The Fiery Priest (Season 1)

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

CompletedVIGILANTE PRIEST PICK

The Fiery Priest (Season 1)

열혈사제 (Yeolhyeolsaje) · 2019 · South Korea

WriterPark Jae-beom

DirectorLee Myung-woo, Park Bo-ram

Episodes40 eps · ~35 min each

AiredFeb 15 – Apr 20, 2019

GenreAction · Comedy · Crime

Content RatingTV-MA

SBSNetflixHuluVikiOnDemandKoreaKOCOWA (Prime)Kocowa

CorruptionVigilante JusticeBuddy CopPriestRevenge

One box. Everything you need to decide.

A priest, a detective, and a prosecutor who make an unlikely case for teamwork.

Kim Nam-gil

Kim Hae-il

Lead

Lee Hanee

Park Kyung-seon

Lead

Kim Sung-kyun

Koo Dae-young

Lead

Go Joon

Hwang Cheol-bum

Lead

Keum Sae-rok

Seo Seung-ah

Lead

Baek Ji-won

Kim In-kyung

Supporting

Ko Kyu-pil

Oh Yo-han

Supporting

Ahn Chang-hwan

Ssongsak

Supporting

Jeon Seong-woo

Han Sung-kyu

Supporting

Um Mun-suk

Jang Ryong

Supporting

Lee Moon-sik

Ki Yong-moon

Supporting

Jeong Young-ju

Jung Dong-ja

Supporting

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

EP 01

Episode 1

Feb 15, 2019

Kim Hae-il’s introduction sets the whole show’s tone in one scene: a corrupt shaman scam gets a taser, not a sermon, and Hae-il gets arrested for it. Exiled to Gudam under his mentor Father Lee Young-joon, he barely has time to settle before Father Lee turns up dead, ruled a suicide within hours. Hae-il doesn’t grieve quietly; he rejects the verdict on the spot and demands a real investigation, which is less a character trait than a promise about the next thirty-nine episodes.

EP 02

Episode 2

Feb 15, 2019

Gudam reveals itself gradually — a prosecutor, Park Kyung-seon, who treats a meth case like a career opportunity; a detective, Goo Dae-young, who’d rather not get involved; and a town quietly run by Hwang Cheol-bum’s money. Hae-il tries to stay out of a protest turned violent, and fails, because restraint was never really his mode. The show pairs his intervention with a new rookie, Seo Seung-ah, joining Dae-young’s team — the ensemble filling in before the plot properly ignites.

EP 03

Episode 3

Feb 16, 2019

Hae-il’s confrontation with Cheol-bum at the protest isn’t subtle, and it isn’t meant to be — this is a priest who solves problems with his fists first and asks forgiveness later. Kyung-seon’s ethics take their first hit when she pockets a bribe, a small moment that matters more in hindsight than it does here. Father Lee, meanwhile, keeps refusing to sell the church’s land to Cheol-bum, which is less a subplot than the reason he’s about to die.

EP 04

Episode 4

Feb 16, 2019

Corruption stops being background texture the moment Jang Ryong’s gang walks free for attacking the church without consequence. A mysterious late-night call to Father Lee is the last thing that happens before he’s found dead on a mountain, and the police close the case as suicide almost before his body is cold. Hae-il’s fury reads as something sharper than grief here, the moment his storyline pivots from priest-with-a-temper to a man building an actual case against everyone who signed off on that verdict.

EP 05

Episode 5

Feb 22, 2019

Denied a Catholic burial for Father Lee because of the suicide ruling, Hae-il does what a priest technically isn’t supposed to do: an unofficial autopsy, via an old NIS contact, that confirms what he already knew. The show is careful to let Kyung-seon’s suspicion start here too, quietly, well before she’s willing to act on it. Cheol-bum wasting no time installing himself as the orphanage’s successor is the episode’s real threat — not because it’s subtle, but because nobody stops him.

