The First Responders (Season 2)

Start here — the basics before the first scene.

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The First Responders (Season 2)

소방서 옆 경찰서 그리고 국과수 (Sobangseo Yeop Gyeongchalseo Geurigo Gukgwasu) · 2023 · South Korea

WriterMin Ji-eun

DirectorShin Kyung-soo

Episodes12 eps · ~70 min each

Where to Watch✅ Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+

⏱️

Binge Time14h 0m

AiredAug 4 – Sep 9, 2023

GenreAction · Thriller · Mystery

Content Rating15+

SBSDisney+HuluApple TV+

CrimeInvestigationPoliceFirefighterForensic Science

One glance, one verdict — everything you need is right here.

Kim Rae-won leads a deep ensemble of police, firefighters, and forensic officers who operate better together than any one department could alone.

Kim Rae-won

Jin Ho-gae

Lead

Son Ho-jun

Bong Do-jin

Lead

Gong Seung-yeon

Song Seol

Supporting

Son Ji-yoon

Yoon Hong

Supporting

Kang Ki-doong

Gong Myeong-pil

Supporting

Oh Eui-sik

Kang Do-ha

Supporting

Seo Hyun-chul

Baek Cham

Supporting

Ji Woo

Bong An-na

Supporting

Baek Eun-hae

Woo Sam-soon

Supporting

Woo Mi-hwa

Supporting

Jung Jin-woo

Supporting

Lee Woo-je

Supporting

Episode-by-episode, kept spoiler-light on purpose.

EP 01

Code Orange

Aug 4, 2023

Jin Ho-gae does not approach the serial arsonist the way the department expects him to. He goes to prison to talk to someone who once set fires for similar reasons, because understanding why someone burns things down is more useful than cataloguing what they burned. The show announces its working method in this opening episode: intuition applied systematically, with fire and a paramedic response always nearby to remind everyone what is at stake if they get it wrong.

EP 02

Code Red

Aug 5, 2023

Bong Do-jin finds the wrench in Episode 2 — a small, specific detail that opens the whole investigation. Song Seol nearly does not make it through a rescue. The first two episodes function as a single unit, establishing the stakes and the rhythm: every case is a crisis, every crisis has a cost, and the three agencies are discovering that they work better together than the organizational chart suggests.

EP 03

Code Black

Aug 11, 2023

The arson investigation expands: more victims, more complex motives, more evidence for Ho-gae to arrange in sequence. Bong Do-jin’s ability to read fire — how it spread, what was used, what the pattern reveals about intent — proves to be exactly what the detective needs. The personal toll on both of them is handled without flinching, and without stopping the investigation to process it.

EP 04

Code Blue

Aug 12, 2023

Episode 4 is the one that defines Season 2. The serial arsonist’s final plan traps Song Seol with a bomb and forces Ho-gae to race against a timer that the show makes feel genuinely live. He disarms it. The criminal is caught. The case closes. Then Bong Do-jin dies preserving the evidence chain, because he understood that a case is only closed if the evidence holds. The rest of the season is everything that comes after.

EP 05

Code Green

Aug 18, 2023

The grief does not consume the episode — which is the right call. Kang Do-ha arrives from the NFS to fill the gap in the team’s forensic capability, which means the investigative machine has to keep running while Ho-gae and Song Seol are still processing what they lost. The show handles the transition without rushing it.

EP 06

Code Yellow

Aug 19, 2023

The new team’s first real test under pressure. Ho-gae operates the same way he always does; what changes is the evidence trail, which now runs through channels the forensic team can read faster. Song Seol saves someone. The episode is functional more than exceptional — the show assembling its new components, under real stakes, before the next thing arrives.

EP 07

Hot Zone

Aug 25, 2023

A body is found in a junkyard with a bomb implanted inside it. The device is discovered mid-autopsy in the NFS building, which is immediately locked down and held hostage by a hacker threatening further explosions. The First Responders Season 2 sends its reconstituted team into the most immediately dangerous situation it has designed so far — and then Song Seol and Kang Do-ha choose to stay and disarm it. They do not discuss it. They just stay.

