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Voice is a Korean Drama that debuted in 2017.

Moo Jin-hyuk is a Korean cop. Tragedy strikes when his wife Ji-hye is murdered by a serial killer. Before she was killed Ji-hye managed to dial 112 (Korean 911) and reach Kang Kwon-joo, an operator, who listens in horror as the killer bashes Ji-hye's head in.

A suspect is arrested for Ji-hye's murder, but Kwon-joo shocks everyone by testifying in open court that the suspect is not the man she heard speaking on the phone right before he killed Ji-hye. Kwon-joo, it turns out, has unusually sensitive hearing. She claims that the voice on the phone belongs to the man who killed her father three years earlier, in what the cops wrote off as a hit and run accident. Jin-hyuk accuses Kwon-joo of taking a bribe, but she sticks to her guns and the suspect is acquitted.

Cut forward three years. Kwon-joo has advanced in the police force, while Jin-hyuk is an alcoholic wreck. She has formed a new emergency response unit, a "Golden Time Team" that is meant to respond to 112 calls and save victims in the ten minutes that is believed to be the optimum time to save lives in danger. She tabs Jin-hyuk for her team, initially to his rage, but eventually they band together to catch the man that killed her loved ones.

Followed by a sequel, Voice 2, that ran for 12 episodes in 2018, which was in turn followed by Voice 3 in 2019.


Tropes:

