Stream Classics to Latest K-Movies & Shows at OnDemandKorea
Special Investigation Team

🔍 Zoom

📸 More Pictures ›

Watch Korean Dramas

On ODK (Sponsored) 
Get 5% off with code hancinema

Special Investigation Team

Korean Drama | 2008

라이프 생명 특별조사팀 | La-i-peu Saeng-myeong Teuk-byeol-jo-sa-tim

Drama

Directed byKim Kyeong-hee-II (김경희)Lee Dong-yoon (이동윤)Lim Tae-woo (임태우)Yeo In-joon (여인준)

Written by

TV Channel/Platform: MBC (MBC)

Airing dates:

12 episodes

Synopsis

People worry about their future.
That is why people take out insurance policies.
Fear of death, disease, and freak accidents make people sign insurance policies and when they succumb to death or a disease, they and their families receive a payout from the insurance company.
Some people liken an insurance payout to winning the lottery. While others game the system and use insurance policies like their own personal ATM.
Everyone is dangling on a roller coaster in life.
Every day, people will feel small at times or muster up the courage to take a bolder stance. It’s a constant mix off backbiting and sycophant behavior at work where hope and despair go hand in hand. Tragedy and happy endings are the luck of the draw.
That is the life that salaried workers live in.
The characters in this TV drama are ordinary employees who display extraordinary talents under extenuating circumstances.
They work around the borders of happiness and sadness as they unearth the truth amidst the lies.
So every day, they are thrust on a roller coaster of highs and lows.
Everyone has a secret in their past.
It could be the smut porn that is stored in their hard drives or the power to alter the fate of someone’s life. Even insurance policyholders, receivers of insurance payouts, and insurance agents have a dark secret or two.


Starring

Park Chan-ho (age: 34 / 7 years of experience / Junior employee) | actor Eom Gi-joon
He has three likes and three dislikes in life... He loves booze, women, and con artists... Why is that? Because they’re all fun to enjoy!
His three dislikes are booze, women, and con artists as well... Why? Because they’re a pain in the neck!
As someone who works for an insurance company, he must treat customers courteously but even though that’s the case, he doesn’t hesitate to talk bluntly to customers who he thinks are trying to bilk the company. Constantly getting into trouble, he does irrational things that confuse the people around him. He will ramble around an accident side, looking for clues with a sharp eye.
He’ll try to haggle over the price of a cheap $50 suit to buy it a rockbottom price.
He carries chopsticks with him all the time so that he can eat a morsel of someone’s meal.
When he’s exhausted, he’ll take a subway ride on Line 2, which goes around the city nonstop, to take a nap with his legs stretched out.
He never feels any stress. He’ll go to a barbershop once or twice a year to get a haircut. Sometimes he won’t take a shower for more than a week. But when he has to use the bathroom, he’ll relieve himself as soon as possible.
He’ll burp and fart whenever he has to.

Joo Kang-lee (age: 29/ 5 years of experience / Assistant manager) | actress Shim Eun-jin
What are the similarities between Park Chan-ho and a con artist?
They’re both good liars. It’s hard to read their minds. They are both hard to get a hold of!
Frequently staying up all night at work and going on trips to investigate accidents now and then have made her one of the sharpest investigators on the team. She is proud that she never made a mistake on the job even under a lot of work-related stress. But don’t take her word for it. Whenever she gets drunk, she’ll turn into someone entirely different and the next day, she’ll wake up with no recollections of how she behaved in her drunken stupor.
Most of the times, she is a charismatic person who can overwhelm people with the sheer power of her personality but when she has a drink, she’ll turn into a pussycat and act like a nubile, young girl. After kicking back a few shots of liquor, she’ll dance on tables and sing like a rock star.
But after a night of drinking, she’ll appear at work the next day as her usual self and this causes a state of confusion among her co-workers on how to define her character. During a night out with her co-workers, she’ll tell Ms. Jung, the secretary, that she can call her Kang-lee instead of Ms. Joo but when Ms. Jung calls her that the next day, she’ll get upset and berate her for it. She’ll act like she never allowed Ms. Jung to call her that.
She is one of the smartest employees in the investigative unit.
When she decides to interrogate somebody, she’ll track them down and grill them for all their worth.

