The Deal

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

CompletedKIDNAPPING GONE WRONG PICK

The Deal

거래 (Georae) · 2023 · South Korea

WriterHong Jong Seong

DirectorLee Jung Gon

Episodes8 eps · ~45 min each

Where to Watch✅ Viki

⏱️

Binge Time6h 0m

AiredOct 6 – Oct 27, 2023

GenreThriller · Mystery · Crime

Content Rating15+

WavveViki

KidnappingMoral DilemmaBetrayalFriendshipDesperation

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Three childhood friends, one billion-won ransom, and a kidnapping nobody involved knows how to run.

Yoo Seung-ho

Lee Jun-seong

Lead

Kim Dong-hwi

Song Jae-hyo

Lead

Yoo Su-bin

Park Min-woo

Supporting

Lee Joo-young

Cha Soo-an

Supporting

Baek Ji-won

Min-woo’s Mother

Supporting

Kim Do-yoon

Jo Yong-ho

Supporting

Lee Sung-wook

To-jaeng

Supporting

Jung Yong-ju

Oh-chul

Supporting

Woo Ji-hyun

Cha Jae-kyung

Supporting

Jeong In-kyeom

Hwang Chong-jae

Supporting

Shim Young-eun

Chief Kim

Supporting

Shin Hye-ji

Lee Mi-ae

Supporting

Spoiler-light recaps — enough to remember where you left off, nothing that ruins the ride.

EP 01

Kidnapping

Oct 6, 2023

Lee Jun-seong shows up to a reunion drink already buried in gambling debt, and Song Jae-hyo isn’t in much better shape — expelled from med school, out of options, and drunk enough to say the word ‘kidnapping’ out loud before he’s thought it through. Their target is Park Min-woo, the one friend in the group who never had to worry about money a day in his life. The scheme that follows is less a plan than a dare nobody backs out of, and the episode makes sure you feel exactly how unprepared these two are for what they’ve just started.

EP 02

Hukou

Oct 6, 2023

Word gets to Min-woo’s mother faster than Jun-seong and Jae-hyo can control, and the ransom demand stops being theirs to manage. Min-woo, who should be the frightened one tied up in a room, wakes up and does something neither captor expects: he starts negotiating like he’s the one holding leverage. It’s the first sign that this kidnapping was never going to run the way an amateur plan is supposed to.

EP 03

10 Billion

Oct 13, 2023

Min-woo’s counter-deal reshapes the entire dynamic, and suddenly nobody in the room is sure who’s actually in charge of anyone else. Outside pressure starts closing in — family, money, people who were never supposed to know this happened — and the threat of exposure turns from possibility into countdown. Jun-seong’s conscience and Jae-hyo’s desperation start pulling the partnership in two directions at once.

EP 04

Accomplice

Oct 13, 2023

Min-woo stops playing hostage entirely and starts actively steering the deal, which does more to unsettle Jun-seong than anything Jae-hyo has done so far. A hidden witness enters the picture, and the paranoia that follows infects all three of them equally — nobody’s fate is separable from the other two anymore. Whatever this started as, it doesn’t resemble a kidnapping in any conventional sense by this point.

EP 05

Safes

Oct 20, 2023

The fallout starts reaching people outside the original trio, including Cha Soo-an, a police officer whose pursuit adds a layer of consequence the three men can no longer pretend doesn’t exist. Jun-seong keeps running the same math in his head — is the ransom worth what it’s costing him — and keeps landing on an answer he doesn’t like. The show is less interested in the money at this point than in what chasing it has already taken from him.

EP 06

Variables

Oct 20, 2023

The net tightens fast, with law enforcement and other interested parties converging on the trio’s location at the same time Jae-hyo’s decisions get more reckless. Jun-seong reaches something close to a breaking point, and whatever loyalty held the friendship together starts visibly fraying. Min-woo, meanwhile, keeps revealing just enough capacity for manipulation that it gets harder to say who the actual villain of this story is.

EP 07

Quagmire

Oct 27, 2023

Old grievances surface in the middle of the crisis, and the episode finally explains what actually put these three men in a room together in the first place. Jun-seong faces a decision that isn’t really about the ransom anymore — it’s about which version of loyalty he’s still willing to honor. Betrayal stops being a possibility and starts being the episode’s entire subject.

EP 08

The Deal

Oct 27, 2023

Every lie the three of them have been carrying collapses in the finale, and each man’s ending lands as a direct consequence of what he chose over the previous seven episodes. Jun-seong walks away from the ransom entirely, choosing accountability over the money that started all of this. Jae-hyo’s betrayal of Jun-seong becomes the moment that defines him, and Min-woo’s composed, privileged exterior finally cracks to reveal exactly how isolated — and how calculating — he’s always been.

Full spoilers ahead — everything that happens in the finale and what it all means.

What actually happened In the end, Lee Jun-seong turns down his share of the ransom entirely — the money that was supposed to solve his gambling debt becomes the one thing he refuses to touch once he sees what getting it actually cost. That choice functions as the finale’s clearest verdict: whatever else is unresolved, Jun-seong is the one character who tries to walk away clean.

Jae-hyo’s betrayal, not his desperation, defines him The finale is careful to distinguish Jae-hyo’s original crime from what actually condemns him. Desperation is what got him into the kidnapping in episode one; betraying Jun-seong is what the show holds him accountable for by episode eight. It’s a finer distinction than it sounds — The Deal treats financial desperation almost sympathetically, but turning on a friend gets no such mercy.

Min-woo was never the victim Park Min-woo’s manipulative streak, hinted at since he first woke up and started negotiating instead of panicking, finally gets a full accounting in the finale. His privileged upbringing turns out to have isolated him just as thoroughly as poverty isolated Jun-seong and Jae-hyo — money bought him control over the situation, not connection to anyone in it. It’s the finale’s most unsettling reveal precisely because it never once required him to raise his voice.

Cha Soo-an’s pursuit closes the loop The police investigation that’s been trailing the trio since the middle episodes finally catches up, with consequences that extend beyond the three friends themselves. The finale doesn’t let the story stay contained to just Jun-seong, Jae-hyo, and Min-woo — everyone touched by their scheme, however briefly, pays some price for it.

The KDW verdict The Deal never pretends any of its three leads deserves a clean ending, and that refusal is exactly what makes the finale work. Jun-seong gets something closer to peace, but only by giving up the money that was the entire point of the plan. Jae-hyo and Min-woo both lose more than they gain. Eight episodes is a tight runway for this many moral reversals, and the finale earns every one of them by never softening what any of the three men actually did to get there.