If Trigger were a U.S. production, the action thriller that follows a police force as they deal with an influx of guns into their city wouldn’t have a very novel premise. In the U.S., where gun violence was declared a public health crisis last year, there are more guns than there are people, with an estimated 120.5 guns per every 100 people.
But in South Korea, where Trigger is set, there are only 0.2 guns per every 100 people. Korean gun control laws are strict, and the weapons are practically a non-issue when it comes to public safety. While gun violence does occur, as was the case last week when a father shot his adult son using a homemade gun, it is a rarity in Korea, where private gun ownership is uncommon.
According to a 2022 article in the Korea Herald, private guns are intended for shooting athletes, manufacturers and sellers of firearms, and for those who need them for construction or as props in film or TV production. Licensed hunters may apply for gun ownership, but they must go through a rigorous qualification process and are only allowed to keep their guns at home during hunting season. Other times of the year, the firearms must be stored at the local police department. Otherwise, only authorized personnel in security-related fields can be in possession of firearms, and often, police officers choose not to carry them.
Trigger envisions a world where gun control laws in Korea are ignored
Trigger, a Netflix K-drama from writer-director Kwon Oh-seung (Midnight), imagines what would happen if all of these regulations were ignored, and unregistered, highly deadly firearms started streaming mysteriously and rapidly into the country.
Across 10 anxiety-inducing episodes, we follow police protagonist Lee Do (Island’s Kim Nam-gil) as he tries to keep Korean society from falling into a panic-induced frenzy, and succumbing to a status quo where gun violence is the norm. The thriller is simultaneously a parable for Korean viewers and a mirror for American viewers, who already live in a society where buying a gun can take as few as five clicks.
Who is behind the gun plot in Trigger?
The guns in Trigger are being funneled into the country by the fictional International Rifle Union (IRU), a black market arms dealer with immense political and economic power globally. The person behind the plan is Moon Baek (Evilive’s Kim Young-kwang).
Baek stumbles upon the IRU when as a kid, looking for revenge after being trafficked from Korea to the United States for his organs. Jake, one of the organization’s higher-ups, sees something valuable in the desperate, vengeful kid. He raises Baek to be a part of the organization.
The IRU’s entrance into Korea is facilitated by Baek, who has been diagnosed with six months to live due to cancer. While Baek presumably presents the plan to Jake as a business opportunity, he is really looking for retribution against the country that failed him. Upon his arrival in Korea, Baek murders the man who made his childhood a living hell. He hides bullets in the ceiling of the man’s apartment, a signal to officials that everything in Korea is about to change.
Baek uses some local gangsters, posing as regular mail couriers, to distribute the guns. He targets individuals who are marginalized for some reason or another. Many of them are physically and mentally bullied by the people in their lives. “Everyone carries a trigger in their heart,” a psychologist says early in the show’s run. Trigger implies that everyone is capable of violence, and it is the job of a functional society not to give its citizens access to a weapon that can so easily lead to violent self-destruction.
Lee Do’s backstory explained
Lee Do serves as a counterpoint to Baek’s nihilistic ruthlessness. While Do’s childhood may not have been quite as horrific, he didn’t have it easy. His parents and brother were killed during a home robbery when he was just a child. Immediately following the incident, Do takes a gun off of
Captain Jo’s (Kim Won-hae) desk and aims it at the man who killed his family, intending to pull the trigger. The captain talks him out of it, but the moment is a formative one for Do.
Jo raises Do as his own, alongside his daughter. Decades later, Lee Do is the Platonic ideal of a policeman, protecting the vulnerable and preferring de-escalation to violence. Until guns start appearing amongst the civilian population, Do chooses not to use a gun himself, still haunted by the lives he took during his years as a soldier. When gun violence starts ramping up, he decides to pick up a gun once again—but only when it is necessary to take someone down.
Moon Baek kills Captain Jo
While Trigger has a complex cast of characters, Lee Do and Moon Baek are the protagonist and antagonist at its center. Both suffered tragedy as children. One was given the support they needed to become a happy, healthy adult. The other was not, and has grown into a ruthless killer as a result. While Lee Do wants to protect the innocent (and even the guilty) around him, Moon Baek wants to see people suffer like he has. Gun violence is his method.
When Lee Do starts getting in Moon Baek’s way, the criminal mastermind becomes intrigued by the stalwart cop. To get closer to him, he poses as just another recipient of one of the illegal weapons, and offers his “help” in trying to stop various shootings. Do almost immediately identifies Baek as one of the people behind the organized influx of guns. However, when the police go to arrest Baek, he uses his immense resources to slip between their fingers and continue to wreak havoc.
