'Forest of Secrets 2' aka 'Stranger 2' Episode 5: Yeo-jin, Shi-mok learn that they are pawns in a grand plan
Senior Inspector Yeo-jin (Bae Doo-na) and prosecutor Shi-mok (Cho Seung-won) come to the same conclusion at the end of episode 5 which was the fact that the two of them have been placed as pawns on opposing sides of the game of chess and the people who seem to hold the strings over their movements is Choi Bit and Woo Tae-ha. Even as both Yeo-jin and Shi-mok dig deeper into the case of the detective who died by suicide months ago, they are also made aware of how a conflict between the prosecution and police could be used to their advantage. Tae-ha wants to use this case to point finger at the police's toxic practices and how it influencers their investigation, Choi Bit wants to ensure that this death is not homicide but in fact suicide. She wants to turn the entire mess around by pointing out how the prosecution targeted the police with vested interests.
Shi-mok is uneasy about playing a role in Tae-ha's grand plans and soon Yeo-jin also learns that she might after all not be fit for the new job that she signed up for. The first step to this realization comes after Yeo-jin speaks to one of the five cops who were accused of bribery. It is these five cops and their captain who were involved in bullying the dead officer and they could have very well forcefully led the officer to die by suicide. The fact that one of the main accused has no regrets about bullying a fellow officer or collecting bribes gets on Yeo-jin's nerves and the fact that a hardworking, sincere officer became a victim because he questioned authority also shows her that her department is not squeaky clean. As much as she and her boss Choi Bit try to dig dirt on the prosecution, there is an equal amount of dirt hidden within her department that comes through clean.
Similarly, after Shi-mok learned that an assemblyman, who would have served as the Chief of Judiciary Council, is suing the Director of Police from a nervous Tae-ha, he comes to the conclusion that Tae-ha might be more involved in this than meets the eye and this turns out to be partly right. The assemblyman is suing the director for political slander after he is cleared of all suspicions of abusing his position to get his son a job at a bank. The police who had investigated him was the director himself and he had forwarded the case to the prosecution. However, from what Choi Bit, Yeo-jin and Shi-mok learn over the episode, turns out that Tae was the only one to pull strings and get the charges against the assemblyman to be dropped. This seems to be a part of lobbying the assemblyman to support the prosecution when the bill regarding the authority of investigation is raised. However, Shi-mok is too smart and he realizes pretty early on that Tae-ha's anxiety about this entire incident is rooted in the fear that his connection to the assemblyman's release might leak to the public.
At this time, he is desperate for any kind of help and that's why he asked Shi-mok to use his contact Yeo-jin and learn what Choi Bit has planned for the future now that the lawsuit against the Director of the Police has become a hot issue. The question here is if Shi-mok will use Yeo-jin or if he will refuse and take the harder route to uncover the truth.
The episode also sees Prosecutor Seo Don-jae attempt to get on the good side of Woo Tae-ha and find a way to worm himself into Tae-ha's team at the Supreme Court Prosecution Office. Hence he continues to dig into the death of the detective when Shi-mok gets busy with following Tae-ha's new instructions. He also continues to wonder how Shi-mok is able to become a part of elite teams that investigates high profile cases. Will he be able to solve this mystery?
