A Shop for Killers follows a nineteen-year-old Jeong Ji-An, who inherits a shopping mall of perils as elite assassins target her, shortly after her uncle Jeong Jin-Man — her only family — dies under mysterious circumstances.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Jeong Jin-Man was a mercenary who worked for an organization called Babylon. He leads his teams on missions on foreign soils.
One psychopathic member of his team, Bale, relishes breaking the rules and killing civilians.
Jin-Man can’t tolerate seeing civilians being killed and while saving one of them, he fights Bale who seemingly dies in an explosion.
Except he doesn’t, really, and in time, he returns to take revenge, along with his friends at Babylon.
The organization and Bale both go after Jin-Man.
Bale and his friends go after Jin-Man’s family, killing his mother, brother, and sister-in-law.
He manages to save himself and his niece, Jeong Ji-An.
He raises her with tough love and along with helping her overcome her aphasia, he also teaches her how to use guns and tactical knowledge in a crisis.
During college, she learns her uncle has committed suicide.
She visits his house, and performs the rites and funeral, before reuniting with Bae Jeong-Min, a classmate of hers during elementary school.
She soon learns that her uncle was running a shopping mall full of illegal products like firearms, and also services that are provided to mercenaries, spies, and clean-up crews.
Jeong-Min turns out to be working for Babylon.
Meanwhile, Ji-An is helped by So Min-Hye, a friend of Jin-Man, and Pasin, Ji-An’s Muay Thai teacher and also an old friend and colleague of Jin-Man.
Brother, a tech expert who has been handling the shopping mall along with Jin-Man over the years, also lends significant support.
Together, they all contend with many assassins and Ji-An kills Lee Seong-Jo, a former colleague of Jin-Man, a close friend of Bale, and the one who killed Ji-An’s mother.
Before A Shop for Killers season 1 rolls the credits, Jin-Man returns, having somehow cheated death.
Ending explained
Who saves Jeong Ji-An?
Jeong Jin-Man is saved by a plethora of people around her even those she has never even heard of or seen before.
Her uncle, Jeong Jin-Man, saves her in a million different ways, including training her over the years for a crisis such as the one she finds herself after his supposed death.
He also makes sure she is helped by his friends and former colleagues. So Min-Hye, Pasin, and Brother, among others, fight the assassins to save Ji-An.
Finally, Ji-An herself is the key to her survival, for she is the one who employs all the skills knowledge, and tact her uncle taught her growing up.
The finale of A Shop for Killers season 1 sees her not only fight physically but also mentally, taking ownership of the shopping mall and making the assassins retreat.
In doing so, she also manages to take the helm of the business side of things and one-up Babylon, who had put a hit on her and all mercenaries salivated at the offer.
Is So Min-Hye dead?
So Min-Hye was one of the civilians who managed to stay alive during the Laos mission.
Bale, as per usual, went on a psychopathic killing streak, taking out all unarmed civilians, with great joy.
Jin-Man, determined to make Bale face the repercussions of his actions, finds So Min-Hye hiding in a closet.
He helps her escape but is spotted by Bale, which is when the two fight each other and Bale gets the upper hand.
However, Min-Hye helps Jin-Man take down Bale. The explosions take out the whole building and Bale seemingly dies.
Jin-Man helps Min-Hye and gets his old comrade, Honda, to give her refuge inside his shop, where he has a secret room filled with weapons.
Bale lives, and soon, his and Babylon’s men track down Honda’s place, but Min-Hye kills them and escapes.
Jin-Man’s loyal friend from the Babylon days, Pasin, takes her under his wing and teaches her Muay Thai.
She soon blooms into a highly lethal assassin who is feared even among elite assassins.
When Jin-Man seemingly dies, she comes to help Ji-An and sacrifices her body many times to do so.
She takes many bullets to her body but is helped by Pasin.
In the finale of A Shop for Killers season 1, she seems to have lost consciousness after having lost so much blood, but Pasin notices that and that’s the last time the two are on the screen.
Ji-An later looks for the two but they’re already gone.
Her death being off-screen is highly unlikely, especially when her condition doesn’t seem final.
It’s best to presume that she still lives and that Pasin has taken her with him to offer better medical care.
Is Jeong Jin-Man dead?
Jeong Jin-Man trained his niece all her life to one day take care of herself when the assassins who have been hunting him and her come for them.
One day, she hears that her uncle has passed away after taking his own life. She sees his corpse at the morgue and identifies it.
She then takes care of the funeral and everything.
Later on, Bae Jeong-Min, a seemingly helpful and nice guy who was a classmate of hers in elementary school, reveals he’s actually working for Babylon.
He shows her the footage that he recorded of a dead Jin-Man, even after the latter had found out Jeong-Min’s true identity.
Jin-Man had tied Jeong-Min and hung him from the ceiling. Jeong-Min could do nothing but wail and warn him how Ji-An would be taken out.
Suddenly Jin-Man unties him after telling him that he tells Babylon to let Ji-An go if he kills himself.
Jin-Man then enters his washroom.
Jeong-Min walks in later, and records what he sees — a dead Jin-Man inside a bathtub full of water that’s been mixed with his blood.
An arrogant Jeong-Min doesn’t think enough to confirm if Jin-Man’s truly dead.
He rejoices in the fact that he killed such a big deal by himself.
He shows the footage to Ji-An after revealing his true colors to her.
However, the finale of A Shop for Killers season 1 ends with Jin-Man being driven to the house by his school friends and the local cop.
This means Jin-Man’s death was staged in order to take care of things that are not shown.
Why and how he did this is kept under wraps as A Shop for Killers concludes its first installment.
Also Read: Jeong Ji-An’s past in A Shop for Killers explained