he killed his own family and gave up on his trial. But one day his mother-in-law went to meet him and gave him a paper and told him that he had given it to her at the funeral; “Don’t clean the house” was written on that paper. This gave him hope and he started reviewing his case details. Astonishingly, on the day of his trial, the prosecutor submitted a piece of evidence that showed Jung-woo accepting the fact that he murdered his daughter. After watching the video he was heartbroken and started believing that he really was a killer and made the decision to take his own life. 

While he was preparing to take his life, one of his cellmates said to the protagonist, “Why are you taking your own life, you didn’t kill your daughter.” he was shocked and confused to hear that and wondered how the person knew that he didn’t kill his daughter. The prisoner was released from custody the next day and Jung-woo had asked his lawyer to follow him and find out what he knows about his daughter.

Jung-woo’s life takes a sudden turn when one day, he finds in his cell something he had written about what went down on the day of the murder; seeing that he started believing he was being falsely accused of killing his family. As he started to uncover the clues behind that fateful day many ugly truths started coming up and it was seen that all of them were connected to the CEO of Chamyung Group, Cha Sun-ho (Um Ki-joon). 

Jung-woo remembered that the last case he fought was against Cha Min-ho (Um Ki-joon) who was the son of the founder of Chamyung Group. Cha Min-ho has an elder identical twin named Cha Sun-ho. Both brothers were highly different from each other. The elder brother was good at everything while Min-ho always played around and didn’t have any sense of responsibility.

One day Min-ho killed a woman and that case was handled by Jung-woo. After collecting solid evidence Jung-woo went to arrest Min-ho and Sun-ho told Min-ho to turn himself in, but the wicked Min-ho killed his own brother and took his place and made his brother Cha Min-ho. But Jung-woo always believed that Min-ho was impersonating his brother; unfortunately, he always failed to prove that the man was not Sun-ho. 

As he regained his memory, the truth started to unfold slowly, and we learned that Min-ho was the one who killed Jung-woo’s wife as an act of revenge against Jung-woo and he was also the mastermind behind sending Jung-woo to jail and making him believe that he killed his own family. Finally, in the last episode, Jung-woo makes Min-ho accept the fact that he killed his brother, and at the same time, he was living falsely as Sun-ho. Thus, the story ends with Min-ho going to jail and Jung-woo finding his daughter, who was alive this whole time.  

Overall Impression

Innocent Defendant is very popular for its innovative storyline and its twist and turns. It shows how a man can play with the minds of people and manipulate their thoughts. It also shows how a man can turn the ‘Truth’ into the ‘False’ and the ‘False’ into the ‘Truth’ and how far a man can go to fulfill his selfish desires and never thinks twice before doing the worst; man is the biggest enemy of man.