Please explain me....

[Spoiler Warning]

I don't think there is any great conspiracy here. The bad guy just wants to live like a king. This remote village is his private castle; everyone fears him. A lot villagers also owe him big sums of money.

The bad guy certainly lives a very simple life, but I guess he just doesn't need to show off his wealth or power.

He indeed doesn't care ex-criminal's redemption. He just needs some henchmen to do dirty work for him. He also needs the Father because the Father has the charisma to win people's trust easily.

It's suggested that the girl *might* have killed the Father (from her smile in the last scene), but since the bad guy or the girl had many opportunities to do so, I don't know why the perpetrator chose this time point; maybe s/he just realized that the Father has a son or relatives ? It's also not clear who did the prayer house massacre in the first place. It could be the badguy, the Father, or even the girl.

Anyway, the girl is the final winner, and maybe she'e the most evil among all.

This movie is adopted from a popular web-toon: http://cartoon.media.daum.net/series/list/ikki

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Spoiler!!!!!!!!

She killed the father. That's as clear as it can be in the end without it being insulting to the viewer. Was clearly a big ending twist, and just the fact that she called him up in the first place wouldn't be a twist, just a fact that would make sense. You're not going through the film thinking 'I wonder who called him to get him here' like you are wondering what happened to the father. The music, atmosphere and great acting at the end screams 'THIS IS A BIG DEAL' in a way revealing the random caller who hardly came up before wouldn't have been.

Seems pretty clear they're happy to see each other at the end, then he replays the call in his head. Realisation comes across his face, realisation of his realisation comes across hers, and this confirms it for him - and us - and then she has a kind of a half tragic-half sinister smile. She's not thinking an irrelevant 'oh, now he knows I did the decent thing and called him when his father died', she's realised he's realised she killed him out of desperation to change her situation. Came as a shock to me, but a pretty unambiguous revelation I thought. In the end nobody comes out of it well, as is often the case in Korean movies. She was treated awfully and saw that as her only way out, and I don't hold it against her character.

If I'd read the synopsis at the top of this film's page on imdb before watching I think I'd have been wondering who made the call and the possible implications of that throughout as it mentions it straight off in that, completely unnecessarily. I would've been unhappy to have read that and had it spoiled. Should be changed.

I am glad I am the only one who didn't have trouble understanding that final twist. It came "way outta left field" too. So the dad was alive the whole time until the very end? He was in a hospital while the whole movie was going on? Why did everyone think he was dead if he was still alive? SMH!

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What a great last scene! Literally sent chills down my spine! Although I thought the movie was too long for this plot, being just shy of 3 hrs. Anyway, I enjoyed it, but definitely not the greatest, and not the worst either.

SPOILER

What I got from the last scene was that Lee Young Ji was in fact the perpetrator behind the Sandok (sp) prayer house massacre. Like another commenter mentioned, the towns people ran her out of the town. She takes the town back at the end. I think this is alluded to when the stories are told by the Chief and by Young Ji about what happened. The Chief does say she lied. This is also alluded to many times through the movie by her actions and words. Also pay attention to where she is in her stories -- there is no way she could have known what father Ryu saw unless he told her. This would also make a lot of sense with the bible allusions. Eye for an eye, town for a town. She was the one who killed all those people and the one who got all of their signatures! She is the moss that quietly grew! Young Ji was the one who contacted Ryu Hae Kuk after his fathers death and made him a pawn in her game. That is the realization on his face -- that she was the quiet moss, always working behind the scenes. That is the "terrible" aspect of the film, among other aspects. The Chief commits suicide because he knows there is no way out of it. The signatures were found and he would go down for all the deaths regardless. The last thing he says before turning the gun on himself is for them to "dust" everywhere! And the interesting thing is what Young Ji says father Ryu told her about hiding the signatures (who did father Ryu think got the signatures? Who did the chief think got the signatures?). To hide something in the open. Sort of like she was hiding in the open.

I don't think it makes any sense to say that Young Ji killed the father. Why would she? The reason she had sex with the Chief and his henchmen was because that was the only way for Ryu Mok Hyeon to be kept from being killed. Why would she kill him if she did all that for him? She loved him. She followed him. When asked to kill him, she said she would not do it (but then again, that is all her story). We see that even after Ryu Mok Hyeon is dead, she keeps having sex with the Chief and his henchmen! This would perfectly play into her getting the town back all to herself when the son arrives -- and it doesn't really work if one simply says she had enough of "it," since she still does "it" after father Ryu is gone. Why would that scene even be in the film? Why does she set up her bible and the tape player for son Ryu? Why is she the one quietly leading everything to her own gain?

And the last scene is a giveaway. She is the "Chief" of the town that once banished her -- overlooking everything. She not only took father Ryu's place, but the whole town is hers.

Maybe she did also kill father Ryu, but I don't see why she would and how it makes sense. We can infer that the man was around 80 years old. He very possibly could have died from old age, the quiet moss silently growing waiting to overtake the rock. The terrible realization on son Ryu's face at the end simply implies that he was the pawn in her, the perpetrator's, game, in order to fulfill the true justice of an eye for an eye which was the machination of her mind. Do people really want to be born again? is the question. And some folks are basing their conclusions upon what the book said. This is a terrible method for film analysis. If anyone needs an example of why this is a terrible method American Psycho is a perfect one. The book and movie are alike but draw different conclusions. This goes for many books made into films. Hitchcock did that a lot with his films. So did Kubrick.