Lee Na-young signaled a bold counterattack despite mounting pressure from Seo Hyun-woo.
In Episode 5 of the ENA Monday-Tuesday drama Honor: Their Courtroom, which aired on Feb. 16, the truth behind the “Korea University law student disappearance case” from 20 years ago involving the three lawyers of L&J (Listen & Join) was finally revealed. Yoon Ra-young (Lee Na-young) had suffered dating violence from her boyfriend Park Joo-hwan simply for smiling at another man. When Kang Shin-jae (Jung Eun-chae) tried to intervene to save her friend, she was also threatened with strangulation. In response, Hwang Hyun-jin (Lee Chung-ah) swung a pipe, causing Park Joo-hwan to fall and strike his head before plunging into a lake. He was later found in a hospital days after being reported missing but had lost his memory due to brain hemorrhage complications and went abroad for rehabilitation. Park Joo-hwan eventually resurfaced under a new identity as prosecutor Park Je-yeol (Seo Hyun-woo).
However, Park Je-yeol, who appeared to have regained his memory, claimed he was not the perpetrator. He expressed vengeful resentment toward Yoon Ra-young, who had broken up with him via text and never visited him in the hospital. Mocking her by saying he never wanted to meet his friend as a suspect, he raised the possibility of reopening the investigation. His shameless claim that victims could never escape their personal hell filled Yoon Ra-young with suffocating disgust.
Suspecting that Park Je-yeol’s sudden reappearance after 20 years was connected to the secret prostitution app ConnectIn, the L&J trio reopened their investigation into past victims. They discovered that both juvenile sexual assault victim Jo Yoo-jung (Park Se-hyun) and drug offender Lee Sun-hwa (Baek Ji-hye) had received suspended indictments from Park Je-yeol. When they learned that Lee Sun-hwa had introduced Han Min-seo (Jeon So-young) to ConnectIn, the pieces finally came together. Convinced that Park Je-yeol had been supplying female suspects to a prostitution cartel in exchange for prosecutorial leniency, Kang Shin-jae confronted him. Park Je-yeol admitted he had regained his memory and secured DNA evidence, warning her to “stay away from ConnectIn.”
Having grasped his true intentions, the L&J trio resolved never to surrender to him, even if it meant losing everything they had built. But an unexpected crisis emerged. Kwon Joong-hyun (Lee Hae-young), the second-in-command at Haeil, was revealed to be a ConnectIn user and was appointed as L&J’s new representative, stripping Kang Shin-jae of her position. This was the result of a deal with Haeil’s chairwoman Sung Tae-im (Kim Mi-sook), who discovered Kang Shin-jae’s attempt to establish a public foundation. Kwon Joong-hyun knelt and promised to take responsibility and bring Kang Shin-jae back under Haeil’s control.
Meanwhile, Sung Tae-im intentionally leaked rumors of an engagement between her daughter Kang Shin-jae and Baek Tae-joo (Yeon Woo-jin), CEO of IT company The Prime, to the press in an apparent effort to suppress any exposure of ConnectIn.
Hwang Hyun-jin also faced danger when Park Je-yeol assigned the reopened investigation of the 20-year-old case to her husband Goo Sun-gyu (Choi Young-joon). His cruel intention was to make Goo Sun-gyu personally discover that his wife had once been suspected of attempted murder. Park Je-yeol revealed that he had been Yoon Ra-young’s boyfriend and implied that all three women had been present at the scene but escaped suspicion by corroborating each other’s alibis. Already harboring doubts, Goo Sun-gyu was left conflicted over Park Je-yeol’s motives.
Yoon Ra-young, however, refused to back down. Having represented countless female victims of sexual violence, she declared, “We should have fought for ourselves at least once,” resolving to expose ConnectIn and confront the trauma rooted in her past. Realizing that Park Je-yeol’s DNA evidence involved forensic examiner Hong Yeon-hee (Baek Eun-hye), who had once described her husband as “hell,” Yoon Ra-young confronted her directly, questioning her motives.
But Hong Yeon-hee, already manipulated by Park Je-yeol, accused her in return, saying, “It was you, wasn’t it? The one who tried to kill my husband.” Yoon Ra-young appeared to admit it was a mistake, but then delivered a chilling reversal, saying, “I should have killed him back then.” The shocking line ignited anticipation over how she would use Hong Yeon-hee as a decisive counterattack card in the episodes ahead.
The episode recorded nationwide ratings of 3.1 percent and 3.0 percent in the Seoul metropolitan area, according to Nielsen Korea.
Episode 6 of Honor: Their Courtroom airs on Feb. 17 at 10 p.m. on ENA and is also available on Genie TV and Coupang Play.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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