Café Minamdang Episode 7 Recap (2022 Korean Drama)
**This recap of Café Minamdang Episode 7 contains spoilers**
Trigger Warning: Topics of suicide, murder, rape are a ongoing theme of this show. Please look after yourselves.
After entering a staircase in pursuit of Gopuri, Han-Joon is attacked from behind. Hye-Joon sees this through her access into the CCTV and directs Su-Cheol to go help her brother. His arrival interrupts the killer, who pushes Han-Joon towards him and then runs away.
Su-Cheol goes after him and is able to pick him out of the crowd in the lobby. Although he rushes after him, the suspect manages to dissappear after accesing the underground parking garage of the hospital.
Jae-Hui finds Han-Joon as he is trying to catch his breath. He asks her about Choi and together they run back into his room. Choi’s condition is clearly worsening rapidly. Han-Joon, assuming the personality of Shaman Nam, comforts the dying man. With his last breath, Choi finally confesses to lying about being the killer. He warns Han-Joon that the real culprit will not stop unless caught. He will simply find someone new to use as a scapegoat and kill again.
Although medical staff attempts to revive him, they are unable to. Realizing he is gone, Jae-Hui starts shaking Choi’s body, yelling at him to come back. Han-Joon pulls her away and out of the room.
Café Minamdang Episode 7
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Once they are in a different room, Han-Joon accuses Jae-Hui of letting the killer get away. He demands an apology from her for not believing him and for punching him all those times. Jae-Hui stubbornly refuses stating that Choi was an accomplice which makes her still partially right.
Han-Joon is dumbstruck at her rebuttal. In return he threatens to wash off the killers DNA from his hand before she can swab it. This prompts her to remind him that she can and will arrest him for destroying evidence if he goes ahead with his threat.
Still, this does not deter him. Jae-Hui finally relents and apologizes. A satisfied Han-Joon uses a Queue tip to collect the blood from under his fingernail. He follows this with a silly little Happy dance.
Upon receiving a proper apology from Jae-Hui, Han-Joon commands her to do her job like a true police officer and catch the killer.
All the while, Hye-Joon and Su-Cheol sit by observing. Vacillating between incredulity and embarrassment about Han-Joon’s petty and immature behaviour, they can only shake their heads at a loss for words.
Café Minamdang Episode 7
Jae-Hui, barely holding in her frustration, finds a empty hallway nearby to vent by yelling. She is mostly mad at herself for not listening to Han-Joon. He is probably laughing at her ineptness right now.
Prosecutor Cha has followed her. He encourages her by putting forth the idea of him and her joining forces to catch the killer.
Some time later…
The DNA test from the killer does not come back with any matches in the system. Han-Joon is affected by this news yet Hye-Joon and Su-Cheol do their best to cheer him up.
Hye-Joon is still unable to track down the owner of the burner phone that Choi last spoke to. During the autopsy, no chemicals were found in Choi’s system and the police is about to close the case with him as Eun-Hye’s* killer. (*A/N: Kang Eun-Hye is the identity of the victim found in the sewer.)
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Jae-Hye fights the chief of police to keep Choi’s case open and let her further investigate. She argues that Choi was innocent and framed by a serial killer. Ultimately she baits him with how badly it would reflect on them if another station captured the real culprit that they let get away. The chief gives Jae-Hui’s team one week to find the real killer. If they fail, he will hand the case to another team.
The team gets right to work starting with the disappearance of Kang Eun-Hye. The high school student went missing 1 month ago among reports of having recently fought her parents. Jae-Hui expresses her regret at not having investigated more and instead labeling Eun-Hye as a runaway.
Han-Joon believes that Kang Eun-Hye is the key to catching the killer. Besides his usual MO, he observed that certain evidence pointing to Goburi feeling remorse and affection towards Eun-Hye. This would indicate that she was someone he knew and sets her apart from his previous victims.
The former profiler insists they catch Goburi before “Grumpy”, as he nicknamed Jae-Hui, beats their team to it.
Café Minamdang Episode 7
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Jae-Hui’s team, division 7, go for a team dinner. The idea of their team joining forces with Han-Joon is brought up, yet she vehemently refuses working with a fraudster like him.
Detective Jang and Jae-Hui go for round two afterwards. Both apologize to each other, clearing the air about their earlier disagreements. They resolve to work together going forward to solve the case.
The next day, Jae-Hui and Cha go to speak with Eun-Hye’s family, who suggests they interview one of her close friends. From said friend they discover that Eun-Hye had been accepted into Joyce Entertainment and was about to debut. She kept this a secret from her parents.
