The Good Bad Mother episode 9: Kang-ho’s revenge plan is finally revealed, Young-soon destroys all his hard work

The Good Bad Mother episode 9, which premiered on Netflix on Thursday, May 25, was an entire flashback that showed viewers all the hidden secrets behind Kang-ho’s revenge plan. It also showed how Kang-ho became Young-soon’s very own reflection by becoming The Good Bad Son, severing ties with her to find out why her life was ruined at the hands of CEO Song Woo-byeok and Oh Tae-soo.

This latest episode of The Good Bad Mother episode 9 takes viewers through all the heartbreak, pain, humiliation, and loneliness that Kang-ho suffered to avenge his mother. With Lee Do-hyun, Ra Mi-ran, and Ahn Eun-jin in the lead, The Good Bad Mother has been trending ever since it premiered on April 26, 2023.

The Good Bad Mother episode 8 saw Young-soon come across prosecutor Kang-ho’s letter and, through its clues, discover a memory card hidden in their family photo.

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The Good Bad Mother episode 9: Tables turn as Kang-ho becomes The Good Bad Son

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 shows the hidden sides of the mother-son duo, making viewers realize just how much the two unconditionally love each other despite their tough exteriors.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 opens with the villagers finding out about Kang-ho’s fiance, Ha-young, marrying the heir of Dosang Group through the news. They vow to keep it from Young-soon but she overhears them and informs them that she already knows. She asks Mr. Bang for help with using the memory card.

Young-soon and Kang-ho sit together in front of the laptop, confused, as the file needs a password. Young-soon adds Kang-ho’s birthday, but it shows as an incorrect password. Kang-ho reminds his mother about her birthdate, and it turns out that that was the password.

The memory card includes multiple diary entries as notes and folders with PDFs and images. Young-soon opens a note dated March 3, 2008, which throws us into a flashback.

We see Kang-ho’s first day at SNU’s (Seoul National University) School of Law. A professor asks him the reason behind learning law, and he says that he too, is curious about why he needs to learn it. He remembers a young Young-soon crying and telling him that she needed to know why his father died.

Later, Kang-ho gets into a fight with a judge’s son, who, despite barely attending school, passed with flying colors. At the police station, Young-soon begs the student to spare Kang-ho as he will be unable to take the bar exam if he is in jail. The student pushes Young-soon and insults her. Kang-ho gets angry and stands up to beat him, but his mother slaps him and kneels in front of the student to beg for forgiveness. She forces an angry Kang-ho to do the same. He obliges.

Kang-ho mentions in the note that the day at the police station made him realize why he must attend law school—for power.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 also shows the many struggles Kang-ho faced to get the trial documents for his father’s case. Officers deny giving him the documents as he needs a signature from the senior officer of the same jurisdiction, who refuses to give him any since he is a nobody.

Kang-ho remembers Young-soon’s words, where she tells him that once he becomes a prosecutor, no one will be able to bully or look down on him. He also comes across Oh Tae-soo’s name in the case ruling document and begins learning about him through his books.

On his graduation day, Young-soon gave Kang-ho a bank account book with a seal, mentioning that she would keep sending him money in that account. It is the account book that Kang-ho gives to Mi-joo at the time of their breakup.

It is also the same time when Kang-ho starts living with Mi-joo. He starts working as a probationary judicial officer at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. He finally gets his hands on his father’s trial record and finds out that the witness who was to appear for the victim turned against him at the trial.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 sees the return of an old Kwak Sang-cheol, Choi Hae-sik’s friend who turned against him, as Kang-ho goes to meet him. He discovers that CEO Song indirectly threatened to burn down his house and apologized to Kang-ho.

Meanwhile, Kang-ho hides all of this from Mi-joo. We later see that he does not inform Young-soon about his appointment ceremony and asks Mi-joo not to attend it either. While taking the oath as a prosecutor, we get another flashback of memories when Kang-ho realized that Young-soon has always loved him.

