In Mask Girl, Kim Kyung-ja is the antagonist who goes to extreme lengths to kill Mo-mi and her daughter to get revenge for her son’s death. Yeom Hye-ran plays the role of Kim Kyung-ja.
When Mo-mi’s colleague Ju Oh-nam rapes her, Mo-mi kills him. She then dismembers his body and gets rid of it. Mo-mi tries to leave the past behind and start her life afresh, but Ju Oh-nam’s mother, Kim Kyung-ja, gets in the way.
A mother’s love
Kyung-ja’s life has never been easy. She came from a poor family and married a man who had a stable job, as that is the only thing that mattered to her. However, her husband cheated on her soon after they got married, and they got divorced.
Kyung-ja managed to pull herself together for the sake of her son. Whatever she did, she did it for her son, as she had no one except him. She worked day and night to save enough money to own a small restaurant. Circumstances made her tough and independent.
However, Ju Oh-nam eventually moves out of his mother’s house, much to her displeasure. She still tries to dote on him, but he always pushes her away, as she does not know how to express her love with kindness and he can never stand up to her high expectations.
When Ju Oh-nam disappears and the police find a dismembered body at his house, they suspect that he killed someone and fled with Mask Girl. Kyung-ja, who believes her son is perfect and can do no wrong, does not agree with them.
She decides to find her son, and for that, she takes classes to learn how to use a computer. She even learns the slang that people use on the internet to communicate with others like her son and find him. Furthermore, she closes down her restaurant and takes all the money she has saved over the years to look for him.
Blinded by revenge
Once Kyung-ja finds out that Ju Oh-nam is dead, she thinks that her son was killed by Mask Girl and starts looking for her. To do that, she teams up with one of Mask Girl’s fans. They suspect that a girl named Chun-ae is Mask Girl, so she gets a taxi driver’s license and becomes a taxi driver to kidnap her.
Chun-ae is not Mask Girl, but since she fools Kyung-ja in order to protect Mo-mi, her best friend who is Mask Girl, Kyung-ja decides to kill both women. She has no qualms about killing innocent people as long as she gets her revenge.
Kyung-ja ends up killing Chun-ae, who smashes her with a rock before dying. Mo-mi then puts Kyung-ja’s body in her car and pushes it into the river. Mo-mi thinks that she has finally gotten rid of Kyung-ja, but Kyung-ja is still alive.
She managed to make it out of the car alive, but as Mo-mi also put the dead body of Chun-ae’s boyfriend in her car, when her car is found, Kyung-ja becomes a murder suspect. She then decides to get plastic surgery and adopt a new identity like Mo-mi.
All her efforts do not amount to much, as the police get to Mo-mi first. Kyung-ja can no longer kill her and get her revenge, so she sets her sights on ruining the life of Mo-mi’s daughter, Mi-mo.
She opens a tteokbokki stall outside Mi-mo’s school and manages to win her trust by giving her the affection that she does not get at home. She makes Mi-mo’s life a hell by spreading rumors about her mother wherever she goes and teaching her to be violent.
She isolates Mi-mo completely and becomes the only person Mi-mo trusts. Finally, she decides to kill Mi-mo to make Mo-mi feel the pain that she herself felt when she lost her son.
Mi-mo loves and cares about Kyung-ja the way no one has ever done before. This makes Kyung-ja second guess her decision, but she does not let it deter her. She tries to kill the one person who has been good to her, not knowing that Mi-mo is Ju Oh-nam’s daughter.
Her thirst for revenge drives her insane. She not only plans to record Mi-mo’s death but also kills Mo-mi’s mother when she tries to stop her.
When the police arrive to arrest Mo-mi and see Kyung-ja holding a gun, they ask her to let go of the weapon. However, a deeply religious Kyung-ja, who cannot see reason anymore, thinks that God has sent his army to aid her in her quest for revenge.
Kyung-ja fails to kill Mi-mo because Mo-mi takes the bullet for her daughter, but she does manage to kill Mo-mi. Kyung-ja, who thinks she is responsible for meting out fair and just punishment to the woman who killed her son, is also shot dead by the police.
Also Read: Kim Mo-mi: Mask Girl character explained