'The Defects' K-Drama Episodes 1-4 Recap 

The 2025 Korean drama The Defects seems to be quite an original piece of work about bioengineered kids. It’s a commentary on the Korean parents’ obsession with “perfect” children. I suppose manufactured youth has been a thing for many years, but not yet to this level. The TV show has released 4 episodes today, all very gripping, with a story that is very quick-paced and feels quite real. It begins with a kid being kidnapped to be murdered, before suddenly she’s all grown up and living in hiding. While the prospect of this kind of thing happening in real life seems impossible, the K-drama reminds us that we’ve become inhuman enough to be able to send back “defective” pieces, even if it means actual children. But I won’t waste any more time and will jump straight into the recap of the first four episodes ofThe Defects.

What Happens to Tae-Sik? 

The Defects episode 1 begins in 2011, where a young girl gets kidnapped by two men. One of these men is Tae-Sik, whom this girl will grow up to call “Ajhussi” affectionately. But for the moment, it looked like he was about to kill her with a gun. Tae-Sik took up this job because he needed money to pay off the hospital bills for his mom. After doing many jobs, Tae-Sik finally decided he was going to raise these kids as his own because of his guilt but basically weaponized them for their own safety. The young girl, Ah-Hyun, is now grown up, and there are 3 other kids with her. They’ve been living on ramyeon and don’t get to go anywhere by themselves without prior permission or orders. But when one of the other kids, So-Mi, says she wants chicken, Ah-Hyun decides they should give it a go. They head out to a gambling den to steal some money but end up fighting with everybody there, nearly killing themselves. But wait, they’re not stealing a ton of money. They’re simply taking enough to get themselves some chicken, how sweet, while leaving the rest for the police (huh). 

But as soon as they’ve bought the chicken, Tae-Sik sends for them, which means they don’t even get to eat any. The next thing we know, they’re doing target practice, and each of them has a distinct negative memory that they evoke to aim perfectly. These people they’re remembering are all their parents. The parents who’ve abandoned them and harmed them in other ways. But when they’ve all been shot, Tae-Sik tells him that they should not be going out because there are people out there who want them dead, even so many years later. Now, So-Mi gets mad because she’s tired of living in hiding, but Ah-Hyun reminds her that the only reason they’re even alive is because of Tae-Sik, and they asked to be saved. Tae-Sik worries the kids will get caught in Korea eventually, so he plans on sending them out of the country. 

But there’s another Ah-Hyun in the show. This girl’s mother is Se-Hee, and she’s like a good woman that everybody trusts. She goes to an orphanage, and the kids are delighted to see her. She even asks one of them to call her Mom, and the kid does call her that instantly. But she’s the mastermind, or at least the visible mastermind, of this bioengineered baby program. A man named Jung-Hyeon works for her, and we see him kill a journalist who got a bit too close to their story. When Se-Hee visits her daughter’s school, we see a young boy named Si-Woo. The first episode mainly focuses on this kid’s story. He’s going to be the 5th member of the family. Si-Woo’s mum is disappointed by his performance at school, but Ah-Hyun, Se-Hee’s daughter, is good friends with him. 

Suddenly, we learn that Si-Woo is a “defective” piece, and his mom wants to get rid of him. Unbeknownst to him, this is the last time he’s going to see his mum, who pretends to take him to play. The reason she doesn’t want him is that his grades are low, whereas they wanted a perfect child. The return process basically means Tae-Sik killing the kids. But this time, when Si-Woo is spared, he hears his own mom talk about wanting him dead, and he still believes she’ll want him back. He thinks he can apologize and everything will be okay. But this is not the case. He ends up calling his mother on the way to the bathhouse, where the other kids are hiding, and this ends up wreaking havoc on Tae-Sik’s whole plan. Not only does Si-Woo hear his mom talking about how he’s not dead yet, but Jung-Hyeon learns that the kid is still alive, which means Tae-Sik has probably saved more of them. 

Finally, Si-Woo reaches the bathhouse, but news of his having gone missing has spread. This makes the kids realize something is wrong, and he admits he called his mother. On the other hand, Jung-Hyeon ends up killing Tae-Sik, leaving the family abandoned to fend for themselves. This is a big loss because he was the only adult who ever cared for these kids. 

Who Got Rid Of So-Mi? 

So-Mi has named herself after the K-pop idol Jeon So-Mi. In a flashback, we see that she auditioned to become a K-pop idol, but her mom didn’t want her to do it. Meanwhile, her adoptive father is a pedophile and hypnotizes his own daughter to assault her. But So-Mi always believed her mom wanted to abandon her, too. In the present day, Ah-Hyun finds a letter left behind by Tae-Sik explaining everything he’s done so far. She also finds information about everyone who has “returned” kids because they were not up to the standard, quality-wise. Meanwhile, since Si-Woo wasn’t declared, the other Ah-Hyun starts to worry about him. Rumors are spreading quickly at school, too. But Se-Hee tells Ah-Hyun that studying should be her number one priority, also reminding her that she used to think as a child that if she wasn’t number one, she’d have died (yikes). Ah-Hyun refers to Jung-Hyeon as a maternal uncle, but Jung-Hyeon also happens to be one of the kids like her, too, and Se-Hee expects him to call her Mom, as we learn later on the show. 

