The masquerade
At Mount Cheonggye, Jo Seong-ju, the heir of the powerful J Group is throwing a
party. Not only the guests, but the host and the staff are all wearing different kinds of
masks. During the party, a bartender in a fox’s mask pulls out a gun and points it at
the people, which signals the beginning of the hostage situation.
The start of a hostage situation
The police arrive at the scene to find a van in front of the mansion gates loaded with
huge explosives. The hostage negotiator Heo Wan starts talking to the captor who
calls himself “The Master.” He says that he is holding about thirty people in captivity.
The release
In the second negotiation attempt, The Master reveals the details of 15 hostages in
return for a ransom of diamonds worth 5 billion won. The next day, the family of the
hostages bring the diamonds they have bought and have the police hand them over.
The Master releases ten women who agreed to sneak the diamonds. He releases
twenty-five people over four different times but even after two days, seven people
are still hostaged.
The trial at Cheongye Mansion
The Master announces that he will put the seven remaining hostages on trial. He
broadcasts the trial through the Internet to the whole country. The trial is about the
gang rape and murder of a high school girl named Min Ji-yeong that took place
nine years ago. It looks as if the identity of the perpetrators were finally revealed, but
the Master claims that only five are guilty. He reveals the shocking truth about the heinous
crime. Meanwhile, the police decides to use force. Two hostages get killed in the process,
but five are rescued with only small injuries. When the hostage situation is over, the
Master is found dead with a gun shot in the head.
The judgement is not over
A few days later at the SNU hospital, the survived hostages are hospitalized in VIP
wards. At 3 am, when everyone is asleep, a wheeled bed from the mourge in the
basement of the hospital starts moving into the ward where Jo Seong-ju is.
Reference: GOZKNOCKENT. "청계산장의 재판" GOZNOCKENT, https://www.gozknock.com/posts/kthriller/17. accessed 23 Nov 2022.
Park Eun-woo gained significant attention from readers with his novels Jeonjaengui Neup (The Swamp of Wars) and Myeongnyang (The Battle of Myeongnyang). He received an excellence award in the KOCCA Korea Story Contest for Cheonggyesanjangui Jaepan (The Trial at a Hut in Cheonggyesan Mountain), which was published in French and became the first Korean novel to be optioned for a TV series by a major American production company. Cheonggyesanjangui Jaepan (The Trial at a Hut in Cheonggyesan Mountain) was acclaimed by Lindsay Goffman, a producer of the American adaptation of The Good Doctor, as a very timely story addressing the social class inequality and corruption and a work with numerous compelling elements with a dense structure and a huge twist.
『전쟁의 늪』, 『명량』을 출간하며 독자들에게 큰 관심을 받았다. 『청계산장의 재판』으로 한국콘텐츠진흥원 대한민국스토리공모대전 우수상을 받았으며, 프랑스에서 번역 출간되었으며, 국내 소설 최초로 미국 메이저 제작사와 TV 드라마 옵션 계약을 맺었다. 『청계산장의 재판』은 <굿닥터>를 미국에서 리메이크한 프로듀서 린지 고프먼에게 “계급의 불균형과 부패를 다룬 매우 시의적절한 이야기”, “치밀한 구조와 엄청난 반전 등 매력적 요소가 많은 작품”이라는 호평을 받기도 했다.
There are no expectations.