Captain Jo, Do’s surrogate dad, becomes one of Baek’s desperate targets when a jeonse fraud drives his daughter to suicide. Jo finds the men who scammed his daughter, confronting them at a karaoke room. When they show no remorse, he starts firing. Lee Do arrives on the scene once Captain Jo has followed one of the men outside. He convinces Jo to put the gun down, asking him not to let the feeling that killing the man will help fool him in this moment. “How did you bear this pain at such a young age?” Jo asks Do. “It was all thanks to you, Captain,” Do tells him, embracing his distraught father figure.
Baek, who has orchestrated the entire scenario to drive up public anxiety around shootings and to break Do’s resolve, doesn’t like how the scenario ends. He comes out of the shadows to shoot both Captain Jo and Lee Do. “Just wait and see,” Baek tells Do as he loses consciousness. “You’ll wake up to a whole new world.”
The ending of Trigger explained
As intended by Baek, Do is out of the action for at least a few days following the incident. When he wakes back up, he is devastated to learn that Captain Jo has died. He grieves Jo and her daughter, acting as the chief mourner at their funeral.
Meanwhile, Baek has announced to the public that anyone who wants a gun in Korea can get one. Public fear is at an all-time high as thousands of weapons are delivered to the populace, and incidents of gun violence become more common as a result. On the news, political pundits begin to debate whether gun ownership should be legalized in Korea. The president is considering martial law.
A “Free Guns” rally is organized by Baek to pit the two sides of the argument against one another. Lee Do leaves the funeral in order to attend. Baek has a truck filled with boxes of weapons driven into the middle of the rally. Chaos breaks out as people frantically grab the weapons, thinking they need them to protect themselves. Baek sets off smoke bombs to further confuse the crowd.
As Lee Do makes his way to Baek, he remembers a philosophical argument they had over dinner, before Do realized Baek’s villainy. “Wouldn’t pulling a 5-milimeter trigger in pursuit of revenge spread fear in the minds of many?” Do told Baek. “Out of fear that they might die without a gun, everyone will rush to get one. And a society like that will soon be destroyed.” Baek wants to create that society, and he is well on his way. “It was this world that made the people angry,” he tells Do, making the bad faith argument. “All I did was hand them a gun. It’s up to them whether they pull the trigger.”
In the smoky plaza, as scared people point guns at one another, Baek taunts Do. “What I want is a single gun shot … that will make these people start shooting at each other” He wants Lee Do to be the one to pull the trigger. Baek disappears into the smoke and Do follows, gun drawn. Before he can find the man, a gun shot rings out. Baek has been shot, perhaps by his own hand. The plaza erupts into gunfire.
In the chaos, Do sees a boy alone, crying for his mother, a gun in his hands. It is an echo of the boy he once was. Rather than defend himself, Do drops his gun and rushes to him. He embraces the child as the gunfire continues. “It’s okay. You’re safe,” he tells him. The image is captured by a livestreamer on the scene. It stops nurse So-hyeon, whom we have been following throughout the series, from using a gun to kill the co-workers who bully her.
Once the dust has settled, and scores of people are dead, the image of Lee Do embracing the scared child becomes a symbol of choosing empathy over violence. Later, we see the image at a memorial for the victims of the shooting. Another message at the memorial states: “We will remember the innocent lives lost and work to create a safer world.”
Does Moon Baek die at the end of Trigger?
Baek is in a coma following the events of the firefight. The doctor tells Do, who visits Baek in the hospital, that he is unlikely to recover, due to his cancer and the blood loss sustained from the gunshot wound. Later, we see an English-speaking cabal of IRU members, including Jake, vaguely discussing their next business move. A woman walks into the wards where Baek is unconscious, presumably to kill him.
Does Trigger have a happy ending?
The ending of Trigger isn’t happy, but it is hopeful. Across the country, the police hold illegal firearm drop-off drives to collect as many of the weapons as possible. One of the people who drops off a fun is nurse So-hyeon. “It took too long,” she tells Officer Jang, who collects her signature. “You did the right thing,” he tells her.
Lee Do survives to de-escalate another day. In an echo of what Captain Jo did for him, Do adopts the child he saved in the firefight. He picks the boy up from school, and holds his hand as he walks him home. Do is doing what he can.