EP 06

Episode 6

Feb 22, 2019

The fabricated embezzlement and molestation charges against Father Lee start falling apart under basic scrutiny, which says more about how lazy the frame-up was than how sharp Hae-il is. A quieter scene lands harder than the investigation beats: Ssongsak, the Thai worker Father Lee once helped, asks Hae-il to avenge him, and it’s the first time the show lets its priest look genuinely moved instead of just angry. Flashbacks to his NIS past involving children hint at exactly why that anger runs so deep.

EP 07

Episode 7

Feb 23, 2019

Hae-il’s “sarcastic blessing” at Cheol-bum’s award ceremony is the episode’s showcase moment — public humiliation delivered as scripture, no violence required, and somehow more devastating for it. Finding Father Lee’s hidden journal changes the stakes, turning a hunch into documented proof of a conspiracy. The archdiocese quietly closing the book on Father Lee’s death by accepting the suicide ruling is the show reminding you that institutions, not just individuals, are part of the cover-up.

EP 08

Episode 8

Feb 23, 2019

Writing to the Pope is either the most extreme move a priest can make short of violence, or the only move left when every domestic channel has been bought off — Hae-il picks it anyway, and it works. The forced partnership with Dae-young, who’s secretly been ordered to sabotage the reinvestigation, gives the show its first real odd-couple comedy beat without losing the stakes underneath it. Cheol-bum tightening his grip on the welfare facilities in the background is a reminder the clock is still running.

EP 09

Episode 9

Mar 1, 2019

With the reinvestigation official, the team’s first move — tracking down witnesses — immediately confirms what everyone suspected: the woman who accused Father Lee has vanished, and her family’s cover story doesn’t survive five minutes of questioning. Hae-il humiliating a corrupt official at a press conference is satisfying in the moment, but it’s Seung-ah quietly volunteering for hours of CCTV review that actually moves the case forward. Both witnesses fleeing the country confirms exactly what everyone already suspected.

EP 10

Episode 10

Mar 1, 2019

A direct link between Cheol-bum’s villa and Father Lee’s murder turns suspicion into an actual location, and deleted CCTV footage turns a cover-up theory into a documented crime. Kyung-seon’s conscience gets its first real test, and she passes it in a small, deniable way — reducing a sentence rather than making a speech about corruption. The assassination attempt on Hae-il, foiled by Dae-young of all people, is the episode that finally makes their partnership feel earned instead of just convenient.

EP 11

Episode 11

Mar 2, 2019

The investigation’s center of gravity shifts toward the capital as an assemblyman gets indicted and the team’s reach starts extending past Gudam’s borders. A tense harbor standoff to stop a mob boss’s escape gets undercut by an outside interference the show never fully explains, letting two major players slip through Interpol’s fingers. Seung-ah getting hurt and witnesses getting kidnapped mid-episode is the clearest sign yet that the stakes have outgrown a small-town corruption story.

EP 12

Episode 12

Mar 2, 2019

Cheol-bum’s plan to replace the orphanage with a fraudulent cult front is the kind of scheme the show treats as genuinely, not comedically, monstrous, which is why finding the debt-ridden witnesses feels like a real win right up until the Russian mob ambushes Seung-ah and grabs them back. Kyung-seon getting sidelined by her own boss and assigned to investigate Hae-il instead is corruption doing what corruption does best: turning the system against the people trying to fix it. The parking-lot brawl between Hae-il and Cheol-bum is less a fight scene than a thesis statement.

EP 13

Episode 13

Mar 8, 2019

A child’s food poisoning could have been a throwaway subplot; instead it becomes the episode’s moral center, with Hae-il treating a corrupt catering scheme as connected to the exact same rot that killed Father Lee. Forcing the company owner to cover the child’s medical bills is a small, unglamorous kind of justice, which is precisely why it lands. Kyung-seon’s demotion and the cartel quietly sizing her up as a useful “cleaner” is the episode planting the seed for exactly how compromised she could still become.

