I was rewatching My Name and this time I noticed that when Taeju called Mujin in 2016 about Donghoon, when Donghoon went to see his daughter, Taeju addressed Mujin as 'hyungnim', but in 2021 we hear Taeju addressing him as 'hwaejangnim'. I wonder how and why it changed over time ? Did Taeju think that calling him hyungnim is not appropriate anymore?

FUUUCK i went back and watched it with the korean subs and you’re right, he did call him hyungnim 😭

oh god im so sad. it’s interesting to me because like…you would think this would work backward, in a sense. that he would start with “boss” (which i’m sure he did, but for example’s sake) and then transition to hyungnim. but it seems like they kind of…came full circle? and i wonder it because of how painful donghoon’s betrayal was for them.

before, all of their scenes together, their memories, are of the three of them laughing. being together. there is the obvious friendship that is absent, i think, from the rest of dongcheon. camaraderie? of course. the dongcheon guys are all buddies, friends; they rely on each other to protect them in a fight, to pull them out of danger, to face obstacles as a united front. but it can’t compare to what the three of them had—it was special. unique. it was donghoon and mujin first, and then they added taeju, and it’s like that feeling of the last piece of something clicking into place. the clearing of the throat; the first inhale of a real, deep breath. the three of them—they were complete. in so many ways.

and being the youngest and the newest i’m sure the switch to “hyungnim” was strange at first. but it was warranted. they loved each other—it just made sense. they were at this level of comfort, this equal-inequality just by virtue of taeju being younger. but it made sense. they were his hyungs. hyungnim.

and then it all fell apart.

in the show we see how much mujin isolates himself. how little people are allowed in, allowed to know, only so many people are privileged with information, and the one person who has it is the last person he has that understands him to nearly a molecular level. and even taeju gets shut out a little. and i think the switch back, the visible sort of distance that they have that the two of them go back and forth on crossing in the smallest ways—the fixing of the tie, the sliding of the phone in the jacket pocket, minute transgressions of a painful and quiet kind—is a result of how betrayal, and the grief that followed it, fundamentally changed the dynamics of their relationships to each other. even with donghoon dead, he was still there, a lingering shadow, that shaped the way mujin saw their relationship, saw himself, and saw his relationships to everyone else. it broke him. it really did. and i think that creating that distance, by taeju being his number 2 but also having that separation, saved him from feeling like he was always on the edge. it ultimately both changed and saved the relationship between taeju and mujin because it allowed him to keep taeju within reach without trying to destroy him out of fear or paranoia.

and i think that taeju probably agreed—it was never spoken, i don’t think. it was just a subtle backward slide into politeness. and i think it probably hurt taeju very much, in its way, but i also think he would understand, and it would be a mutual thing of sorts. because by not fighting it and adhering to the new trajectory of their relationship, he also both changed and salvaged what they had. it was more visible to taeju than it was to mujin; mujin only realized what they really had after taeju was dead—and i mean this completely platonically, as a serious answer, because in the end they really had each other as a person who understood the total depth of donghoon’s betrayal. because, after taeju died, mujin was really, truly alone in the world for the first time.