Reegan ¦ 饮鸩止渴

I'm once again going insane thinking about Beyond Evil's execution of the food as a love language trope, because while plenty of kdramas include this theme, Beyond Evil does it in a way that shows the evil side of the coin with the dinners shared by Han Ki-hwan, Lee Chang-jin, and Do Hae-hwan as moments of them plotting to do bad things - but especially in the dinner scenes between Han Ki-hwan and Joo-won. It's like Joo-won is being held captive during these conversations because it's rude to disrupt dinner. HKH is all about decorum and he raised his son to be nothing but proper and respectable on the surface. It's pretty obvious that Joo-won barely eats during these "meals" and I don't think it's just because he's disgusted by their conversations. Not eating is a small act of rebellion. He can't leave the table until they're done but he isn't going to share that meal with a man who has never loved or nurtured him the way a father should or give HKH another opportunity to control him by choosing what/when he eats. In my mind, Joo-won spent years half-starving himself out of resistance, and then he meets Dong-sik and the Manyang gang, who coax him slowly into the butcher shop and understanding that the dinner table is not meant to be a place of conflict or negotiation but a place of community, nourishment, and joy. I don't think it's a coincidence that when Joo-won comes back from Busan, mimicking Dong-sik, his first act is to eat ravenously in front of HKH, as if to say that he has taken control over not only that dinnertable but also his own life. It's no longer a matter of passive resistance but active rebellion. And when he and Dong-sik meet again at a dinner table and Dong-sik tells him "You must fill your belly even in the way to hell," it isn't just rebellion but an act of love.