EP 14

Episode 14

Mar 8, 2019

Dae-young taking a bullet’s worth of risk to save Hae-il during an assassination attempt is the moment their bickering partnership stops being a bit and starts being real loyalty. Meanwhile Kyung-seon gets courted more directly by the cartel, and the show is smart enough to make the offer genuinely tempting rather than cartoonishly evil. A bribery scandal forcing Dong-ja into a panicked, revealing move is a small crack, but the show has made clear by now that small cracks are how this entire conspiracy eventually falls.

EP 15

Episode 15

Mar 9, 2019

Kim In-kyung’s buried past surfaces through old ledgers, one more sign that nearly every side character in Gudam is hiding something relevant to Father Lee’s death. Dae-young’s forced choice — protect his dead partner’s family or keep obstructing Hae-il — is the show’s best use of moral pressure yet, precisely because there’s no clean answer. Kyung-seon discovering Hae-il’s real NIS background while trying to claw back her career is the kind of dramatic irony the show has been quietly building toward for fifteen episodes.

EP 16

Episode 16

Mar 9, 2019

A hidden fortune becomes the new target, and a nun who “happens” to find an incriminating recording device is the kind of coincidence this show has earned the right to use by now. Kyung-seon’s reassignment to a remote prosecutor’s office, engineered by her own superior, is corruption’s version of exile — remove the inconvenient person rather than deal with what she knows. Cheol-bum’s continued leverage over Dae-young’s dead partner’s family keeps the detective’s loyalty permanently, uncomfortably in question.

EP 17

Episode 17

Mar 15, 2019

Exposing the Health Office bribery should be a win, but the show immediately shows its hand: corrupt officials don’t fight fair, they just rewrite who the villain is. Watching a convenience store clerk and Ssongsak take a beating for helping Hae-il’s case is the episode’s reminder that his crusade has a real cost paid by people with far less power than he has. Kyung-seon’s return to Gudam as the prosecutor assigned to his case, immediately followed by a physical fight between them, is peak Fiery Priest tonal whiplash — and it works.

EP 18

Episode 18

Mar 15, 2019

Getting trapped in a vault with Cheol-bum while hunting for a hundred and fifty million dollars forces Hae-il into the kind of uneasy, temporary alliance the show does better than almost any other corruption drama — enemies who need each other for exactly one scene. Watching Dae-young endure a literal car crusher rather than give up the stolen ledger is the loyalty test the show has been building toward since episode fourteen, and he passes it without hesitation. Dong-ja starting to crack under pressure is the first domino in what’s about to become a much bigger collapse.

EP 19

Episode 19

Mar 16, 2019

Father Han’s collapse is the episode’s emotional gut-punch, and it’s the thing that finally tips Hae-il from righteous anger toward something closer to vengeance. Dae-young saving him from an assassination attempt only delays the inevitable: Hae-il, alone, gets overpowered trying to rescue Yo-han and Ssongsak, a rare moment where the show lets its hero actually lose. Kyung-seon getting a direct, tempting invitation into the cartel is the choice the whole season has been steering her toward.

EP 20

Episode 20

Mar 16, 2019

Confirming Cheol-bum’s villa as the actual murder scene should be the episode’s biggest beat, and it almost gets buried under a genuinely funny botched infiltration that ends with Hae-il knocking out his own prosecutor. What isn’t funny is Kyung-seon finally, unambiguously choosing a side — confronting Cheol-bum directly and drawing a line she can’t walk back from. The show earns that pivot by making her arc slow instead of instant.

EP 21

Episode 21

Mar 22, 2019

A disguised break-in at Cheol-bum’s villa gets Hae-il and Dae-young real forensic evidence — blood traces under luminol — and nearly gets them caught by Kyung-seon walking in at the worst possible moment. Knocking her unconscious to protect their identities is exactly the kind of morally messy choice this show doesn’t apologize for, and her half-remembered suspicion afterward (his fighting style, his eyes) is a nice slow-burn detail. Naming the operation “Dedenchi” against a sitting representative signals the fight is now aimed well above Gudam’s local corruption.

