Somebody
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Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A dating-app developer is drawn to a killer who uses her creation; desire and danger share one interface.
Kim Sum, a gifted developer with Asperger syndrome, built the chatbot and matching system behind Somebody, a social-connection app run by the company Spectrum under its chief executive, Samantha Jung. Sum has always found other people hard to read. Her friends are Yeong Gi-eun, a police officer who uses a wheelchair and has been her best friend for ten years, and Im Mok-won, a shaman. Sung Yun-oh, an architect, has been using the app under several names to meet women and kill them. It began a year earlier, when a woman he met through it died at his hands during sex in a hotel room, and he found that he enjoyed killing.
When a woman is found dead after a date arranged through Somebody, Gi-eun starts to dig. Yun-oh finds his way to Sum, and each recognises something in the other: he is untroubled by her flatness and her dark thoughts, she by what he is suspected of. After a date set up through one of his accounts leaves her cornered by men she believes mean to rape her, Sum kills one of them, and later admits it made her feel euphoric. Even when she learns that Yun-oh left Gi-eun for dead in a demolition site, she will not help her friends against him. Mok-won sees the angry dead crowding around him. Sum tells a colleague, simply, that she loves him.
The net closes. The body of a restaurant owner is found in a redevelopment zone. Samantha, who has been reading Sum and Yun-oh's chats, secretly passes his account data to Gi-eun through a hacker and haunts him with faked video calls from his victims. Shaken, Yun-oh comes to Sum's door in tears, tells her he should have met her sooner and confesses. He prepares a hideaway, a space made for her, and waits. Sum leaves her phone in a taxi so that Gi-eun cannot follow, goes to him and kills him. She rides away on the back of Mok-won's motorbike, goes to the office and joins her colleagues' video game as if nothing has happened.
Starring
Kang Hae-limas Kim Sum
The developer behind the Somebody app, who has Asperger syndrome and falls for the man using her app to kill.
Kim Sum’s story
Sum built the app's chatbot and matching system, and has always found other people hard to read. Yun-oh is untroubled by her flatness and dark thoughts; she is untroubled by what he is suspected of. Cornered on a false date set up through one of his accounts by men she believes mean to rape her, she kills one of them, and later admits it made her feel euphoric. Even after learning that Yun-oh left her best friend, Gi-eun, for dead, she will not help. When he comes to her door in tears and confesses, she lets him in. Then she leaves her phone in a taxi so that Gi-eun cannot follow, goes to the hideout he has made for her and kills him. She rides away on Mok-won's motorbike and joins her colleagues' video game as if nothing has happened.
Kim Young-kwangas Sung Yun-oh
An architect and serial killer who meets women through the app under false names and is drawn to Sum.
Sung Yun-oh’s story
A year ago a woman Yun-oh met through Somebody died at his hands in a hotel room, and he found that he enjoyed killing. He finds his way to Sum, the app's developer, and she does not flinch from him. Posing as another user, he sends her on a date that ends in a killing, and he leaves her friend Gi-eun for dead. He readies a hideout, a space made for Sum. Haunted by fake video calls from his victims, with the police closing in, he comes to Sum's door in tears, says he should have met her sooner and confesses. He waits for her at the hideout, tells her on a video call that he loves her, and she kills him.
Kim Su-yeonas Yeong Gi-eun
Sum's best friend of ten years, a police officer who uses a wheelchair and hunts the killer on the app.
Yeong Gi-eun’s story
When a woman is found dead after a Somebody date, Gi-eun starts digging on her own, and Yun-oh leaves her for dead in a demolition site. Rescued, she keeps going with Mok-won's help and finds the body of a restaurant owner in a redevelopment zone. When Sum refuses to say what she knows and admits she gave Yun-oh a knife, Gi-eun walks out. With a hacker's help she traces him, lays out the evidence for her colleagues, and the police raid his office. Sum tells her she is going to meet him, but not where; Gi-eun tracks her phone, which Sum has left in a taxi, and the chase leads nowhere.
Kim Yong-jias Im Mok-won
A shaman and friend to Sum and Gi-eun, who senses the dead around Yun-oh and helps Gi-eun close in.
Why it matters
Somebody is a thriller about loneliness turned into a product. Sum builds an app to connect people because connection does not come easily to her, and the most dangerous user of it is the one who connects with her. Jung Ji-woo, who directed it and co-wrote it, lets his heroine love a killer knowingly and declines to explain her, so that the ending lands as a question rather than a verdict; explainers have debated whether Sum is a psychopath or someone ending a life she knows cannot be saved. The series is also plain about the mechanics of harm online: false profiles used to find and isolate women, and a company that reads its users' private messages when it suits it. What it leaves open is whether being understood by one person is worth what that person is.