Abhiroop Das
Directed by Kim Gyu-tae, Netflix’s ‘Notes from the Last Row‘ or ‘Maen Kkeutjul Sonyeon’ begins with professor Heo Mun-oh feeling deeply unfilled in life, both on the personal and professional front. However, the mood begins to shift when he comes across the works of Lee Kang, one of his students, who writes passionately about his best friend’s perfect life, and how badly he wants to be a part of it. As Mun-oh begins to read more of and more into these voyeuristic accounts, he comes across a unique figure, named Seon Min-hui, who seems to be at odds with Kang.
Min-hui is the housemaid and is generally disliked in the house, but Kang suspects that her connection might run deeper than it looks on the surface. As Mun-oh feeds into these doubts, somewhere along the line, he forgets that he is merely reading a student’s weekly assignments, and the truth behind these statements cannot be ascertained as readily. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Min-hui Was Never Real to Begin With
At the end of ‘Notes from the Last Row,’ Seon Min-hui is revealed to be a fictional character created by Lee Kang for his stories. While the rest of the characters in his assignments can be directly linked to people Kang knows, such as Eun-joo, Min-hui originates entirely from his mind and is designed specifically to add an element of mystery. Initially, we are led to the belief that Min-hui is a housemaid with whom Kim Su-hun is having an affair, that is, until she gets into a car accident. To make things more complicated, Min-hui later dies at the hospital, with Kang claiming that Kim Su-hun killed her to cover up the truth. Both of these claims, as it turns out, are completely made up and meant to send Mun-oh on a wild goose chase with no end.
The inclusion of Min-hui into the narrative is perhaps the first time Kang completely veers into the fictional, and his main reason for doing this is to create an affair plotline. Knowing that Mun-oh loves Eun-joo and is envious of Su-hun, Kang constructs a scenario where Su-hun is sufficiently villainized so that it allows Mun-oh to uncritically hate his lifelong rival. Interestingly enough, one of the plot beats that Kang creates involves the claim that Su-hun plagiarized his latest book from the manuscripts written by Min-hui’s sister. This adds yet another made-up reason for Su-hun to kill Min-hui, almost as if Kang’s story is emulating the mystery plotline of Su-hun’s actual book, one that Mun-oh derided as too commercial and unchallenging.
The Person Hit by a Car is a Stranger Whom Lee Kang Added to the Storyline
While the character of Seon Min-hui was initially meant to only exist on paper, a single coincidence allows Lee Kang to spin the tale farther than ever he could have. When he calls Mun-oh to the hotel in the middle of the night, it is initially just to reveal that the “father” is none other than Kim Su-hun. However, moments before he can make that revelation, a woman completely unknown to him gets into a car accident. Seizing the moment, Kang capitalizes on Mun-oh’s confusion to claim that this stranger is Min-hui, and then swiftly leaves the premises to keep the secret intact. In Mun-oh’s mind, seeing Su-hun and the supposed Min-hui naturally creates a mental chain reaction, and before long, he is fully caught up in the lie.
While the stranger’s accident gives Kang the perfect excuse, he still needs to add some intent to this fictional plotline, and to do that, he needs to introduce a murder. As such, in the following assignment, he connects Min-hui’s death to Kim Se-yoon, who then serves as an externalized account claiming that Su-hun choked her to death. These additions of layers continue down the line when Kang reveals that Eun-joo has seemingly known about the affair this entire time and has been working with her son to unveil the truth. All of these lies make for a riveting story, convincing Mun-oh that Min-hui is a tragic figure who was killed in cold blood by Su-hun. This is exactly what Kang intends to make him believe, as, in the end, his grand goal is to blur the line between lies and fiction and then use it against his professor.
Read More: Notes from the Last Row: Are Heo Mun-oh and Kim Su-hun Based on Real Novelists?
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