Karma Ending Explained: Who Does Dr. Yoon Kill?

‘Karma’ is a crime thriller show that follows a group of people whose lives are inextricably connected to each other through an unseen string of fate. Park Jae-yeong is at the center of the narrative as a young man harboring a monumental debt on his head. As a result, when he finds out about his father’s lucrative life insurance, he decides to hire a hitman, Jang Gil-ryong, to bring him one step closer to a big payout. However, as things progress, the murder plot ends up looping in a wealthy doctor, Han Sang-hun, his charming girlfriend, Lee Yu-jeong, and a strange man who is the witness to the couple’s muddied crimes. Consequently, as the sins of these individuals—past and present—rack up, it inevitably brings them to their own personal reckonings. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Karma Recap

As the story unfolds, it leads up to a big fire at an abandoned building, where a handful of people died, and one was rescued as a survivor. Once the emergency doctors, including Lee Ju-yeon, save his life, the patient reveals his identity as Park Jae-yeong, which brings up bad memories for the former. Yet, the survivor’s story doesn’t start here. A handful of weeks before the fire, Jae-yeong finds himself backed into a corner by the loan shark to whom he owes money. After the dangerous man threatens to reap his debt by harvesting him for organs, the Debtor finds himself with only 30 days to put together a large sum of money. This brings Jae-yeong to his father, Dong-sik.

The two have had a fraught relationship over the years, primarily because of the son’s thankless, immoral ways. Even now, as he visits Dong-sik in the aftermath of a car accident, he remains interested in only solving his own problem. Eventually, he finds a possible solution when he comes across his father’s life insurance papers. Therefore, he devises a plan to employ the dubious services of Jang Gil-ryong, a Chinese-Korean guy recently fired from his workplace. Nonetheless, his idea ends up going south when Gil-ryong’s assassination, meant to look like a hit-and-run, emerges as an evident murder case. As it turns out, rather than the street, the authorities had instead found Dong-sik’s dead body buried in the mountains.

On the night of the murder, a simultaneous incident unfolded in another part of town with an acupuncture doctor, Han Sang-hun, and his girlfriend, Yu-jeong. While the two drive late at night, under the influence of alcohol and hormones, the doctor’s car slams into a man. This compels him to cover up the accident by burying the man and paying a hefty price for the silence of a biker who coincidentally witnessed the entire thing. However, in the aftermath, the witness grows bolder with his demand for even more hush money. Yet, a passing comment by his mechanic leads Sang-hun to check his dashcam footage. As such, he discovers that the witness has actually been conning him since he’s the one who threw the already-dead man into his car.

Eventually, a rash confrontation leads Sang-hun to kill his girlfriend—who is the witness’ accomplice—while the latter kills him. Shortly afterward, he gets a call for help from his pal, Gil-ryong. Since Jae-yeong refuses to pay him for the assassination due to insurance complications, Gil-ryong threatens him for cash, which is why he needs someone for backup. Consequently, this brings the three men to their destinies at the abandoned building in Guhoe. In the aftermath of their altercation, only one man walks away with his life, later identifying him as Jae-yeong. Nonetheless, given the Debtor’s past connection to his medical savior, Ju-yeon, the survivor isn’t quite as safe as he thinks he is.

Karma Ending: Is the Survivor Really Jae-yeong? Does Dr. Yoon Kill Him?

The story establishes the identity of Jae-yeong as the survivor right at the beginning of its narrative. However, as the story progresses—swinging between timelines and storylines—this fact becomes more and more dubious. Most notably, it is the survivor’s blatant disregard for one of his doctors, Ju-yeon, that rings the initial alarm bells. As it turns out, the doctor shares a dark history with the apparent survivor. During her high school years, she invited the poisonous envy of another girl, Yu-jeong, who sets her up on a blind date with Jae-yeong. However, unbeknownst to her, the date is actually a trap for several boys to kidnap and assault her in an abandoned building. Jae-yeong was one of these boys and, in fact, the leader of the pack.