Tae-Sik left somebody as a safe contact for the kids, but when they get there, it turns out it’s a trap, and Jung-Hyeon is there to get rid of them for good. But ultimately, the kids manage to escape because Tae-Sik has trained them well. Ah-Hyun has new zeal now; she shows the other kids recordings of what their parents said about them before getting rid of them. This makes them decide that they won’t give up easily and will fight the people who started it all. Episode 2 focuses on So-Mi’s father. He’s now the principal of a school, which is honestly shocking, seeing as he’s a predator. They want to get information about a black card from him to get to the leader. At night, Ah-Hyun pretends to be a designated driver, and he notices how “young” she looks. He tells her that when kids like her need money, it excites him even further. Ah-Hyun pretends she’s willing to do anything with him for money, and he’s delighted. She then says she knows someone who is even younger, and she’d be happy to introduce him to her. It happens to be Joo-An dressed as a girl, but Chul-Soo invites her into his house, not realizing the difference (Sister Hong, who?). 

The kids then torture Chul-Soo to get information out of him about the black card. Turns out So-Mi’s mother never abandoned her; she didn’t even know her husband was “returning” their daughter. She lost her mind soon after So-Mi’s disappearance, and Chul-Soo sent her to a psychiatric hospital. 

What Do The Kids Find? 

So-Mi wants to find her mother, but at first, the kids are skeptical because Jung-Hyeon is going to be there. The kids also find a nice spot for them to live in and make it their home pretty quickly. Meanwhile, Se-Hee meets with an important lady, whose identity we don’t know yet. She says her infertility is her biggest flaw, and she’s married to such a perfect man, so she needs a perfect kid for him. We also see how indifferent Se-Hee is about children and just natural childbirth. She says it’s ridiculous that people would call embryos babies when they’re just cells. At the same time, a cop finds Ah-Hyun’s phone and sees that Tae-Sik and Ah-Hyun were like a family. This might help them uncover a bigger secret. 

On the other hand, Se-Hee meets the woman again, and she says she wants a perfect child like Se-Hee. It seems she wants her to give up her own eggs for the child. But Se-Hee tells her she can do one better and give her her 14-year-old daughter’s eggs (yikes). On the other hand, the kids go to the hospital, and So-Mi gets her closure because she was never abandoned by her mother, but she’s unable to save her. Her mom gets left behind in the hospital when Jeong-Hyun’s men are too much for the kids to handle. On the other hand, we learn that an assemblyman’s child has gone missing, and the kid’s name is Sung-Woo. This kid is Seok-Su, one of the 4 with Ah-Hyun. He went “missing” 3 years ago. If he shows up again, it will be a big problem for not just the assemblyman but the organization as well. But one cop somehow seems to be catching up. 

The kids manage to find some information about an event for baby buying. They go in to find out exactly what is happening and see wealthy parents bidding for babies. The kids are all disgusted by what they say; they can’t believe such an elaborate system exists, and now they must stop it. 

What Happens to Ah-Hyun? 

The Defects episode 4 begins with Se-Hee killing a man who helped her set up her business and even gave her the real estate for it. Later, Jung-Hyeon wonders why the auctions are so popular. Se-Hee tells him that the value of the kids goes up higher because people don’t trust their own decisions. The detective even confronts the assemblyman with a picture of the kids to see if Sung-Woo is still alive, but the assemblyman tells him to stop looking into unnecessary things. Meanwhile, the kids figure that Se-Hee’s organization is collecting eggs and sperm from the crème of society to create perfect babies. They learn that there will be a collection of women to donate their eggs, and Ah-Hyun joins them by stealing a black card from a woman at the bar. Meanwhile, Se-Hee herself is trying to have another baby, it looks like. 

The assemblyman shows up to talk to Se-Hee about Sung-Woo being alive, but she tells him that not only is he alive, but she wants to kill him too. She’s basically blackmailing him so he can change the law to make what she’s doing legal. On the other hand, amongst the women is Se-Hee’s 14-year-old daughter. Turns out the woman she was talking to earlier is the president’s wife. The youngest president of Korea. Here there’s some talk about the low birth rate of the country, which means she’s really got a fantastic business plan. On the other hand, Ah-Hyun changes into a nurse’s outfit after knocking her out. She walks around the whole place, finding information about the kids they’ve “grown,” the tubes, the grades, and how they’re all labelled as “products” and monitored. She also meets her replacement, the other Ah-Hyun, and she wants to help her, but for the time being, she leaves her there. But Ah-Hyun is wearing glasses with cameras in them, and Si-Woo notices his friend Ah-Hyun. He calls her to meet him, which means she’s going to find out the truth about her mom and possibly join the kids’ team as a double agent? We’ll have to wait to find out. 

At the end of The Defects episode 4, Ah-Hyun is nearly caught by Jung-Hyeon and his men, but she blows up some stuff in the lab and nearly kills herself in the process (quite funny, she doesn’t even have any scars). But the episode ends with her opening her eyes to a bright white light looming over her. It’s likely Se-Hee. In a flashback, we see that Se-Hee told Ah-Hyun (the older daughter) when she was a child that Snow White’s stepmother didn’t call the huntsman, but her biological mother did. I suppose she’s trying to tell her that, though Ah-Hyun was a part of the experiment, she’s her biological daughter? I’m not entirely sure, but this is what we’re probably going to find out next week. 

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