Gong Chul-soo (age: 29 / New hire) | actor Kim Heung-soo
After being jobless for 3 years, he barely got hired at an insurance company.
He took English language courses in America during summer and spring breaks. His TOEIC score is nearly perfect. He graduated with a high GPA average.
In every company that he applied to, he always got a call to come in for an interview.
However, during every interview, he is told that he gives canned answers and lacks any creativity! So he faced rejection many times. For three years, he was in the pits of despair and gloom.
However, he finally got hired at one of the top five insurance companies in Korea and his confidence was restored. Since he found a job later in life than his peers, he is very eager to get ahead. If he doesn’t get promoted within the next two years, then he’ll never be able to attain his goal of becoming the youngest CEO of an insurance company. So he needs to quickly master his duties and perform well. But Chul-soo’s goals are shattered on the first day on the job. According to his view, his life became stuck in a tar pit on the very day when Park Chan-ho volunteered to look after his back.
Now Chul-soo’s goal is to get back on track! But it’s not about getting a fast track promotion or becoming a CEO any more
He just wants to withstand Park Chan-ho, his bizarre partner! That’s all he wants in life!
He is obsessed about cleanliness but some dirt or speck will alway escapes his probing eye.

Bae Dong-shik (age: 44/ 12 years of experience / Team leader) |actor Jeong Gyeo-soo
He is the prototypical salary man who focuses on holding onto his job while doing as minimal work as possible.
He was once on a short list of employees who were to be axed because he was deemed to be incompetent. But he increased his lobbying efforts to key superiors and became entrusted with the special investigations unit, surviving the last round of layoffs. So Park Chan-ho is a ticking bomb. He takes an aspirin every day to alleviate the headaches he gets from all the trouble that Chan-ho causes.
Whenever there is a company reorganization or management shuffle, he tries as hard as possible to get Chan-ho sent away to a different division but it always backfires. Nowadays, Kang-lee has become a double threat because she never knows when to drop a case that the higher-ups already cleared. Because of her actions, he begins to suffer more stress and gets constipated. He also has to concentrate more on extinguishing any problems that erupt at work that might jeopardize his cushy job. (He also seems to have hemorrhoids. But he is doing everything he can to cure it.) But when the dust settles, he defends the actions of his team, showing them that he has a big heart.
He watches CSI and reads crime thrillers to retain his touch as a detective and he sometimes perturbs his team by trying to pigeonhole accidents into similar cases he saw on a CSI episode.

Yeo Han-soo (age: 41/ 9 years of experience / Senior manager) | actor Lee Doo-il
Having a law degree, he follows the rulebook and never errs.
But at night, he turns into a wild party animal at expensive gentlemen clubs.
He will agree with both sides of an argument and always stand in the middle ground, which makes him look like a sly operator, but his behavior is actually the product of extreme self-preservation where he doesn’t want to make enemies with anyone.
He’ll wait for someone else to make a mistake first. Since he’ll never take a certain stance on any matter, he’ll be the mediator for arguments thereby removing himself from any position that might carry repercussions.
He carries a copy of Reader’s Digest all the time and likes talking a lot but most of the time, he loafs around at work. He’ll try to offload his work to other people.
While Bae Dong-shik is like a fox, Yeo Han-soo is a raccoon.
When Mr. Bae slanders prosecutors and judges for their incompetence, Mr. Yeo will counter such insults by airing his low opinion of detectives and cops.
When Kang-lee and Chan-ho quarrel at an accident site, Mr. Bae and Mr. Yeo will verbally slug each other in the office.

Jung Joo-ri (age: 23 / Secretary / Runs an online merchant shop) | singer Solbi
He has a peculiar character.
She graduated from a commercial girls’ high school but she didn’t study hard and wandered from one job to another. She met many mean and strange people during her job-hopping days and she talks like a madam of a bordello.
She is also a blunt, straightforward person and has little regard for the feelings of others. Her hair and clothes are straight out from Japan’s Harajuku street style and she’ll come out with a new look every day. Her choice of clothes confounds the people at work but she hardly notices the effect that her clothes have on others.


Episode Guide

Episode 1
Chul-soo is a new employee who is working at different jobs around the company as part of his on-the-job training and he leaves home to report to the company’s special investigations team for the first time. Chul-soo rear-ends a luxury car, which abruptly slammed the brakes in front of him. Chul-soo gives his number to the driver of the car and thinks he is dealing with an honest person. On his first day of work, Chul-soo is late but Dong-shik and the other employees cheerfully welcome him. The team needs a new employee after having no new staff member for the last 5 years. But Chul-soo decides not to join the special investigations team because it is a dirty place and the work is hard.
Chul-soo follows Chan-ho and Kang-eeh to a textile factory that burned down to confirm that it was an accident. If it turns out to be arson, they will not have to pay for the damages. They suspect arson but they have no evidence. Chul-soo becomes disappointed when Chan-ho and Kang-hee keep quarreling amongst themselves while surveying the site and reaffirms his decision not to join the special investigations team Meanwhile, Chul-soo gets a threatening call from the driver of the car he crashed into in the morning. Will Chul-soo decide to join the special investigations team?