  • The Alcoholic: Jin-hyuk never stopped drowning his sorrows and, after the three-year time skip, is still showing up drunk to work.
  • Alone with the Psycho: In episode 3 the killer, the security guard, lures Jin-Hyuk into the basement of the apartment building. He thinks that he slipped Jin-hyuk some poisoned fruit juice, but Jin-hyuk, who realized what was up and spat the fruit juice out, arrests him.
  • As the Good Book Says...: In Season 1, Tae-gu the deranged psychopath has a habit of writing thematically appropriate Bible verses at the scenes of his murders. In episode 10, after plucking out a woman's eyeball and leaving it for the police, he writes on the wall a reference to John 9:41 about how being able to (metaphorically) see makes one guilty of sin.
  • Bitter Almonds: Faked in episode 16. The doctor at Sungun Hospital, who's one of Chairman Mo's minions, gives Tae-gu a different chemical that smells like almonds, in order to fake his death and facilitate his escape.
  • Blackmail: In Season 1, Chief Jang is helping the evil real estate agency get away with its crimes, because they have a video of him canoodling with a prostitute in the Fantasia nightclub.
  • Bound and Gagged: Eun-soo's sister Eun-byol is bound and gagged and thrown in the trunk of a car by a psycho in episode 4.
  • Buried Alive: Kwon-joo's kidnappers attempt to do this to her in episode 1-5, but they've barely gotten her covered in dirt when Jin-hyuk shows up and rescues her.
  • Chalk Outline: Episode 8 shows that there's still a tape outline of where the dead lady's body fell out of the closet.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Baek Song-hak, he helpful elderly security guard who assists the Golden Time Team when they arrive in episode 2, looking for the child who was stabbed. The next episode reveals that he's the Big Bad of the arc, a multiple murderer.
  • *Click* Hello: Jin-hyuk has fought off five bad guys and is making his escape from the bad guys' lair in episode 8, when out of nowhere, a "click" and a gun to his head announce the presence of some more bad guys. It's Nam Sang-tae, head of the gang, and his henchman (holding the gun).
  • Cliffhanger: Episodes usually end on a tense cliffhanger as the Golden Time Team is racing to save a person in danger.
  • The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much:
    • Dong-chul's death in episode 4 is an obvious murder—he has head injuries that couldn't have come from a fall, and his feet are all sliced up, due to walking on broken glass—but the cops and the coroner call it suicide because of the ongoing cover-up of the murder of Jin-hyuk's wife.
    • In episode 13 Sang-tae is hanging from a tree with a noose around his neck and a few stab wounds in his gut, but the coroner's people once again talk themselves into calling it a suicide.
  • Corrupt Bureaucrat: In season 1, Minister Kim and his underling Director Kwan of the land development industry, who are basically owned by the evil real estate company at the heart of the conspiracy.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: Yang Ho-sik, the villain of episodes 8 and 9, a deranged stalker who is after Officer Oh. He is disguised as a woman when he's arrested, which is obviously to make him come off as more creepy.
  • Creepy Souvenir: In season 1, Tae-gu is shown to keep locks of hair from the people he has murdered.
  • Death by Falling Over: Episode 15 reveals that this is how the Mo family got its hooks into Dae-ski. In the confrontation after his father's bus accident, Dae-sik shoved a mook, who hit his head on the curb and died.
  • Death Glare: In episode 2 Hyun-oh, a new addition to the Golden Time Team, hits on the extremely attractive Eun-soo, another new hire. She's skilled in several languages so he asks her "How do you say 'you're hot' in Russian?". She gives him a poisonous Death Glare and says "Leave before I sue you for sexual harassment."
  • Dirty Cop: In season 1, Commissioner Bae is in the pocket of CEO Mo and the evil real estate company. He eventually shuts the Golden Time Team down at Tae-gu's behest.
  • Disposable Vagrant: The Sungwun Express company in season 1 makes a lot of use of vagrants, hiring them as bus drivers and collecting insurance payments when they crash, conducting medical experiments on them, and harvesting their organs.
  • Feet-First Introduction: The Unreveal Angle with which the killer is introduced in episode 1. And again with another murderer in episode 3.
  • Finger-Twitching Revival: A twitching finger in episode 16 reveals that somehow, despite being hit four times in the head by Tae-gu's kettle bell, Dae-sik survived and will eventually recover.
  • Flashback: Many. Episode 3 re-tells the story of Jin-hyuk's wife's murder, from Kwon-joo's perspective. It turns out that Kwon-joo's father was an old patrolman, who tried to make the arrest at the scene and was killed by the murderer instead—which Kwon-joo also heard over the phone.
  • Foreshadowing: In the first episode Kwon-joo bumps into a woman on the street as said woman is on the phone with a man who wants to pay 100,000 won (a little bit less than $100) just to talk to her. It turns out the man is a killer and will kidnap the woman, in the first call the Golden Time Team takes.
  • Glasses Pull: Kyung-il, the meek, bespectacled schoolteacher, takes his glasses off in episode 4 as he's revealed to be a rapist and murderer.
  • I Have a Family: Ji-hye begs for mercy, telling her killer "I have a baby at home." He then bashes her head in.
  • The Lancer: Dae-shik, Jin-hyuk's best friend on the force who tries to keep him on the straight and narrow and sometimes covers up Jin-hyuk's messes.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: In episode 6 the Golden Time Team responds to a call of an angry renter threatening his landlady with a knife. They arrive, arrest the angry guy with little difficulty...and find a dead woman wrapped in plastic in the landlady's closet. This in turn reveals a plot by the Good Friend real estate company to buy up all the land in the neighborhood, using any means necessary, including murder.
  • The Mole: In Season 1, Jin-hyuk's good buddy Dae-shik is eventually revealed to be a mole for Sungwun Express, the evil real estate company. His father used to be a bus driver for them.
  • Organ Theft: The story arc in episodes 11 and 12 involves an organ harvesting operation that preys on the homeless. (The ones they don't harvest organs from, they use for experimental doses of prescription drugs.)
  • Please Wake Up: Jin-hyuk is initially unable to process his wife's death, saying "Let's go home" and attempting to pick her dead body up from the alley.
  • Product Placement: Eun-soo brings Hyun-ho the customary Subway sandwich and drink in episode 9. Three episodes later they up the ante by actually eating at Subway, complete with a shot of the exterior and talk about how good the sandwiches are.
  • Punk in the Trunk: Both Eun-soo's sister Eun-byol, and Kwon-joo herself, get stuffed into a trunk by the same pair of kidnapper-murderers in season 1.
  • Rewind, Replay, Repeat:
    • Kwon-joo is doing this in episode 2, continually repeating the 112 call of Jin-hye's death and particularly the words the killer said: "That's why you shouldn't have run."
    • In episode 13 she does this with the recording of Jin-hyuk's wife, and she eventually figures out that it was spliced together from other recordings.
  • Rooftop Confrontation:
    • Between Jin-hyuk and Kyung-il the rapist/murderer in episode 5, after the former chased the latter to the roof of the abandoned school that Kyung-il was using as a murder house.
    • Then in the final episode of Season 1 between Tae-gu and our two detectives, who, as it turns out, deliberately lured Tae-gu into a trap.
  • Sinister Switchblade: In episode 5 Kyung-il flicks out a switchblade as he creeps up behind Kwon-joo.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Yang Ho-sik, one of the villains in season 1. He's the "deranged murderer" version of a stalker, who has a habit of throwing hydrochloric acid in the face of whoever gets in his way. He encounters the Golden Time Team when he's stalking one of their officers, Hyun-oh.
  • String Theory: Episode 2 reveals that Kwon-joo has a wall of her house dedicated to the murders of her father and Jin-hyuk's wife, with police photos and newspaper articles and, yes, red string tying things together.
  • Time Skip: Three years between the first part of the first episode, and the main story where Kwon-joo is forming her team.

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