EP 08

Code Green

Aug 26, 2023

The NFS bomb case resolves. The hacker is traced to a gangster organization attempting to tamper with court evidence; a judge’s kidnapped son is rescued; the criminals are arrested. Each element lands in sequence with procedural efficiency. Then Lawyer Yang is murdered in a way that signals the show is shifting from cases to something more systemic.

EP 09

Code Purple

Sep 1, 2023

Lawyer Yang’s autopsy returns a detail that reframes everything: organs are missing. Forensic doctor Han Se-jin joins the investigation. Ho-gae maps what he is seeing against a name he has been carrying: Dex. The episode turns from procedural to manhunt, and the name Dex acquires weight that the rest of the season will have to earn.

EP 10

Code White

Sep 2, 2023

Ma Joong-do was poisoned with potassium. The murder was engineered to look like something else and nearly succeeded. Ho-gae maps Dex’s network with the same methodical care that has characterized his work all season, while Song Seol navigates the accumulated trauma since Episode 4. Ho-gae’s support in these scenes is quiet and exactly calibrated — the show’s most accurate rendering of their relationship.

EP 11

Code Red

Sep 8, 2023

Dex places Ho-gae’s father inside a bomb’s radius and compels him to erase criminal DNA records — deliberately compromising an investigation he built. Ho-gae does it. Then he orchestrates his own apparent death in a caravan explosion. Episode 11 is where the season shows its hand: the detective has been thinking ahead, and the faked death is the move that finally puts Dex within reach.

EP 12

Dying Message

Sep 9, 2023

Ho-gae returns. The finale does not waste time on revelations — everyone who needs to know already knows — and moves directly to dismantling Dex’s last plan: landmines and a lethal injection intended for Song Seol. The team handles each element in sequence with the coordinated precision the season has been building toward. Ho-gae defeats Dex in a fight that ends in an arrest rather than a kill. The first responders of Taewon, fractured and rebuilt and fractured again, are still standing.

From here on, full spoilers — the ending, unpacked.

What actually happens Jin Ho-gae, having faked his death in Episode 11, returns in the finale to confront Dex directly with Song Seol and Kang Do-ha as backup. Dex’s final plan — landmines and a lethal injection intended for Song Seol — is dismantled by the same coordinated three-agency response that defines the entire series. Ho-gae defeats Dex in a fight that plays as relief rather than triumph; Dex is taken alive for prosecution. Life imprisonment.

The romantic resolution The show earns its final kiss. Ho-gae and Song Seol’s relationship has been building under the surface of twelve episodes and two seasons of life-threatening situations — the final acknowledgment is not a soft moment dropped in after the climax but a recognition that has been deferred through two seasons of refusing to be the wrong kind of drama. It carries the weight of everything that had to happen before it could.

Bong Do-jin’s place in the ending Bong Do-jin’s death in Episode 4 is what Season 2 is really about, even when it is about Dex. The forensic evidence chain he died to protect is the same chain that brings the case against Dex to its conclusion. The finale makes this explicit: what Do-jin sacrificed directly enables what Ho-gae can prove. The show connects the sacrifice to the outcome without sentimentalizing it — it is simply the cost of what justice required.

Kang Do-ha’s arc The NFS forensic officer who joined the team as an outsider ends the season as its most capable member in the final crisis. Oh Eui-sik plays Kang Do-ha with enough dry efficiency that his investment in the team only fully shows once — in the finale, when he stays to defuse rather than evacuating. That one choice tells you what twelve episodes built in him.

The KDW verdict Season 2 of The First Responders does the hardest thing a sequel can do: it justifies its own existence. By killing its most popular character at the midpoint and using that death as structural fuel for everything that follows, it becomes a more complex and emotionally honest show than the one it follows. Dex is among the more credible antagonists in recent Korean crime drama — specific, methodical, and threatening in proportion to what the show has taught you to value. The finale earns its ending.