As such, once the patient gives his name as Park Jae-yeong, it brings back ugly memories for the woman. Still, aside from the name he himself provides, there aren’t any other ways to identify the survivor due to the magnitude of his burn scars and a lack of identification on him. Therefore, Ju-yeon can’t be certain if it’s the same guy or just someone who, unfortunately, shares his name. This dilemma compels her to hire a PI, Hwang Cheol-mok, to learn about the current whereabouts of her attackers. In the end, he confirms that Jae-yeong was one of the people in the abandoned building at the time of the fire. Thus, the doctor realizes she has the opportunity to finally get her revenge on her abuser, whose life she had unwittingly saved.

After a few taut encounters, the thing that finally pushes Ju-yeon to commit to her murderous plans is Jae-yeong’s frustrating unacknowledgement of their shared past. Yet, what she doesn’t know is that the survivor doesn’t recognize her because he isn’t the man he claims to be. At the time of his death, Sang-hun was actually being followed by a pair of Hwang’s PI Agents, who witnessed his murder at the witness’ hand. Thus, in the aftermath, the witness finds himself on the run from the law as a murder suspect. For the same reason, once he realizes Jae-yeong has no money to pay him and Gil-ryong, he comes up with a drastic Plan B.

The witness—Kim Beom-jun—concludes that he can’t return to his old life without garnering unwanted legal trouble. Therefore, he decides to set the abandoned building on fire and steal Jae-yeong’s identity. The unintentional wounds and burns from the fire, which require facial reconstruction surgery, only further his plans. Nonetheless, while this saves Beom-jun from his misdeeds, he unwittingly inherits Jae-yeong’s sins. Even though he gets lucky when Ju-yeon decides to spare his life, he can’t outrun his namesake’s debt. Thus, in the end, Jae-yeong’s loan shark enemies end up kidnapping Beom-jun to settle the score. As such, in the end, when the resident doctor, Yoon, harvests the survivor’s organs, Beom-jun receives his reckoning, even if dressed as Jae-yeong’s retribution.

Why Does Ju-yeon Spare Jae-yeong’s Life? Does She Regret Saving Him?

Ju-yeon’s narrative remains one of grief, trauma, and vengeful opportunities. The doctor’s past hangs heavy over her head even in her adult life. She routinely has nightmares about the incident, often finding herself back in the shoes of her teenage self. Consequently, Park Jae-yeong’s unfortunate return to her life naturally triggers the worst of her trauma. Even though Yu-jeong came up with the idea to stage her assault, it was Jae-yeong who acted as the mastermind behind it. Worse yet, he initially earned Ju-yeon’s trust to steer him clear of any future consequences. Consequently, once her attackers had been identified, it left a deep wound on teenage Ju-yeon.

Now, in the present, the doctor realizes that she has just saved the life of the man who ruined hers. When the survivor is initially brought in, Yoon almost shoots him up with morphine, which could have been fatal. Therefore, Ju-yeon’s interference had saved his life. Naturally, once the survivor identifies himself as Jae-yeong, the doctor inevitably finds herself second-guessing her actions. Soon enough, she makes the decision to kill the man, equipping Hwang’s help to swap out his pain medication for fentanyl so that she can get the drop on him. Nonetheless, when the time comes for Ju-yeon to go through with her lifelong fantasy of stabbing her attacker, she grows indecisive.

Her partner, Dr. Yoon, arrives in the nick of time to appeal to her sensibilities. Even though he understands her desire to kill Jae-yeong, he also knows that doing so would forever condemn her own life. From legal troubles to a darkened conscience, Ju-yeon will only suffer from taking another person’s life, even if it sates some vengeful part of herself. Thus, the doctor ultimately decides to spare the survivor’s life. Despite still believing him to be Jae-yeong, she doesn’t take his life and tarnish her own morality. Instead, she chooses to move forward with her life. In the end, this decision lightens the weight on her soul a little, aiding in her overall healing process. This becomes all the more evident when she declines to hear any updates on the Jae-yeong case from Hwang after he discovers the reality about the survivor’s identity.

