Finally putting my knowledge of the Korea National Police University, which I learned from kdrama Rookie Cops, to use, but it seems Nam Han-joon in the flashbacks was a freshman at KNPU at that time.
KNPU logo on the left arm, and then from the shoulder stripes it matches the shoulder stripes (badge??? idk what these are called) from when the Rookie Cops characters were in their first year of uni.
(Yes, you can enter KNPU as an older student, but I’m just gonna assume he entered it right after graduating high school.)
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Injustice at the hands of justice
Rookie Cops (episodes 1 - 3)
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
If the title of the show was not a giveaway, Rookie Cops is a coming-of-age story about students of the 47th class of the Korean National Police University (KNPU) who are studying to becoming police officers.
Before I begin, as a disclaimer, I simply wish to comment about what I had watched from this show, noting that I have no knowledge of the accuracy of its representation of KNPU.
Eun-kang (played by Chae Soo-bin) and Wi Seung-hyun (played by Kang Daniel in his debut acting role) first meet as civilians when the upright Seung-hyun is shown helping his friend with a love problem. Seung-hyun, a proud son of a police officer, is shown as a person who cannot help himself but to speak up when he sees someone treated unfairly, such as his friend who had been misled by his ex-girlfriend. Eun-kang, meanwhile, is loud and courageous and steps in to defend her sister who was being accused of taking advantage of men. The two don’t expect to meet again, and Eun-kang faces a rejection letter from KNPU.
Meanwhile Seung-hyun and his peers attend Cheongram Education, a two-week, cutthroat, military-style orientation that freshmen students must first undergo before being enrolled into KNPU.
Students are asked to surrender any personal items including mobile phones, they are told to reply only with the words “Yes, sir”, “Sorry, sir” and “I’ll get it right, sir”, and we get montage scenes of the students undergoing intense physical training without any breaks. Any wrongdoing or failure to meet the standards of the trainers is punished through more physical training.
For the Cheongram Education Training Corp, inflicting punishment on their underclassmen just like how they were punished by their upperclassmen was the normal. Just like how the students of Class 47 are forced to follow the rules placed by the Training Corp, the Training Corp are also forced by tradition to push their underclassmen through the hardest ordeals so the students can one day be suitable to protect the citizens.
But one of the students of Class 47 could not complete her punishment due to feeling ill and Seung-hyun, who could not continue to watch his classmate’s suffering, speaks up against the Chief Trainer about his classmate’s wellbeing.
Then who protects us when we're sick?
Later, the student drops out not being able to bear the rigorous training, which becomes the stepping stone for Go Eun-kang to enter into KNPU, without knowing what she is getting into.
For Eun-kang, the only motivation for her to get into KNPU is to follow the footsteps of her first love, an upperclassman at KNPU. She is wide-eyed and excited to be accepted and become a university student in the same place as her first love, not knowing what her classmates already know of about Cheongram Education.
Eun-kang would only fully realise the extent of Cheongram Education at the end of her first class, when the trainers ask everyone who had dozed off during the class to stand up and admit their mistake. Instead of complying when a trainer calls her out, Eun-kang instead defends herself to the trainer that while she had been sleepy (not because of the class but the fact that she couldn’t sleep the night before due to her excitement), she had not dozed off and instead pinched herself throughout to stay awake.
Eun-kang, along with her classmates who are being punished, are beaten with a baseball bat. But even as she takes in the beating, Eun-kang still speaks out that she had not deserved the punishment.
Eun-kang gets into further disrepute with her upperclassmen when, while undergoing physical training, she is accused of secretly filming students being beaten by the Training Corp. Eun-kang’s denial falls on deaf ears and she is sent to detention until the disciplinary committee makes a decision to expel her from school.
But Eun-kang, knowing that she is a victim of injustice for the second time, seeks out the truth and reveals the real student who owned the spy cam, her classmate and roommate, Ki Han-na (played by Park Yoo-na). But for Han-na, instead of expulsion, she is given just 3 months’ probation. Even if she is no longer facing the accusation, Eun-kang feels unjustly treated due to the difference in the punishment.
But even if Eun-kang disliked the light punishment Han-na received, she sympathised with Han-na as Han-na is given extra punishment as a “lesson” by the Training Corp in front of her classmates to the extent of injuring her leg and collapsing. Eun-kang disregards the proper procedures and goes straight to the dean of the school to voice her complaints about the Training Corp.
Beatings don't make us into great police officers.
As the whole Class 47 undergo punishment for Eun-kang’s actions, Eun-kang and Seung-hyun refuses to accept punishment, reminding their upperclassmen the oath that all KNPU students made.
I affirm that I will be an honest and honourable KNPU student who will not give in to injustice.
These episodes of Rookie Cops are a startling acknowledgement of injustice where society should least expect injustice.
The institution of police was created to be the enforcer of law and justice and the protector of people. But for Class 47 who will one day bear the power to enforce justice, the unwritten rules created by the tradition of Cheongram Education forces them to first feel the wrath of injustice at the hands of their upperclassmen who were also once forced to suffer the same when they were starting out.
The members of the Training Corp were not the villains. They were simply enforcing the law of Cheongram Education which had taught generations of police officers to inflict punishment on their subordinates without listening to the subordinate’s defence, and to accept punishment from their superior even if unjustified.
In this never ending cycle of inflicting harsh punishment without allowing the underclassmen to speak up for themselves, are these future police officers really learning how to protect the justice that created their institution? Or are they instead just reinforcing the learnt trauma and handing it down to their successors?
If not for Eun-kang who had been set up multiple times to receive punishment for something she had not done and refused to receive unjustified punishment, and Seung-hyun who refused to blindly comply with the traditions of Cheongram Education - the students of Class 47 would have continued the never ending cycle. But while Eun-kang and Seung-hyun may have led the resistance against Cheongram Education, they alone would not have been enough to create change if the rest of Class 47 did not stand up and stand by them.
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