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Tae-ju

  • Memoir of a Murderer Ending Explained: Was Tae-ju Real, and Can We Trust Byung-su?

    TTK Original — Beyond the Headlines

    Spoiler warning: This article reveals the endings of both the theatrical version and the director’s cut, Memoir of a Murderer: Another Memory.

    You finish Memoir of a Murderer believing you have finally understood who committed the murders. Then you read an explanation describing a different culprit, a different aftermath and scenes you never saw.

    Your memory of the film may be perfectly sound. You may be reading about another version.

    One Reddit viewer described discovering exactly that on a rewatch: the same film gradually developed into a different storyline and ending. Other discussions ask whether Tae-ju was real or whether Byung-su had committed the recent murders himself.

    The confusion begins when three questions get treated as one: does Tae-ju exist, is he the killer Byung-su describes, and can Byung-su’s account of their confrontation be trusted?

    The theatrical cut largely supports a real confrontation with a murderous Tae-ju, then reopens uncertainty through the final tunnel scene. The director’s cut substantially reverses that account, revealing Byung-su’s responsibility for recent crimes and Tae-ju’s death. That does not mean Tae-ju never existed.

    The more disturbing possibility is that a real person has been assigned a false role in a story that protects its narrator.

    First, which version did you watch?

    Won Shin-yun’s film was released in two significantly different edits. The Korean director’s cut, subtitled Another Memory, arrived in November 2017. Contemporary SBS reporting explains that it reconstructs the narrative and changes the ending, rather than simply restoring a few deleted scenes.

    VersionApproximate runtimeWhat distinguishes its ending
    Theatrical cut118 minutesThe confrontation appears resolved, followed by institutional care and a destabilizing return to the tunnel.
    Director’s cut / Another Memory128 minutesInterrogation and a final reconstruction overturn the story Byung-su has supplied.

    Runtime is a useful clue, although credits and playback differences can affect a displayed duration. The ending and the presence of repeated prosecutorial questioning are stronger ways to identify the version.

    These edits should be interpreted separately before they are compared. The director’s cut offers a different arrangement of evidence, not an extra chapter that automatically becomes the hidden explanation of every theatrical scene.

    What is Byung-su trying to remember?

    Byung-su, played by Sul Kyung-gu, is a former serial killer living with Eun-hee, the daughter he has raised. The story introduces him through deteriorating memory, written recollections and recordings intended to help him navigate daily life.

    When he encounters Min Tae-ju, played by Kim Nam-gil, he believes he has recognized another killer. Tae-ju’s relationship with Eun-hee makes that suspicion urgent. The distributor’s synopsis frames the struggle around protecting her while confronting his own unreliable mind.

    That premise makes Byung-su both an investigator and the principal source of the information being investigated.

    Our reading is that this creates two kinds of uncertainty. He may fail to recall what happened, and he may interpret what he recalls in a way that preserves a tolerable picture of himself.

    An omitted event and a self-serving explanation can both distort the story. The two cuts give them different weight.

    The theatrical ending: what appears to happen?

    In the theatrical account, a recording supports Byung-su’s belief that Tae-ju has threatened and manipulated him. The final confrontation presents Tae-ju as a danger to Eun-hee, and Byung-su kills him during the struggle.

    Afterward, Byung-su is confined to an institution. Eun-hee visits, but his recognition of her is failing. The film eventually returns to the railway tunnel and snowy landscape that framed its opening.

    At the tunnel, Tae-ju’s image and Byung-su’s renewed conviction that he remains alive disturb the apparent resolution.

    This sequence creates a distinction between an outcome the preceding drama has shown and the certainty available to the man remembering it. The ending makes the latter unstable again.

    It does not provide a simple, independently verified scene of a supposedly dead villain recovering and returning.

    Was Tae-ju real in the theatrical cut?

    The strongest straightforward reading is yes. The story identifies him as a police officer through other characters and places him in a relationship with Eun-hee. His threatening role is reinforced through the recording and the confrontation, rather than resting only on Byung-su’s first impression.

    That is stronger evidence than a fleeting apparition at the tunnel is evidence that the entire person was invented.

    There are still limits: much of the film reaches us through Byung-su’s unstable experience. External-looking evidence inside such a narrative is not automatically an objective camera standing outside it.