Episode 2
A request is made from a policyholder, who is a leg model, to pay for the burns she sustained on her legs. Chan-ho and Chul-soo investigate the case and hear from the model’s agent that the model sustained burns while receiving a hot massage while asleep. The agent then reminds him that the policy would pay her $500,000 if her legs were harmed and requests the money soon. Chan-ho asks the agent to show him the hot pack that was used for the hot massage.
Kang-eeh is assigned to the suicide case of a woman in her twenties and must find the beneficiary of the insurance policy. There is no address or contact number that can lead her to the beneficiary. Kang-eeh finds out that the beneficiary is the lover of the dead woman but he turns out to be a married man. It turns out that the young woman took her life after discovering that her lover was married and this enrages Kang-hee. Meanwhile, Chan-ho and Chul-soo learn that the leg model attempted suicide earlier and they rush to her side...


Episode 3
The special investigations team investigate the director of a daycare center when she requests an insurance payout based on her liver disease on the very first day she takes out a life insurance policy, which is meant to insure the parents and guardians of children. While meeting with the parents of the dead child, they learn that the beneficiary of the insurance policy is the stepdad of the child. The stepdad maintains that the child died while walking in his sleep. While meeting with the director of the daycare center, Kang-eeh becomes suspicious of her behavior...
Chan-ho looks at the police file on the dead child and learns that the child’s feet were clean and this discounts the assertion that the child was walking in his sleep. He also learns that the stepdad was arrested before for scamming an insurance company but no charges were pressed. Kang-eeh investigates the daycare center director and learns that she has no national health insurance. Chan-ho and Chul-soo enter the stepdad’s home without his permission to find hard evidence. Kang-eeh detects something odd about the daycare center.


Episode 4
The special investigations team investigates the suicide of a woman in her thirties and a yacht incident when they receive notices for an insurance payout. The suicide of Yoon Ah-young raises suspicions because the beneficiary of the insurance policy has been changed to her twin sister a month before she dies and Chan-ho is assigned to the case. Kang-eeh handles the yacht incident because it is similar to other incidents that have been happening frequently. Chul-soo works with Chan-ho at first but then he secretly joins Kang-eeh to help her with her investigation.
Chul-soo learns that all the passengers in the series of yacht incidents were young woman in their twenties and worries about Kang-eeh’s safety. When they arrive at the dock where the yacht is anchored, Kang-ee tells Chul-soo to meet with the boat repairman and investigate the boat while she boards the yacht by herself. Chan-ho meets Yoon Ji-young and cries about how her twin sister Yoon Ah-young suffered from depression after her miscarriage. The husband of Yoon Ah-young wants Chan-ho to stop his investigation because he doesn’t want to attract any attention. Chan-ho becomes suspicious of the relationship between Ji-young and the husband of Yoon Ah-young and finds unmistakable proof of foul play when looking at photos of Ah-young’s body...


Episode 5
Team Leader Kim Mi-joo works at LT Insurance, which is a direct competitor of the Special Investigation Team. She exposes the truth about a case of a female employee dishonestly paying insurance money. As a result of this incident, rumors swirl that the Special Investigation Team will go through employee layoffs, and that Kim Mi-joo will be scouted to their office. The Special Investigation Team is due to submit their performance reports in three days. To have higher marks of performance, the team avoids paying insurance money for cases that are dubious, and each employee begins to carefully review their cases.
On his way to work, Chul-soo grows suspicious after seeing Mr. Roh riding in a fancy car with a strange person. The team members find some abnormalities in their cases, but they all lack solid proof. While the team members are out in the field, they receive a call from the Human Resources Team saying that they will be sharing their office space. After hearing this news, Team Leader Bae orders Jung Joo-ri to prevent them from entering, no matter what. As time is scarce with no solid leads, the team members begin to see how each of their separate cases is connected.


