Image of the drama's promotional poster was taken from the drama's official website (tvN) and reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

This is the second post in a two-part series for the International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31) looking at recent K-dramas that incorporated transgender characters in positive ways.

Park Ji-bin plays Saeng-sun in The Killer’s Shopping List. Photo from the drama’s official gallery (tvN), reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

The Killer’s Shopping List (tvN, 2022) is a comedy murder mystery set at a local grocery store run by Han Myung-sook for 30 years. Because he has been working at the store since he was a child, Myung-sook’s son Ahn Dae-sung feels protective of the customers and the neighbourhood, so when he discovers that one of them has been murdered, he takes it upon himself to investigate, along with his girlfriend Do Ah-hee, who is a police officer. He watches everyone who looks like they might be behaving suspiciously, and he begins to suspect a newly hired employee, Saeng-sun (which means Fish–the employees are all nicknamed after the department they are in charge of at the store).

Dae-sung (right, played by Lee Kwang-soo) is wary of the store’s new employee, Saeng-sun (left), after a murder in the neighbourhood. Photo from the drama’s official gallery (tvN), reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

Saeng-sun appears to be a young man with a shady past, having three prior convictions for petty theft. The local police captain who arranges Saeng-sun’s job interview assures Myung-sook that no one was ever hurt in the commission of these offences and that Saeng-sun is a good kid who strayed from the law for reasons that he cannot share. When Myung-sook hesitates, the police officer reminds her that her own son, Dae-sung, had a brush with the law when he was young. We will later see the full details of Dae-sung’s situation in a flashback and understand that he was only protecting his mother and the store from a violent criminal, which suggests that Saeng-sun’s priors might also have been justified.

This traumatic experience is the reason why Dae-sung, though smart, is awkward and can never manage to do anything right. Despite frequently messing up, Dae-sung has a good heart, and he is determined to solve the murder. He breaks into Saeng-sun’s locker and house to search them, and finds women’s clothing, accessories and make-up, so he and Ah-hee start following Saeng-sun.

When he and Ah-see are tailing Saeng-sun, who is out for a walk wearing women’s clothes, Dae-sung comically hides behind a blow-up chicken mascot so that Saeng-sun doesn’t see him. Dae-sung and Ah-hee are doing all the things that sleuths do in murder mysteries, but they are investigating the wrong person, and the ridiculous way in which they do it highlights how silly they are to suspect Saeng-sun just for dressing in women’s clothing. Photos from the drama’s official gallery (tvN), reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

 
After Dae-sung becomes the police’s prime suspect and the neighbourhood residents start to boycott the grocery store, he, Ah-hee and Myung-sook are desperate to identify the real murderer. Dae-sung remains convinced that Saeng-sun is the culprit, because of the fact that Saeng-sun owns women’s clothing and accessories, including a women’s sweater like the victim’s and stockings identical to those used as the murder weapon. In a last-ditch attempt to make his mother and Ah-hee take his suspicions of Saeng-sun seriously, Dae-sung leans in to tell his mother the clincher, as though the topic is so delicate that it can’t be discussed at a volume higher than a whisper, and prefacing the revelation with, “Mom, don’t be shocked.” He reveals that Saeng-sun likes to dress in women’s clothes. His mother’s immediate reaction is, “So what? Wearing women’s clothes is a personal preference. It’s not something people should judge.” Dae-sung then comically wonders out loud, “Why is my mom so chill?” while Ah-hee offers other evidence suggesting that Saeng-sun couldn’t be the murderer.

However, when a child goes missing and is in danger of becoming the next victim, Dae-sung acts on his suspicions. He and his mother knock out and tie up Saeng-sun in an attempt to rescue the missing child from the murderer’s evil clutches, then are ashamed when Saeng-sun explains all the “evidence” by revealing the fact that she is a transwoman awaiting gender confirmation surgery and in the process of changing her legal records to match her female gender.

Dae-sung and his mother are contrite when they learn that Saeng-sun was friends with the murder victim, who was the first person to accept her for who she really is. Photos from the drama’s official gallery (tvN), reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

After the misunderstanding is cleared up, Saeng-sun makes a point that she never lied about her gender identity (“나는 내 입으로 내가 남자라고 말한 적 없어”) and that making her out to be a psychopathic serial killer just because of her gender expression was going too far, but she still expects to be fired from the store, and she is surprised when the other characters accept her for who she is and want her to stay because they appreciate her excellent work. When she later explains the harsh measures her parents took while trying to straighten her out, which led to her criminal record, Dae-sung, Ah-hee and Myung-sook become protective of her, and the rest of the store staff and customers eventually become like Saeng-sun’s new family.

Once cleared of suspicion and fully integrated into the group, Saeng-sun even gets to participate in catching her friend’s murderer. When the culprit calls her a monster for being neither a woman nor a man, she faces him down: “You’re the monster, not me (괴물은 너이지. 내가 아니라),” she says, rightly. This dramatic head-to-head moment solidifies the contrast that has been working on an implicit level throughout the show, particularly through the comedic moments. We already saw through lovable goof Dae-sung’s blundering investigation that it was ridiculous to suspect Saeng-sun just for wearing women’s clothing. There is an actual serial murderer in the show, a truly evil person who deserves to be found out and reviled for his crimes, and that person is not Saeng-sun, who is guilty of nothing except wanting to live as her authentic self–which, of course, is not a crime at all.

At the end of the drama, Saeng-sun returns to work at the fish counter presenting her true self and clearly happier than ever. Photos from the drama’s official gallery (tvN), reproduced under Fair Dealing for educational purposes.

The Killer’s Shopping List is about catching evildoers so that the neighbourhood can remain a safe place for the residents to live their lives. And at the store at the heart of the neighbourhood–Myung-sook and Dae-sung’s Mom & Son Mart–trans people are welcome and valued. 어서 오세요!