Bloodhounds follows boxers Kim Gun-woo and Hong Woo-jin who befriend each other and join hands to take down a powerful and corrupt moneylender.
Based on “Bloodhounds” by Jeong Chan, the South Korean television series is directed by Kim Joo-hwan and stars Woo Do-hwan, Lee Sang-yi, Park Sung-woong, and Huh Joon-ho. Bloodhounds follows the story of two boxers who become friends and set foot in the world of private money lending.
Bloodhounds Story Summary
Kim Gun-woo (Woo Do-hwan) and Hong Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi) become friends after a thrilling boxing match between the two. However, they find themselves caught up in the midst of chaos as Gun-woo’s mother, So-yeon (Yoon Yoo-sun), becomes a victim of a financial scam by Smile Capital and falls into debt.
Under the chairmanship of Kim Myeong-gil (Park Sun-woong), Smile Capital works to scam poor homeless people and loan sharks. The gang members scam the poor homeless people by asking for their IDs, telling them that they offer low-interest loans to the people in need, under a government scheme. The poor people fall victim to this scam. The stolen IDs of these homeless people are then used by the gang members to take out loans in the name of those people from private loan sharks.
Gun-woo’s mother also falls victim to this scam when she signs a contract with the company as they told her that the government is providing financial aid to those struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Gun-woo’s mother had been unable to pay the rent for her café as her business was making less than one-fourth of what it used to make before the pandemic, but the landlord still takes the same amount as rent.
Myeong-gil’s thugs attack her café, demanding the money that was lent to her. The conditions for lending the loan were written in fine print on the contract, which Gun-woo’s mother missed. The contract stated that she would be paying 10% of the interest rate within 24 hours of signing. However, the extension has accrued 40 million in interest as she failed to make the payment and the interest rate went up to 20%.
Gun-woo reaches the café while Myeong-gil and his men ruin everything. Gun-woo is beaten up. Myeong-gil offers Gun-woo to join his company, and Gun-woo refuses and spits on Myeong-gil’s face as his men watch. This results in Myeong-gil scarring Gun-woo’s cheek with a knife, leaving Gun-woo with the need for 30 stitches.
Woo-jin Comes To Gun-woo’s Rescue
Woo-jin decides to help Gun-woo to the best of his abilities. Woo-jin worked as a bloodhound for someone, before he joined the military as a Marine and decided to stay clean thereafter. He uses his contacts from his days as a thug to help Gun-woo. However, the person for whom Woo-jin worked, asks him to join him in his business again. Gun-woo refuses to do so as they are boxers and not one of those thugs.
Mr. Moon (Park Hoon), one of Woo-jin’s contacts and an ex-senior Marine, tells Woo-jin and Gun-woo to go to Mr. Choi(Huh Joon-ho), who lends zero-interest loans to sick and poor people. Gun-woo and Woo-jin are hired by Mr. Choi to assist and protect Hyeon-ju (Kim Sae-ron), an orphan who is like his granddaughter. Gun-woo gets a hundred million won from Mr. Choi, as an advance payment of two years, to repay his mother’s debt.
Hyeon-ju has been investigating Yang Jae-myeong secretly. She tells Woo-jin and Gun-woo that Yang Jae-myeong was one of the few people who took advantage of M. Choi’s generosity. Jae-myeong had disappeared after borrowing ten million won from Mr. Choi and had started working for Myeong-gil, Mr. Choi’s enemy.
One night, the three of them go after Jae-myeong (Bae Jae-gi) to find the exact number of IDs stolen by him and his crew in a day. Gun-woo ends up getting involved in a fight with the gang when they attack an old homeless man, who had been scammed previously by them. Gun-woo and Woo-jin fight the gang. Hyeon-ju joins the fight to help the two of them and the three of them put down the entire gang. They send the old man to a hospital. However, all of this angers Hyeon-ju as she had told them to focus only on keeping an eye on Jae-myeong, without getting involved. However, Gun-woo ultimately convinces her that it was the right thing to do.
Choi Shares History With Myeong-gil
When Mr. Choi learns about how Gun-woo got the scar on his cheek, it makes him realize that Myeong-gil is the one who scammed Gun-woo’s mother. Myeong-gil used to work for Mr. Choi until Choi decided to end his dark business as a private loan shark and instead work to help the poor. However, Myeong-gil decided to rob all of Choi’s wealth. Along with one of his associates, In-beom (Tae Won-seok), he attacked Choi’s office one night and stole money and goods from the safe. Mr. Oh (Min Kyung-jin), the security officer at Choi’s office, called Choi. Myeong-gil and In-beom attacked Choi and Myeong-gil scarred Choi’s face just like he did to Gun-woo, and In-beom threw Mr. Choi out of the window.
Myeong-gil then set Choi’s office on fire and fled. Mr. Choi was saved but became handicapped. Later, he started his business, along with Mr. Oh, to help the sick and poor people in dire need of money.