Cha seems alerted upon hearing the name of the entertainment company but he does not comment on it. As they are about to leave, the friend casually mentioned that she already told all of this to a male detective a short while ago.
Jae-Hui instantly guesses that it was Han-Joon and promptly calls him to demand that he stay out of her case. Han-Joon calmly replies that she should just focus on her investigation and then hangs up.
His manner towards the matter makes her loose her cool and yell out loudly in the middle of the street. Cha, recently witnessing a few of her outbursts, stands awkwardly by, not sure what to make of them.
Sometime later…
A commotion inside Café Minamdang has both staff and customers on edge. With Su-Cheol out on an errand, Na-Dan comes to Han-Joon for help. Wearing his Shaman Nam disguise, Han-Joon makes his grand entrance and approaches a male and female seemingly cause for the disturbance. The female informs him that her brother seems possessed, continuously seeing his dead girlfriend.
Han-Joon, scared of potentially dealing with an actual ghost, initially tries to get the two of them to leave. However, after the woman offers him a substantial amount of money he changes his mind. Ushering them inside, he suddenly realizes that he forgot to put in his earpiece. This means there is no way for Hye-Joon to feed him any information.
Hye-Jin is already furious her brother took on an unscheduled client. Noticing he cannot hear her sends her into slight panic mode. Specially when her software detects a live feed coming from inside the consultation room. She is sure they are to be discovered and the Shaman Nam gig will be up.
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Nevertheless, Han-Joon’s keen observation skills save the day, as he catches on rather quickly to the set-up. Calling them out on their scheme, he chastises them for trying to mess with a shaman. Stunned by his revelations about their personal lives, both become convinced of Shaman Nam’s psychic powers. As a result they agree at once to put a stop to the live broadcast.
Walking them outside afterwards, Han-Joon catches Cha and Jae-Hui trying to hide their presence inside the café. Turns out Jae-Hui knows the female client, Ms. Yoon. She admits to calling her with a tip about Shaman Nam, knowing Yoon runs a variety TV show named “Fraud Busters”. The show focuses on exposing fake shamans and conman.
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Before Han-Joon can say much on the matter, a distressed Deaconess Kim walks in only to faint moments later. She happened to see the recent broadcast featuring her son and realized the truth. After regaining consciousness, she expresses her anger at the fact they lied to her. She also demands to know what the reason is behind all this.
When Han-Joon refuses to give her an answer, she leaves upset. Nonetheless, he emphasises to Su-Cheol that his Mom cannot know that he is going after Goburi.
Café Minamdang Episode 7
The investigations of both teams lead them to Joyce Entertainment and its associates. Mainly the owner Park Jin-Sang, 3rd son of Choekang Insurance’s CEO, and Gu Tae-Su, the former’s secretary. Park has a long criminal record and fame of being a party animal. Him, together with Shin Gyeong-Ho of S&H Group, and Cha Seung-Won of Choekang Group are known as the “Three Mad Dogs”.
Looking into the finances of Joyce Entertainment, reveals they get strangely large investments. Despite there being no signs of earnings and barely any artists left under contract with the company.
While the police is following a lead from Eun-Hye’s phone leading to another Joyce trainee, Han-Joon is looking for a chance to meet Park. He wants to eliminate him as Goburi by personally checking his wrist. After discovering that Park believes in shamanism, Han-Joon uses this to arrange an appointment. He also has Na-Dan secretly place a bug in the office. Unfortunately, Park is wearing patch over his wrist when greeting Han-Joon. When the later notes the patch, Park states that he hurt himself playing golf.
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When Jae-Hui and Detective Jang find out the chief is handing the case over to another team before the week is up, they decide to go rouge. Disguising themselves they manage to enter Joyce Entertainment during an audition.
Shortly after, Jae-Hui and Jang are about to be exposed as police. However, Han-Joon under the guise of Shaman Nam, comes to their aid. He also manages to wiggle his way into becoming one of the judges during the audition.
During this incident, secretary Gu does a double take when seeing the shaman. He quickly confirms that Nam is in fact former Lieutenant Nam Han-Joon and forwards this news to his boss. A short but clear message reply is the answer : “Get rid of him”.
As Han-Joon is inside the washroom washing his hands a while later, secretary Gu comes out of one of the bathroom stalls holding a syringe.
Epilogue – The past
Eun-Hye is inside one of the studios at Joyce Entertainment. Gu is handing her a pair of white shoes which she happily accepts and excitedly puts on right away. The shoes appear identical to the ones her body was found with later.
Park Jin-Sang is looking on, sharing a secret smile with Gu without Eun-Hye noticing.
Café Minamdang Episode 7 END