    Our interpretation is therefore that the theatrical cut supports Tae-ju’s existence and murderous role while leaving Byung-su unable to possess a final, secure memory of defeating him. A total-fantasy interpretation remains possible, but it requires overturning much more of the story.

    “Was he real?” also needs to be separated from “Is he literally alive at the end?” The first question concerns the existence of a person. The second concerns an unresolved final perception.

    What does the tunnel scene mean?

    Three readings are worth distinguishing.

    A literal survival reading: Tae-ju survived, and Byung-su’s memory of killing him is wrong. The final image invites this suspicion, although the film does not independently establish the mechanics of that survival.

    An unstable-memory reading: the confrontation occurred, but Byung-su can no longer retain a reliable account of it. The threat returns because he cannot remain certain that it ended.

    A moral-double reading: Tae-ju represents a murderous identity Byung-su cannot remove from himself simply by opposing another killer. Defeating an adversary offers no guarantee that his own violence has been resolved.

    Our preferred theatrical reading combines the second and third. It preserves the confrontation while taking the final uncertainty seriously: the danger remains present in the narrator’s mind and in his unresolved identity.

    The third is a symbolic interpretation. It does not require Tae-ju and Byung-su to be literally the same person.

    Why the notes and recordings cannot settle everything

    Byung-su attempts to move memory outside his head. A written account or recorded voice seems more stable than a recollection that can vanish.

    But a record still has an origin. Someone selects what to preserve, supplies the context and interprets what it means. In the theatrical story, the memoir itself becomes vulnerable to Tae-ju’s interference.

    The recording can establish that a voice was captured without making the narrator’s entire account reliable. Equally, an accurate detail in a journal does not certify every conclusion surrounding it.

    Our reading is that the film keeps moving the problem of trust. First we ask whether Byung-su remembers. Then we ask whether he recorded. Finally, we have to ask what the surviving records actually prove.

    That becomes especially consequential in the director’s cut, where the account is repeatedly tested through questioning.

    The director’s cut: what does the final reversal change?

    Another Memory makes the aftermath and the investigation substantially different. Tae-ju’s body is absent from the apparent resolution, and the prosecutor challenges the story Byung-su tells about his disappearance.

    The final montage then revisits events from altered perspectives. It identifies Byung-su as responsible for recent murders, reverses the killing of Chief An and reveals the disposal of Tae-ju with a submerged vehicle.

    The important correction is that Tae-ju is a real man whom Byung-su kills; the role of continuing serial murderer and persecutor assigned to him is what the reconstruction overturns.

    This version gives much firmer grounds for rejecting Byung-su’s rescue narrative. We have been encouraged to follow his pursuit of someone else while he controls the account of his own actions.

    The final shoe adjustment and smile also support a more calculating reading of his behavior. In a 2018 comparative study, scholar Jung Hye-kyung interprets the director’s cut as revealing a narrator who performs impairment and manipulates confession to evade responsibility.

    That is a claim about this fictional character in this edit. It should not be imported into the theatrical cut, which gives his deteriorating condition a different dramatic function.

    Why “Tae-ju was imaginary” is an incomplete answer

    The director’s-cut twist can tempt viewers to erase Tae-ju altogether. But the revealed disposal of his body requires a victim who existed.

    What changes is the distribution of actions: who committed a crime, who spoke to the chief, who pursued whom, and whose account we accepted.

    This is a more precise kind of deception than an entirely invented person. Byung-su can use a real individual as the center of a distorted explanation.

    It also changes how we understand his apparent fear. A person’s account of being endangered can conceal the danger that person poses to others.

    The theatrical cut leaves the reliability of the ending open. The director’s cut supplies a much stronger retrospective accusation. Combining those into a single vague answer would lose the particular force of each.

    What does Eun-hee’s family history reveal?

    In the theatrical account, Byung-su recovers the memory of killing his wife, Eun-hee’s mother. Her claim that Eun-hee is not his biological daughter also becomes part of what he remembers. Later, he uses the distinction to tell Eun-hee that she does not carry his identity as a murderer through blood.

    This is not a revelation that Eun-hee never existed. It destabilizes the story he tells about being her father.

    Our interpretation is that his family contains both care and violence. The years he spends raising her cannot be separated from the harm connected with her mother’s death, and his desire to protect her cannot make that history disappear.

