Nam Goong-min Cracks the Hospital's Pay-to-Play Secret, and 'The Completion of Marriage' Hits a New Ratings High

7.6%. That's where The Completion of Marriage landed with episode 9, which aired on KBS2 on the 1st, setting a new series-high rating by Nielsen Korea national household standards and making it three consecutive weeks the show has climbed its own chart.

The episode's central reveal was a nasty one. Kang Tae-joo (Nam Goong-min) pieces together that the hospital's fetal stem cell clinical trial wasn't selecting patients based on medical criteria, it was selecting them based on how much money they'd donated to the hospital. The list of approved trial participants matched the hospital's top donor board in the lobby, name for name. "It wasn't hope," Tae-joo says, arriving at the conclusion his father-in-law Go Dong-chan (Jang Gwang) had been hiding. "Money was the standard."

The backstory that gets Tae-joo to that point is layered and fast-moving. Earlier in the episode, Kim Gyeong-ae (Lee Sang-hee), the kidnapper who'd been hospitalized, regains consciousness and tells detective Jang Do-sik that both she and her husband were manipulated by someone above Ha Jeong-su. Ha Jeong-su is already dead, killed by potassium chloride injection, cardiac arrest, case closed on paper, but Tae-joo isn't buying it. He'd heard Ha Jeong-su say before his death that he was just following orders, and the trail of evidence pointing exclusively to Ha Jeong-su feels too clean. Jang Do-sik agrees.

Tae-joo volunteers to be Kim Gyeong-ae's attending physician over Go Dong-chan's explicit objections, which is not a subtle move and probably tells us something about where this father-in-law storyline is heading. During his visit to her room, he tells her there was no criminal record on her application anywhere. Someone fabricated that reason to disqualify her. Then he pushes the real knife in: if someone used Ha Jeong-su to try to kill her, what makes her think that same person won't try again now that she's talking?

The paperwork that cracks the case comes from Go Se-yoon (Lee Seol), who sneaks into her father's private study and retrieves the hidden clinical trial documents after Tae-joo tells her the official files have gone missing from the research lab. She hands them over without knowing the full picture, and Tae-joo doesn't give her much. Their dynamic is doing real work this episode, she's frustrated at being kept in the dark, but she shows up anyway.

Elsewhere, the fugitive No Man-hee (Kim Dae-myung) is having a very different kind of day. He receives a message from an unknown contact with a photo of the 3 billion won cash bag that vanished from Tae-joo's car trunk, along with instructions to proceed with the original plan. He heads to a hardware store to buy a hammer and cable ties. The shop owner happens to catch No Man-hee's wanted photo on a TV news broadcast. No Man-hee kills him without hesitation.

The episode also pulls junior doctor Cha Myeong-hee (Cho Yoon-seo) into the web. Jang Do-sik pulls CCTV footage showing her telling Ha Jeong-su "you did well" in a context that doesn't sit right, and forensics on Kim Gyeong-ae's phone show the two were in contact as recently as a month ago. Jang Do-sik confronts Cha Myeong-hee directly, "You know Kim Gyeong-ae, don't you? You were in contact with her just a month ago", and she doesn't have a clean answer.

The episode closes on Tae-joo scrambling through the hospital to find Go Se-yoon after learning No Man-hee is on the premises. He doesn't get there in time. Se-yoon is just reaching for her phone to answer Tae-joo's call when No Man-hee steps into the frame holding a blood-stained hammer. "Long time no see, ma'am," he says, calm as anything. "Where's President Kang?" Se-yoon backs away in terror. No Man-hee raises the hammer. Cut to black.

The Completion of Marriage airs Saturdays and Sundays on KBS2.