People sometimes say, “If you commit a crime, you will go to hell.” However, neither hell nor heaven is visited until after death. Even if you are going to pay for your sins in hell after you die, what if you are only punished lightly compared to your sins while you are alive and enjoy heavenly life after you die? Wouldn't it be unfair? In reality, these things often happen, and the public is angry whenever they are known. The SBS TV series “The Judge from Hell” borrows a setting of “fantasy” and judges people who have not been properly judged in the real legal system to their heart‘s content.

Kang Bit-na (played by (Park Shin-hye), the female protagonist, is a judge from hell. Justitia and a judge in charge of murderers in hell, she accidentally sends the murder victim, judge Kang Bit-na, to hell and is expelled into the human world. She enters Kang’s body and is punished to kill 20 unrepentant and unforgiven sinners to send them to hell.

The TV series is an upgraded version of dramas where individuals take the law into their own hands, which have been popular for several years. In the series, the people being judged by Kang are heinous criminals who have committed horrible crimes. They include a perpetrator of dating violence, a man who murdered his spouse for insurance money and abused children, a man who pretended to have multiple personalities after murdering a family, and an entrepreneur who harassed and murdered union members.

The difference with traditional lynching dramas is the way of punishing sinners. The protagonist judges those who refuse to admit their sins according to “hell‘s procedures.” In hell, it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Sinners are punished in a way of exactly what they have done. The perpetrator of relationship violence is beaten to death by Kang in the same way he beat his girlfriend. A wife who locks her husband in a car and drowns him suffers the same pain of being locked in a car and drowning. The entrepreneur is hit with a golf ball until he passes out in the middle of an indoor golf course, just like he did. The series shows the sinners being punished in much longer scenes than the sins they commit.

The judiciary is also satirized. The protagonist, who is also a judge in the human world, deliberately gives a weak sentence to a criminal and lets him go free. Although the purpose is to punish the criminal with a punishment of hell, it is interesting to hear the mitigating factors that the protagonist, dressed as a judge, recites after listing the defendant‘s sins with the word “but.” Because they are something you might hear in a real-life trial. They include "the defendant's deep reflection on it, the first offense, and the contribution to society through other things." Even the demon, who serves as a subordinate of the main character, says, "How can you make such a trashy judgment?” Then the main character asks, wondering, "Why do humans ask a judge to forgive them for their sins?"

Lynching narratives are a common theme in many recent TV series and films. Stories of people who do bad things end up being punished, and those of the weak developing their power and taking revenge on the strong are common but continue to be popular.

In the film “I, the Executioner,” which was released in the middle of last month, a police officer takes it upon himself to hunt down criminals via YouTube. In the SBS TV series “The Killing Vote,” released last year, the entire nation votes on whether or not to kill someone who has committed a crime. In Disney+ TV series, “No Way Out: The Roulette,” a 20 billion won bounty is placed on the head of a convicted criminal upon his release from prison. In “Vigilante,” the main character, who is a police student by day, judges criminals at night. In “The Glory,” a revenge drama of a victim of school violence, the protagonist spends her entire life seeking revenge. This is a reflection of the growing distrust and anger toward the existing public system, including the police and prosecutors, as well as court judgments, and the trend of individuals taking the law into their own hands, such as disclosing the identities of criminals.

Some voices are wary of the recent trend of private punishment of criminals. Director Byun Young-ju said she tried not to make her new TV series “Black Out” look like a story of private punishment. The director said, “I think the concept of self-help is very dangerous.”