    The biological distinction offers Eun-hee one way to resist being defined by his crimes. It does not absolve him of responsibility for the household he helped destroy.

    Her perspective is therefore crucial. A narrative in which Byung-su proves his love is still also a narrative in which Eun-hee must confront the person who has shaped—and damaged—her life.

    How does Byung-su justify his murders?

    His story begins with violence against an abusive father and develops into a claim that certain people deserved to die. He describes his killings through the language of removing harmful people from the world.

    That language asks the audience to accept him as a judge of necessity. It also lets him explain repeated killing through a story whose first episode may invite sympathy.

    Our reading is that this is a second problem of reliability, beyond the puzzle of what happened. Even a narrator who accurately remembers an act may give a deeply compromised explanation of why it was justified.

    The memory mystery can distract us from that distinction. We work so hard to decide whether Tae-ju is guilty that we may accept Byung-su’s moral account with less scrutiny.

    The director’s cut makes that danger especially stark. The man organizing our search for the villain has organized the evidence around a version of himself he wants others to believe.

    What did the director say about making him sympathetic?

    In interviews, Won Shin-yun explained that the adaptation develops Byung-su’s paternal attachment to make the audience emotionally engage with a difficult protagonist. A Sports Donga interview also discusses his effort to make the character someone viewers might support while still recognizing that his crimes require judgment.

    This helps explain the theatrical cut’s pull. We can become invested in his attempt to protect Eun-hee without deciding that his previous murders were acceptable.

    In a separate JoyNews24 interview, Won described memory being dismantled and reconstructed as an invitation for viewers to assemble different interpretations. That supports attention to ambiguity, but does not make every theory equally well supported.

    Our analysis treats sympathy as an influence on judgment. The film encourages us to care, then leaves us to assess how that caring affects the account we are willing to accept.

    The two endings change who controls the story

    In the theatrical cut, Byung-su’s struggle is largely to preserve enough memory to recognize and resist a threat. The ending denies him lasting confidence that he has succeeded.

    In the director’s cut, the struggle over memory becomes a struggle over the account others will accept. His apparent vulnerability helps him construct a position from which responsibility can be displaced.

    That is why this film deserves more than the explanation that everything was a hallucination. Such an answer would flatten the difference between forgetting, misinterpreting and deceiving.

    Our conclusion is that Tae-ju’s existence is only the beginning of the puzzle. The deeper question is who gets to assign guilt once the story of an event is controlled by someone with a stake in its outcome.

    The theatrical version makes us fear the loss of a dependable memory. The director’s cut makes us fear the persuasive story that can take its place.

    Frequently asked questions

    Is Tae-ju real in Memoir of a Murderer?

    Both versions give grounds for treating him as a real person. The crucial difference concerns his role in the crimes. The director’s cut reveals Byung-su’s manipulation of that role and Tae-ju’s death at his hands.

    Does Tae-ju survive the theatrical ending?

    The tunnel scene raises the possibility, but does not independently establish his survival. An unreliable recollection and a symbolic return of Byung-su’s murderous identity are also viable readings.

    Is Byung-su the killer in the director’s cut?

    The final reconstruction attributes the recent crimes to him and overturns the account that positions Tae-ju as their perpetrator. This reversal belongs to Another Memory; it should not be treated as an extra scene from the theatrical cut.

    Is Eun-hee imaginary?

    The film does not require that explanation. Uncertainty about paternity and Byung-su’s recollections should not be confused with proof that she never existed.

    Why can’t Eun-hee speak in the director’s-cut aftermath?

    The investigator describes her silence and uncertainty over whether she will not or cannot communicate. The film does not establish a precise medical cause. Assigning a specific drug or diagnosis would go beyond that account.

    Does the novel explain the movie’s “true” ending?

    Kim Young-ha’s novel is the source, but the adaptation substantially reworks it. Its events should be discussed as a separate version rather than used to overwrite the evidence of either film edit.

    Sources and further reading

    More from True Taste Korea

    For another morally compromised protagonist whose concern cannot erase his earlier choices, read The Chaser Ending: Did Joong-ho Find Redemption—or Only Guilt?

    For another ending that requires separating the scene shown from the interpretation built around it, explore The Call Ending Explained: How Did Young-sook Call Herself?