Nam-san’s younger partner, Ji-Wan has a crush on Su-na before her kidnapping, and her sudden disappearance leads him to urge Nam-san to bring her to justice while rescuing her from her kidnappers. As Nam-san already considers Su-na his daughter in spirit, he agrees and joins forces with special agent Seargent Eun-ho (An Ji-hye), who also wishes to help catch the perpetrators. A deranged scientist named Dr. Yang seems to be at the center of this chaos, and he believes that conducting horrific experiments on teens can help save humanity, his twisted beliefs quickly garnering a cult following.
In a bonfire scene with Eun-ho (and a sleeping Ji-wan), Nam-san confesses that he is “not a good person” and that he has blood on his hands. This confession is prompted after Eun-ho says that she couldn’t have gotten to the bottom of the Su-na disappearance without his help, and Nam-san responds by acknowledging his brutal past while still expressing affection for Su-na. In an interview with The Post, Ma Dong-seok talked about this scene and how it provides a glimpse into this complicated character:
“That scene was supposed to be longer, but we edited it. It may not be totally clear, but he has a daughter who died before the movie starts. If there’s a sequel, we’ll have more time to show his backstory…Characters who have flaws, who have problems, are really important to me. In a movie you don’t have much time to learn about a character, so it’s important to give them some depth.”
A potential sequel could dive deeper into Nam-san’s past, and allow us to understand how he became the man he is today. Until then, we will have to stick to the action-packed thrills provided by “Badland Hunters.”