Kang-ho remembers Sang-cheol telling him that Young-soon wanted her child to become an artist just like her. Since she couldn’t complete her dream after her family passed away, she would make sure that her child could do so. In more flashbacks, we see Young-soon tearing apart a young Kang-ho’s drawing and burning his art awards.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 then shows Kang-ho's newfound confidence and power as well. With his prosecutor ID, he goes to the same officer who had insulted him and denied giving him his father’s trial records previously and demands the same. Kang-ho notices discrepancies in the neck mark pictures taken at the scene and during the autopsy of his father.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 finally reveals the reason behind the breakup of Kang-ho and Mi-joo. The former later discovers Oh Tae-soo as the prosecutor during the trial and begins following him. He plans on using his daughter, Ha-young, and breaks up with Mi-joo without telling her the reason. The latter also demands not knowing the answer if it will eventually change nothing. In a voiceover, we hear Kang-ho’s painful letter to Mi-joo.

Kang-ho then launches his plan by following Ha-young and purposely arresting her for drug usage, getting closer to her. Meanwhile, he finds a case where Yoon Jae-min, CEO Song Woo-byeok’s grandson, was named for killing a woman. He finds evidence against Jae-min and goes to his senior. He plays a few tricks and asks the senior to hand over the case to him.

Kang-ho then frames an innocent man to rise up in CEO Song’s eyes. Simultaneously, the former and Ha-young get closer. He visits Ha-young’s house as a potential son-in-law, and Tae-soo insults him. He later realizes that CEO Song and Tae-soo are going against each other and asks CEO Song to adopt him as he is going to marry Ha-young.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 also puts to rest the speculations of Kang-ho murdering Hwang Soo-hyun and her newborn. Kang-ho takes care of her, gets her on a boat to go to the Philippines, and stages her murder. Soo-hyun tells Kang-ho to be cautious, and it is at the same time that he sends Young-soon back when she comes with home cooked meals.

Later, we see Kang-ho picking up Ha-young from her house to go meet Young-soon. Tae-soo tells her to keep in mind what he talked about earlier. Kang-ho senses trouble. At the village home, while Young-soon is all excited to meet her son’s fiance, Kang-ho tells Ha-young to wait in the car. He then asks Young-soon for drinks and hides the memory card in the family portrait.

In his note of October 3, 2021, Kang-ho reveals that he was never interested in his father’s case but wanted to avenge Young-soon, whose life was destroyed by CEO Song and Tae-soo. In more flashbacks, we see Young-soon applying ointment on a young Kang-ho’s leg (when she beat him for using a swear word), eating only the remains from Kang-ho’s plate as he never ate full and neither did she, and sticking up the pieces of his drawing that she tore.

Kang-ho says in the note how dangerous his path was and that severing ties was the only way to keep her out of harm's way. He asks forgiveness for being a bad son and wishes to lie in Young-soon’s arms and eat the mung bean pancakes (that he threw away earlier) she cooks when everything ends.

In the present, Young-soon is emotional and devastated after learning about Kang-ho’s lonely revenge. Elsewhere, Sam-sik comes across his mother hiding a luxury bag and takes it out to give it as compensation to his past employer. As he walks towards the street, a black car speeds by, shocking him.

Young-soon burns all the evidence Kang-ho had collected all these years. She repeatedly tells the present child-like Kang-ho to stop his plan and forget everything so that they can live peacefully without danger. In the last scene, she tosses the memory card in the pit of fire as well.

Meanwhile, The Good Bad Mother episode 9 ends with a fisherman finding a dead infant and yellow-white stripes bag washed ashore. The bag and baby make it clear that Soo-hyun was killed despite Kang-ho's help.

The Good Bad Mother episode 9 answered many questions that viewers had in the previous episodes. It also showed unseen sides of Kang-ho and Young-soon, in a way, finally revealing their true selves. However, it still remains to be seen how the mother-son duo’s relationship ends up, considering Young-soon’s terminal stomach cancer.

The Good Bad Mother is a 14 episode series; it releases new episodes every Wednesday and Thursday on Netflix.