[비즈한국] The drama ‘The Auditors’ (Korean title: ‘Thank You’) features an audit team that inspects the integrity of business execution, financial status, and accounting, rather than focusing on the usual meaning of gratitude. While audit teams have appeared in dramas before, this is the first time they have been placed at the forefront as protagonists, making the concept stand out for its freshness. Furthermore, it is an office drama starring Shin Ha-kyun, famously known as the ‘God of Acting’ (Ha-kyun-sin), so there is no reason not to watch it.
The setting of ‘The Auditors’ is JU Construction, a leading domestic construction firm that was once ranked 12th in the business world. However, the company has been in the red for years, and the quality of the food in the company cafeteria is so poor that it even raises suspicions of corruption. Shin Cha-il (Shin Ha-kyun), who has moved between various construction audit teams to eradicate the ‘rats’ that eat away at companies through embezzlement and breach of trust, is now targeting JU Construction. A man who trusts evidence over people, he is a purely rational individual—an ‘extreme T’ type in today's slang—who scouts out the company’s situation, including the cafeteria, even before his interview, exposing every problem.
On the other hand, JU Construction is overflowing with ‘extreme F’ types. Specifically, there is the rookie auditor Goo Han-soo (Lee Jung-ha), who thinks nothing of accepting shoes as a gift from a friendly site manager while working on the audit team, and encourages his colleague Yoon Seo-jin (Jo Aram) to take a taxi on the corporate card because there is money left in the team's expenses budget. While the show features typical villain archetypes—such as Vice President Hwang Dae-woong (Jin Goo), who is ruthless to those who block his path but infinitely warm to his own people, and Managing Director Yang Jae-seung (Baek Hyun-jin), who fawns over Hwang—the audit team members themselves, such as Deputy General Manager Yeom Kyung-seok (Hong In), who feeds information to Yang, and the well-connected Manager Ok A-jung (Lee Ji-hyun), seem far from the cool-headed, meticulous nature required of an audit team, with the sole exception of the precision-loving Yoon Seo-jin.
For an audit team that seemed somewhat warm but rather complacent, the appearance of Team Leader Shin Cha-il was a bolt from the blue. Starting with an investigation into a tower crane collapse caused by strong winds, Shin Cha-il finds evidence of false delivery of defective equipment and bribery, leading to the downfall of Executive Director Seo Gil-pyo (Kim Hong-pa), the company's real power broker. Since then, he has meticulously rooted out old, corrupt practices one by one, such as the embezzlement of 3.4 billion won in housing maintenance funds and corruption related to the operation of construction site cafeterias.
The construction industry where Shin Cha-il operates is known for its pervasive culture of rebate acceptance. Given the constant public controversies over shoddy apartment construction and the ongoing rumors of a crisis in the construction industry since the beginning of this year, ‘The Auditors’ feels like a story very closely aligned with reality by using a construction company's audit team as its background. However, it doesn't just target thrilling corporate corruption. It also captures attention by dealing with life-oriented episodes such as workplace bullying and hiring irregularities, alongside large-scale events like massive embezzlement or technology leaks.
The subject matter is good, the approach is good, and the immersion is strong, but the balance between characters is a pity. ‘The Auditors’ is in a format where the Don Quixote-esque protagonist, Shin Cha-il, is bound to stand out. While Shin Cha-il is clearly the highlight, it is natural that the supporting characters need to do their part to enrich the story and emotional depth. ‘The Auditors’ takes the path of having the polar opposite Shin Cha-il and Goo Han-soo grow together as mentor and mentee, but the imbalance between them feels increasingly severe.
Shin Ha-kyun, playing Shin Cha-il, keeps emotions extremely suppressed while still perfectly conveying his inner cold passion to the viewers. In contrast, Goo Han-soo, who needs to receive some warm support from the audience through his somewhat childish yet pure passion, creates frustration due to both the ‘nuisance’ factor of the character himself and the awkward acting of Lee Jung-ha. While it’s nice to trust people and value human affection, the Goo Han-soo character just gives the strong impression of always causing accidents by rushing into things he believes in without thinking. One can only hold their head in their hands at the sight of him hacking into Manager Park’s (Lee Joong-ok) computer without authorization to uncover workplace bullying and technology leaks in the R&D center.
Therefore, contrary to the production team’s intention of the mentor and mentee growing together, the audience becomes more focused on the confrontation between the multi-faceted Vice President Hwang Dae-woong and Shin Cha-il, or the relationship between Shin Cha-il and President Hwang Se-woong (Jung Moon-sung), who seems to have ulterior motives regarding management rights despite having recruited Shin. Shin Ha-kyun, who shows extreme charisma in one-on-one confrontation structures, creates tense and immersive scenes when facing Jin Goo or Jung Moon-sung; however, the scenes become loose—and sometimes even annoying—when he is with the main lead Lee Jung-ha. It seems this needs to be resolved in the remaining episodes for the drama to be remembered as a high-quality series.
‘The Auditors,’ a 12-episode series, has finished airing up to episode 8, watching Shin Cha-il’s activities against corporate corruption. In the remaining episodes, the focus is expected to shift to whether they can overcome the limitations of being mere audit team employees, as hinted at in the early episodes by Goo Han-soo and Yoon Seo-jin, while becoming entangled with the management struggle of the Hwang brothers. When Goo Han-soo said that audit team employees are like the police of the company, Yoon Seo-jin replied, “Audit team employees are just office workers getting paid for their own interests.” It remains to be seen if Shin Cha-il’s energetic activities can transcend the limitations of a paid office worker and succeed in cleaning up the old-fashioned culture of the construction industry.
‘The Auditors’ may lack the provocation of extreme dramas about the top 1% chaebols, but it doesn't miss out on the fantasy of having at least one such person in reality. If you are staying away from TV because you think there aren't many good dramas to watch these days, I recommend watching it. You will find yourself grateful for Shin Ha-kyun’s cold yet hot passionate performance.
About the writer, Jung Soo-jin?
She has worked at various magazines, reporting and writing about films, travel, and popular culture. While she doesn't want to fall behind on trends, she has become an "old-school" person who anticipates obvious clichés in the next scene while watching the latest dramas. She is currently trying to regain her sense of taste while drifting through the vast world of OTT platforms, and her current wish is for the release of an integrated OTT subscription plan.