Hong Min-beom (Choi Si-won) also falls victim to Myeong-gil’s evil plans. Myeong-gil lends a hundred billion to Hong, with the condition of having a casino and a bar in the hotel that Hong was going to acquire. However, Myeong-gil actually plans on taking the hotel off from Min-beom, once he destroys the reputation of the hotel. In order to achieve his goal, Myeong-gil gets his thugs to kidnap Min-beom and record a video of him while he’s being stripped.
Mr. Choi calls Yang-jung (Lee Hae-young) and Du-yeong (Ryu Soo-Young), his best knifers who worked for him back in the day. The two of them, along with Hyeon-ju, Gun-woo, and Woo-jin, frame a plan to end Myeong-gil’s reign. Yang-jung and Du-yeong train the three of them to prepare them before attacking Myeong-gil’s gang members, who were admitted to the hospital after the fight earlier.
They are able to kidnap Jang-do (Ha Soo-ho), a former police cadet, who now worked for Myeong-gil. Jang-do knows all the ways in which Myeong-gil operates his business, and thus, he could be of great help to Mr. Choi and his team. Mr. Choi is able to turn Jang-do against Myeong-gil and uses him to learn everything about Myeong-gil’s ways of working. In return for his help, Choi assures Jang-do that he will give him enough money to spend the rest of his life well in a faraway land.
Jang-do reveals to Choi that Myeong-gil uses videos of people to blackmail them and make them work in his favor. He has over 50 videos that he can use against different people, stored on a hard drive. This hard drive is kept securely in a safe at Myeong-gil’s house and it can be incinerated by Myeong-gil anytime he finds it to be in danger through an app on his phone. This hard drive also includes Hong Min-beom’s video.
Bloodhounds Ending Explained
In an unfortunate turn of events, Myeong-gil’s gang is able to track Du-yeong and they attack his house. Myeong-gil tells Du-yeong that he will let Du-yeong’s pregnant wife live if Du-yeong tells him about the whereabouts of Yang-jung and Choi’s team. Despite Du-yeong telling Myeong-gil about it, Myeong-gil kills Du-yeong and his wife.
Another group of Myeong-gil’s gang members attack Choi’s office while Hyeon-ju and Gun-woo were away to send off Gun-woo’s mother to help at Choi’s orphanage. Choi’s hidden gold and money is stolen by the gang as Choi had opened the safe for his gun. Hyeon-ju and Gun-woo return to find their place set on fire. Mr. Choi dies in the incident, while Woo-jin is taken to a hospital in a critical condition. However, Woo-jin is saved when Gun-woo donates as much of his blood as needed to save him.
Hyeon-ju goes away to Rome after the incident as she finds herself unable to keep going when everything around her reminds her of Mr. Choi. Mr. Oh finally allows Woo-jin and Gun-woo to take revenge from Myeong-gil, after opposing it for a long time. They join hands with Hong Min-beom and his cousin Yang-gong, who is also a police officer, as they share the same motive of ending Myeong-gil. Gun-woo and Woo-jin tell Min-beom and Gang-yong (Choi Young-joon) that they know the location of the hard drive and could incinerate it by hacking into Myeong-gil’s phone with the help of a technical expert in the police agency.
Min-beom is instructed to ask Myeong-gil if he wants to delete the video himself before signing the contract. When Myeong-gil gives his phone to Min-beom, Min-beom turns on the Wi-Fi on the phone. This enables Tae-yong, the technical expert with the police, to hack into the phone and the hard drive containing the videos is incinerated using the safe app on Myeong-gil’s phone.
Do Gun-woo And Woo-hin Defeat Myeong-gil?
However, Jae-min (Kim Min-jae), a cop, joins hands with Myeong-gil. The location of Mr. Oh is revealed to Myeong-gil and he sends his gang to kidnap Mr. Oh. However, Jae-min is ultimately arrested for being Myeong-gil’s associate, along with the other gang members.
While, Myeong-gil attempts to flee to Vietnam with In-beom, who is like a brother to Myeong-gil, and Mun-jin (Jo Wan-gi), another associate, Gun-woo and Woo-jin plan to stop him. They contact Jang-do who tells them about Myeong-gil’s plan to escape in a cargo ship, with all the gold and money that he stole from Choi. Jang-do tells the two to board the ship and refers them to a contact who would help the two, in exchange for money.
Min-beom helps the two of them with the money transaction as a backup of his video, which needs to be destroyed, exists with Myeong-gil. Gun-woo and Woo-jin board the ship and take down Myeong-gil, In-beom, and Mun-jin. They also successfully recover Choi’s money and gold and take Myeong-gil’s phone so that Min-beom’s video does not get leaked in the future.
Min-beom receives the two of them in the middle of the ocean and expresses his gratitude to them by offering to split the gold amongst themselves. Gun-woo and Woo-jin refuse to do so as it is Choi’s money. They tell Min-beom that they would rather open an organisation for the welfare of the poor, as Choi always wanted to help the poor. Min-beom decides to support them and also build a hospital for such needy people. He rewards the two of them with two gold bars each.
Everything ends well as Gun-woo and Woo-jin return and go to visit Gun-woo’s mother at the orphanage. The two of them get back to living their life as boxers again, as they decide to use their skills and power for helping the people in need.
All episodes of Bloodhounds are available to stream on Netflix.
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