EP 22

Episode 22

Mar 22, 2019

Kyung-seon waking up from that villa encounter and immediately punching Cheol-bum is one of the show’s best character beats — she doesn’t need proof to know who to be angry at. A plot to assassinate a representative and frame Kyung-seon for it is the cartel’s most brazen move yet, and it backfires specifically because she figures out she’s being set up in time to stop it. Hae-il disguised as a woman to prevent a staged suicide is the kind of scene that shouldn’t work tonally and somehow does.

EP 23

Episode 23

Mar 23, 2019

A former mercenary showing up to warn Hae-il off, using his own traumatic past as leverage, is the show finally starting to answer questions it’s been sitting on since episode six. Kyung-seon accusing him outright of being the masked intruder and a former NIS agent gets an unconvincing denial, which tells you everything about how close she’s gotten. Hae-il racing to save her from a mafia assassin isn’t a twist so much as the final confirmation that she’s fully, permanently “Team Priest” now.

EP 24

Episode 24

Mar 23, 2019

Discovering Kyung-seon is now a mafia target reframes the entire investigation as personal, not procedural, for Hae-il. Her response — digging into the cartel’s shared ownership of a nightclub instead of hiding — is the clearest evidence yet that she’s stopped playing defense. Dae-young operating as a double agent while Hae-il feigns capture through Kyung-seon’s quick thinking gives the episode its best piece of teamwork: three people who’ve learned to read each other without needing to plan it out loud.

EP 25

Episode 25

Mar 29, 2019

Watching her own attacker get quietly deported without ever taking her statement is the episode’s clearest illustration of how deep the cover-up actually runs — this is corruption that has never once had to lose. Hae-il infiltrating a club full of drug-addicted enforcers to steal back a Virgin Mary statue is absurd on paper and exactly the show’s register in practice. Kyung-seon formally allying herself with Hae-il’s team by episode’s end confirms what the show has been promising since episode nine.

EP 26

Episode 26

Mar 29, 2019

Recovering in a hospital bed is the closest thing to a breather this show allows Hae-il, and it’s mostly used to formally assemble “Team Priest” as an actual unit instead of a loose alliance. The financial trail finally connects Father Lee’s murder to laundered money moving through the orphanage, which is the first time the show’s central mystery and its ongoing crime-of-the-week structure fully overlap. A nun revealing a secret past as a card shark is the kind of left-field reveal this show treats as completely normal.

EP 27

Episode 27

Mar 30, 2019

Turning Russian gang members against each other requires the entire team to act, badly and hilariously, and the show leans all the way into the comedy without losing the plot’s momentum. Watching Kyung-seon wield a sword mid-operation says more about how far she’s come from the bribe-taking prosecutor of episode three than any speech could. Ssongsak’s hidden fighting skills finally get their moment, proof the show’s quietest character has been underestimated on purpose the whole time.

EP 28

Episode 28

Mar 30, 2019

A forty-eight-hour warrant deadline turns the interrogation of a mob enforcer into a genuine ticking clock, and the team clears it with barely a minute to spare. Testimony that directly implicates Cheol-bum in a murder and an assassination attempt is the kind of hard evidence this show has made you wait twenty-eight episodes for. Kyung-seon standing her ground against a superior while literally holding a sword is as blunt a metaphor as the show gets, and it earns the moment anyway.

EP 29

Episode 29

Apr 5, 2019

A decoy confession lets Cheol-bum and the real power players walk free, and the fallout is immediate and unglamorous: Kyung-seon loses her cases, the detectives get reassigned, and the show makes clear that winning a battle here rarely means winning the war. Her fake return to corruption, groveling to regain an insider position, is the smartest move she’s made all season, precisely because it looks like a defeat from the outside. A recovered recording finally naming names is the reward for playing the long con.

