K-drama Through the Darkness: Mindhunter finds its Korean equivalent in new criminal profiling series, an adaptation of 2018 book Those Who Read Hearts of Evil
- Through the Darkness is a new 12-part series loosely adapted from the memoir Those Who Read Hearts of Evil, by Korea’s first criminal profiler, Kwon Il-yong
- The Fiery Priest star Kim Nam-gil plays an investigator with a traumatic past who follows his intuition to solve deadly crimes
Korean films and dramas have long been known for their grisly serial killer tales, but criminal profiling – the application of behavioural sciences on criminal investigations – was only adopted by South Korean law enforcement in the year 2000.
Korea’s first criminal profiler was Kwon Il-yong, and in 2018, along with co-author Ko Na-mu, he published Those Who Read Hearts of Evil, which served both as a memoir of his time as the head investigator of the Criminal Behaviour Analysis Team at the National Police Agency and as a probing study of notable violent criminals in modern Korea and what makes them tick.
If that sounds familiar, you might be thinking of either the Netflix show Mindhunter or the non-fiction bestseller it was based on, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, based on the experience of FBI agent John E. Douglas, the world’s first criminal profiler.
Through the Darkness, a new 12-part drama from SBS, is a loose adaptation of Kwon’s book, which chronicles the formation and inaugural cases of Korea’s first Criminal Behavior Analysis Team.