Episode 6
A man submits an insurance claim saying that his wife became a vegetable person as a result of medical malpractice. Most team members shun the case thinking that it would be difficult to establish proof, but Chul-soo boldly volunteers to take it. Team Leader Bae tells Kang-eeh to support Chul-soo. He also gives Chan-ho an insurance case that involves a lost pet. Kang-eeh encounters Soo-ho who is a doctor at the hospital in question.
Although Chan-ho thought this was an open-and-shut insurance case, he is requested by the owner to find the lost dog. Meanwhile, while investigating the insurance claim, Chul-soo and Kang-hee discover from other patients that the woman’s husband named Sung-wook treated her violently. As they grow suspicious of Sung-wook, Chul-soo and Kang-eeh learn that Sung-wook had a previous criminal record for accidental homicide, and that was the reason Hyun-joo’s brother passed away.


Episode 7
Jung Suk-hyun was a former photographer who became blind after hurting his head in an accident. He applies for an outrageous insurance claim of one million dollars. His supporting documents prove that he is in fact blind, and Kang-eeh and Chul-soo start to process his request. However, Chan-ho has his doubts about whether Mr. Jung has truly lost his sight.


Episode 8
Chan-ho and Chul-soo work on an insurance case of a child who has suddenly collapsed. It is revealed that the mother has made fake claims in the past using her child. Meanwhile, Kang-eeh investigates a case of a food company where foreign substances were found in the food. Chul-soo discovers that the child’s mother is in need of money after establishing an educational institute. Kang-eeh discovers that the refrigerator was not properly fixed at the food company and that their products were still being sold at school cafeterias. Meanwhile, Chan-ho and Chul-soo pass by a murder scene where a homeless man was found dead. When Chul-soo looks at the face of the victim, he realizes that this was the man he saw with Mr. Roh a few days ago.


Episode 9
A famous modern sculptor submits an insurance claim stating that one of his art pieces was damaged. However, during the investigation, it is discovered that there are many incidents related to this piece of art. Meanwhile, Chul-soo and Yoh Han-soo investigate the case of a dead taxi driver. They get a tip that the wife of the driver may be related to his death.


Episode 10
Yoon Ji-eun and Lee Tae-sung leave the site as if nothing is bothering them. When Chan-ho sees this, he becomes confused. After Chan-ho leaves, Lee Tae-sung explains that the death of Ha Soo-kyung was merely an accident, but Ji-eun does not believe him. Later, Chan-ho sees a police car heading towards Tae-sung’s place. He learns from the police that Ji-eun is now dead. Chan-ho helps the police in getting to the bottom of this case.


Episode 11
The body of Kim Tae-shik is discovered and it is revealed that he was the recipient of the dead homeless man’s insurance money. The police view this as an open-and-shut case and close the books on it. Chan-ho disagrees and urges the police to investigate more, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Kang-eeh is assigned to the case of the deceased Lee Jung-ah. She visits the recipient of the insurance money, Ryu Han-kyung, and meets an inspector from another insurance agency.
As Kang-eeh investigates Ryu Han-kyung, it is discovered that Ryu’s mother passed away, leaving a large sum of insurance money to her son. It is also found that Ryu’s father has gone missing, and Ryu is slated to receive a large insurance check. Meanwhile, as Chan-ho examines the cases of Kim Tae-shik and the homeless man, he is shocked to find that Mr. Roh is the final recipient of the insurance money.


Episode 12
Chan-ho is accused as being suspect but professes his innocence. Nevertheless, the police finger him as the prime suspect. Mr. Yeo tells Chan-ho that he will not investigate the criminal case that Chan-ho is embroiled in, which has the effect of infuriating Chan-ho. He goes to see Roh Bong-koo’s grandson to find a way to help Chan-ho clear his name but nothing comes out of it.
Kang-eeh goes to see Ryu Han-gyeong and asks him if anyone would have a motive to murder Lee Jung-ah but Ryu tells him that he is not aware of any grudges that people would have against Lee. Kang-eeh looks around Lee Jung-ah’s room and finds a diary, which contains the name Roh Bong-koo. This stuns Kang-eeh... While Chan-ho is interrogated by the detective, he is asked about the way he administered the poisonous Acotinin drug to kill the victim. While looking through the autopsy report, Chan-ho’s co-workers find that Acotonin was a drug that came up in a different case handled by Kang-eeh.

Source

Advertisement

Special Investigation Team
📰 Latest News
More

📰 More News ›

Extended Cast ›

Special Investigation Team
📷 Pictures
More

📸 More Pictures ›

Special Investigation Team
🛒 DVDs, Blu-rays, Collectibles
More

More ›

Special Investigation Team
💬 Community, fans, discussions
More

Comments

To leave a comment, sign up for freeSign Up for Free

More ›

❎ Try Ad-free