EP 30

Episode 30

Apr 5, 2019

Retrieving the Rising Moon ledgers means winning them in a gambling match, which means the show gets to introduce Sister Kim’s secret past as a legendary card shark with a nickname good enough to earn its own reveal. Her hesitation before agreeing feels earned rather than manufactured — this is a woman who buried that identity for a reason. Cheol-bum’s own interest in the ledgers is the episode’s reminder that everyone in this story wants the same evidence for different reasons.

EP 31

Episode 31

Apr 6, 2019

A fabricated letter accusing Hae-il of killing children, released by the same mercenary from episode twenty-three, is the show’s most serious character attack on him yet, and the cult-organized protests outside his church make it visceral rather than abstract. Sister Kim’s gambling skills pay off in the form of a thumb drive full of evidence, quietly one of the season’s more satisfying long-game payoffs. Cheol-bum’s fear that his own allies are planning to eliminate him signals the corrupt alliance is finally starting to eat itself.

EP 32

Episode 32

Apr 6, 2019

Ordering Hae-il shipped off to Argentina is the cartel’s cleanest way to remove him without violence, and Kyung-seon’s counter — blackmailing a prosecutor with a fabricated assault story — is exactly the kind of morally chaotic solution this show has trained you to expect from her by now. A councilwoman known as the “Bad Hair Lady Thug” finally getting arrested is a small, satisfying dismantling of the network. The detectives facing discipline but staying loyal to each other says more about the show’s real values than any of its bigger plot beats.

EP 33

Episode 33

Apr 12, 2019

Three assassins sent after Hae-il’s allies leave Seung-ah critically injured, and the show finally lets its priest’s fury stop being righteous and start being frightening — the beating he gives the mercenary who ordered it isn’t played for catharsis so much as warning. Watching the corrupt alliance start eating its own, with Cheol-bum ambushed by the same side he’s supposedly loyal to, confirms there was never any real solidarity among the villains. Plotting to intercept a money transfer sets up the heist the whole back half has been building toward.

EP 34

Episode 34

Apr 12, 2019

The heist plan — incapacitating an entire crew with a laxative — is the show’s funniest idea deployed at its most dangerous moment, which is exactly the tonal high-wire act it’s built its reputation on. Getting several key players trapped together in an oxygen-depleting vault turns a caper into a survival scenario in the space of one scene. A mercenary revealing he’s been bugging his own ally’s office is the kind of betrayal that makes clear nobody in this conspiracy actually trusts anybody else.

EP 35

Episode 35

Apr 13, 2019

Surviving the vault takes an assist nobody saw coming — a Russian thug blasting through a wall built too cheaply to actually hold — which is the kind of plot mechanics this show gets away with because it’s earned the audience’s goodwill by now. A temporary truce between Hae-il and Cheol-bum against a common enemy reframes the season’s central villain as just one more piece on a much bigger board. The savage attack on Father Han right after a rare lighthearted scene with Hae-il is the show’s cruelest gut-punch yet, timed for maximum damage.

EP 36

Episode 36

Apr 13, 2019

Persuading false witnesses to recant should feel like a win, and it does, right up until Cheol-bum admits he didn’t personally kill Father Lee — he just knows who did. That single confession reframes the entire season’s central mystery in one sentence. An ambush that leaves Father Han severely injured is the last straw for Hae-il’s composure, and the show is explicit that what comes next stops being justice and turns into vengeance.

EP 37

Episode 37

Apr 19, 2019

Father Han’s critical condition is the breaking point the show has been building toward for two episodes, and Hae-il’s response — resigning from the priesthood outright — is the most drastic thing he’s done all season. Cheol-bum, now a fugitive with nothing left to protect, finally names the real killer: Chief Prosecutor Kang. Hae-il seeking out an old NIS contact for a weapon signals the countdown has already started.

