Direct Investigation

Direct Investigation (직접조사)Seoul, 2035. In a city where the line between real and fake has all but dissolved, one man's job is to draw it again. Seoul, 2035. Autonomous taxis glide by in silence. The fluorescent lights of unmanned convenience stores burn until dawn. On the giant outdoor screens, AI persona celebrities smile without blinking. People no longer bother to verify whether the voice on the other end of the line is really their friend — not because they can't, but because they've long since realized it doesn't make much difference either way.

Park Eunkyul is the man who verifies the things nobody wants verified. Isu Information Integrity Consulting. A six-pyeong office with a single private investigator's license framed on the wall. By day, he takes on corporate internal audits, deepfake authentication, voice forgery analysis. By night, together with his longtime partner Sungjae, he handles a different kind of work. The kind that leaves no paperwork. The kind the public isn't meant to know about. What he does can be reduced to one thing.

He investigates directly. He does not trust the screen. He does not trust the document. He does not even trust what the witness tells him, not at face value. He goes to the site, and he sees with his own eyes. It began with ninety seconds. Late one night, power across the greater Seoul area cuts out for exactly ninety seconds.…