In Queenmaker, Ms. Son gets Carl Yoon to handle Jae-min’s campaign, knowing that Jae-min’s whole family was destroyed because of him. Lee Geung-young plays the role of Carl Yoon.
Since Do-hee is Kyung-sook’s campaign manager, Ms. Son hires Carl Yoon, an experienced campaign master who has made two candidates president, to help Baek Jae-min become the next mayor of Seoul.
While working with him, Jae-min starts trusting him and even learns to scheme and plot from him, but he is not aware that both Ms. Son and Carl Yoon have been keeping a secret from him.
Carl Yoon’s contribution
Carl Yoon is notorious for his methods to win elections. People do not know if he is even allowed in Korea, which means that he has been involved in illegal activities in the past.
The moment he takes over Jae-min’s campaign, he discards age-old strategies that his camp had been using and introduces his own strategies.
To him, it does not matter what kind of a person his candidate is. He guarantees them victory as long as they do exactly what he asks them to do. He does his homework and finds out everything about Jae-min to prepare the perfect disguise that would please the public for him.
He also makes a deal with Assemblywoman Seo and starts a smear campaign against Kyung-sook. While she handles that, he focuses on diverting Do-hee’s attention to prevent her from doing damage control.
Ethics or law do not matter to Carl Yoon, so he gets Do-hee’s old father, who has dementia, kidnapped and leaves him in the middle of nowhere. Due to this, her father gets into an accident and dies, but his death does not affect Carl Yoon much, and he disregards it as an unfortunate incident.
He does not hesitate in attacking innocent people to make his candidate win. He even goes after Kyung-sook’s teenage son to make her withdraw. He employs every technique in the book, including bribing one of the candidates to withdraw, to ensure Jae-min’s victory and most of the time, it works.
Carl Yoon’s past
Years ago, when Ms. Son’s husband passed away, it was Carl Yoon who helped her manage her business and stand up to the politicians. In return, Ms. Son generously provided him with whatever he needed.
When Do-hee hears his name for the first time, it sounds familiar to her. Later, Do-hee reveals to Jae-min that she has been keeping an eye on Carl Yoon for a long time and that the man he has been working with all this time is the one who is responsible for his father’s death.
Carl Yoon’s real name is Yoon Dae-cheol. He framed Jae-min’s father as a corrupt politician and drove him to kill himself. After his father’s death, Jae-min’s grandfather also died, his mother suffered from a mental illness, and his family lost everything.
Jae-min wanted to become the mayor and use his power to destroy those who betrayed his father, but he did not know that one of them earned his trust and was working with him.
Carl Yoon is the kind of person who usually drops a candidate as soon as things go south, but he stands by Jae-min’s side through thick and thin because he wants to ease his own guilty conscience for what he did to his father. He also has plans to make Jae-min a presidential candidate.
Carl Yoon even tries to teach Jae-min not to cross the line that makes one lose their humanity, as he has himself done that in the past, but Jae-min learns from his actions, not his words.
In the end, he fails to protect Jae-min’s humanity or make him the mayor. He watches Ms. Son order Jae-min’s death and does nothing to save his life.
Carl Yoon is a character who has his own ideas and philosophies when it comes to politics; he does not see people as human beings but as obstacles. In a show about politics, Carl Yoon is an ideal Machiavellian character.
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