EP 38

Episode 38

Apr 19, 2019

Shedding the collar for good, Hae-il undergoes something closer to a transformation than a plan — the show visually and narratively commits to the idea that its priest is gone and its agent is back. His friends’ attempts to stop him land as genuine fear rather than plot obligation, because by this point the show has spent thirty-seven episodes proving how much they actually care about him. A hostage standoff with the mercenary who’s tormented him all season is staged as the point of no return, not just another fight scene.

EP 39

Episode 39

Apr 20, 2019

Cornering the man responsible for both his mentor’s death and Father Han’s beating, Hae-il gets close enough to end it — and it’s his friends physically arriving to stop him, not his own conscience, that pulls him back. That choice matters: the show argues his restraint was never innate, it was earned through the people around him. Father Han waking up in the hospital is the mercy the season needed before its final confrontation, and Hae-il’s declared intent to leave the priesthood anyway shows how much this cost him even in victory.

EP 40

Episode 40

Apr 20, 2019

The finale pushes Hae-il to the actual edge of pulling a trigger, and it’s Dae-young — not fate, not restraint — who takes the shot that saves him from becoming what he swore to stop. Kyung-seon choosing to confess her own past corruption rather than bury it is the season’s cleanest redemption arc, rewarded with a real second chance instead of a punishment. Hae-il’s return to the collar after a visit from a papal envoy closes the loop the premiere opened: a hot-tempered priest who spent forty episodes proving faith and fury don’t have to cancel each other out.

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

What actually happened The finale answers its two biggest questions in quick succession. Chief Prosecutor Kang Seok-tae is confirmed as Father Lee’s actual killer, with Hwang Cheol-bum having only disposed of the body under threat — and when Hae-il gets close enough to execute the man responsible for both that murder and Father Han’s near-fatal beating, it’s Goo Dae-young who pulls the trigger first, saving Hae-il from becoming what he swore to destroy. Kyung-seon closes her own arc by writing a full confession of her past corruption rather than hiding it, and is rewarded with a genuine second chance to fight from inside the system. Hae-il, after a period of reflection and an unexpected visit from a papal envoy, returns to his collar and reunites with the team that spent forty episodes refusing to let him go.

Why Dae-young has to be the one to pull the trigger This isn’t a detail the show leaves to chance. Hae-il getting talked down by his own conscience would have been a tidier ending, but a less honest one — the whole season has argued that Hae-il’s restraint was never innate, it was something his friends built around him one loyalty test at a time. Letting Dae-young, the reluctant partner who spent the first act sabotaging him, be the one who saves Hae-il from himself is the show cashing in every scene of grudging trust it spent thirty-nine episodes accumulating.

Who actually killed Father Lee — and why the answer took this long The season’s central mystery resolves exactly where the smartest viewers probably suspected by the midpoint: not with the visible villain, Cheol-bum, but with Chief Prosecutor Kang, the institutional figure who never had to get his hands dirty because men like Cheol-bum did it for him. Making Cheol-bum a fugitive-turned-informant rather than the final boss is the show’s clearest statement about how corruption actually works — the man in the expensive suit signing off on cover-ups is more dangerous than the gangster enforcing them.

Kyung-seon’s ending is a redemption, not a punishment Most corruption dramas would end a character like Kyung-seon in disgrace, or with a tragic sacrifice that lets the story feel edgy without following through. The Fiery Priest does something more interesting: it lets her confess fully, on her own terms, and then hands her a real second chance to keep working the system from inside it. That’s a specific, deliberate contrast to how the actual corrupt officials get handled — confession earns you a future here, silence and denial don’t.

The KDW verdict Forty episodes is a long commitment for a show that spends half its runtime as slapstick comedy and the other half as a genuinely grim murder conspiracy, but The Fiery Priest earns the tonal whiplash by never letting either mode undercut the other. It ends exactly where it should: with its priest choosing faith over vengeance, but only because the people around him refused to let him choose alone.