Is Yoon Lying to Ju-yeon? What is He Hiding?

Yoon remains mindful of Ju-yeon’s growing distress throughout the story. Therefore, he’s able to look into her past and make the connection between her and Jae-yeong, which compels him to seek her out in the most opportune of times. He talks her off a homicidal ledge, helping her realize that no revenge would be worth jeopardizing her entire career and life. However, this proves that he has his partner’s best interests at heart; one can’t help but question his loyalty, given his recent rendezvous. Although one might be compelled to believe he’s cheating on his fiance at this time, a different, vastly jarring reality reveals itself.

Much like every other central character in the story, Yoon’s threads of fate are also intricately connected to the entire overarching narrative. All the times that he has been taking off to “take care of a family member” are actually times he has been aiding a loan shark in his organ harvesting needs. However, now that he has paid off his student loans and cemented himself in a comfortable place in his life, he is ready to quit with one final job. Fatefully, this brings him to Kim Beom-jun’s operating table. However, despite the man’s claims of having stolen someone else’s identity, he refuses to believe him. Therefore, since the other man is about to die either way, Yoon decides to make him pay for Ju-yeon’s pain. In the end, the doctor harvests Beom-jun’s organs without even allowing him the relief of anesthesia so that he dies a gruesome and painful death.

How is Everyone Connected to Ju-yeon? Did They Deserve Their Fates?

The central premise of ‘Karma’ remains the interconnectedness of each character and their stories. Although each narrative begins without any apparent relation to another, it’s all one overarching story about destiny and just deserts. Most of the primary characters—from assassin Gil-ryong to con artists Lee Yu-jeong and Beom-jun—are bad people who have done bad things. Yet, a pattern runs among some of them that dictates the course of their retribution. Ju-yeon, the doctor, is at the center of this pattern.

Ju-yeon was a victim of group abuse at the hands of Jae-yeong and his friends. Two of these guys had already met their bitter ends—one dying in prison and the other dying of an overdose. Nonetheless, their leader had yet to meet his comeuppance. It’s evident that the years haven’t changed the man one bit, and he’s still on a path of immorality. He disregards other people for his own benefit, and his own father feels the need to repent for his sins. In fact, his treatment of his father—as evidenced by his decision to steal his Rolex while he’s in the hospital—is a crucial signifier of his character.

Then there’s Yu-Jeong, the woman who orchestrated Ju-yeon’s kidnapping to soothe her own jealousy. The other teenage girl had done nothing to wrong her, yet she felt the need to push her into the arms of danger purely out of her own insecurity. As Yu-jeong grows, she also goes down an evil path, becoming a con woman who uses herself as the honey trap to extort rich married men. Once Beom-jun is released from prison—following an arrest for his own conning ways—she teams up with him and lays down a trap for many men, including Sang-hun. Admittedly, the latter and Gil-ryong don’t have direct connections to Ju-yeon, making their demises simply coincidental reckonings.

However, the same cannot be said for Beom-jun. Even though he wasn’t one of the boys who assaulted Ju-yeon, he isn’t exactly innocent in the matter. As an upperclassman, he remained friends with Yu-jeong even long after his own graduation. Therefore, when he sees her distress over a more popular girl in her grade, he gives her some advice to ruin the other girl’s life. As such, when each action is traced to its origins, one can find Beom-jun at the very top. His actions over the course of the story, which involve murder, extortion, and arson, further cement his immorality.

Therefore, even though each character receives their ending through arbitrary means, each one of them only reap the fruits of their karma. In some ways, when Beom-jun steals Jae-yeong’s identity, he also ends up inheriting the culmination of his sins. Therefore, as he’s condemned to perhaps the most painful demise, he’s meeting his own destiny as well as that of the man he has killed. Ultimately, one ripple effect—Jae-yeong’s decision to commit patricide—sets off a series of events in motion that bring numerous sinners to their fates.