Oh Beom-seok and Ahn Su-ho: The Most Disturbing Relationship in Weak Hero Class 1

Screenshot from Weak Hero Class 1 showing Choi Hyun-wook as Ahn Su-ho and Hong Kyung as Oh Beom-seok in a heated physical altercation inside a karaoke room, depicting the violent breakdown of their relationship.

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카테고리:

When fans talk about what makes Weak Hero genuinely unsettling, Beom-seok is almost always the answer.

Not because he’s a monster. Because he’s familiar.

As one viewer put it: “Beom-seok feels like someone we know.” And that recognition — that uncomfortable sense of having met this person somewhere — is exactly what makes his fixation on Su-ho so hard to watch.

Director Yoo Soo-min has noted that Si-eun works as a character largely because of Park Ji-hoon’s performance, and that Su-ho represents a rare type of person — genuinely protective, emotionally stable, naturally charismatic. Beom-seok, by contrast, is terrifyingly ordinary in his dysfunction. His patterns exist in real schools, real friendships, real workplaces. That’s what makes his arc one of the most psychologically precise portrayals of attachment disorder in recent K-drama history.

The Void That Shaped Everything

Beom-seok’s fixation on Su-ho doesn’t begin with jealousy. It begins much earlier — with an orphan who was adopted by a politician who had no interest in parenting, only in performance. What Beom-seok never received was unconditional love. What he learned instead was that affection is conditional, that safety requires dominance, and that connection can be revoked at any moment.

This is the emotional foundation Su-ho unknowingly stepped into.

What the Script Book Actually Says

The official Weak Hero Class 1 script book contains details that didn’t make the final cut — and they change the way you read Beom-seok entirely.

In the deleted Han River scene, where Beom-seok and Su-ho drink beer together after their pool game, the directorial notes are specific: “Beom-seok smiles shyly, enjoying Su-ho’s arm around his shoulder” — and during their conversation, “he agrees with and laughs at whatever Su-ho says.”

When I read that, I thought about whether Si-eun was ever directed this way in his closest moments with Su-ho. He wasn’t. These notes read less like friendship and more like someone on a first date, hyper-aware of every point of contact, performing ease while feeling anything but.

Then there’s the scene before Beom-seok meets Su-ho, Si-eun, and Yeong-i at the café — where he fixes his hair, checks his clothes, looks at Su-ho’s Instagram. This show had eight episodes to tell its entire story. Every second of screen time was deliberate. That close-up of Beom-seok adjusting his appearance wasn’t filler. It was a character statement.

My read: the production team was crafting Beom-seok to show signs of romantic attraction toward Su-ho — without making it explicit in the final edit.

The Instagram Follow That Became a Psychological Event

To anyone else, the Instagram follow situation is a minor teenage drama. To Beom-seok, it was confirmation of his worst fear.

Su-ho followed Yeong-i. He hadn’t followed Beom-seok back. For someone whose entire sense of worth depended on his position in Su-ho’s life, this wasn’t a social media oversight — it was a hierarchy. And Beom-seok was below a girl Su-ho had just met.

The brilliance of this plot device is how universally legible it is. Most viewers understand the sting of that kind of digital rejection, even if the scale of Beom-seok’s reaction seems extreme. It anchors his larger psychological breakdown in something recognizable — which is exactly what makes it so effective.

Su-ho, meanwhile, almost certainly had no idea any of this was happening. Their emotional languages were simply incompatible.

The Karaoke Wall. The Cafeteria Push. The Test He Failed.

One of the most overlooked turning points in the series is Su-ho’s physical aggression toward Beom-seok.

Both Su-ho and Si-eun knew how Beom-seok had been treated at his previous school. They knew the history. For someone carrying that kind of trauma, having Su-ho — his safe person, the one who was supposed to be different — resort to the same physical intimidation must have felt like a door closing.

One subscriber analyzed the cafeteria scene as a test: would Su-ho treat him the way everyone else had? When Su-ho looked at Si-eun for a long moment before pushing Beom-seok — that hesitation suggests he understood what was happening. Which makes the choice to do it anyway even more damaging.

This was the moment Beom-seok’s idealized version of Su-ho died.

“Hey, Didn’t Ahn Su-ho Block Your Number?”

Episode 6. Yeong-bin tosses this out as a taunt.

We don’t know for certain whether Su-ho actually blocked him. What matters is Beom-seok’s reaction — a flash of something terrifying, the first time we’ve seen him snap back at Yeong-bin’s group with real emotion. He had never responded like that to their teasing before. The possibility of being cut off from Su-ho’s inner circle hit somewhere that nothing else reached.

Hong Kyung plays this moment with precision — the horror of someone realizing they may have already lost the one person whose acceptance they needed most. Su-ho’s boundary-setting was entirely healthy for him. For Beom-seok, it was the psychological death blow.

Why Yeong-i, and Why Those Questions

When Beom-seok kidnapped Yeong-i, his interrogation revealed everything about how he understood relationships:

“Are you dating Ahn Su-ho? Relationships are all about give and take. That guy lets you sleep at his house and gives you a job. What have you given Su-ho in return?”

Beom-seok couldn’t process Su-ho’s kindness toward Yeong-i without assuming a transaction. He had never experienced unconditional care — so he didn’t believe it existed. Someone must be giving Su-ho something. And whatever it was, Beom-seok couldn’t compete with it.

The Ring Scene: When the Camera Tells You Everything

The final confrontation is where the directing becomes most deliberate.

When Beom-seok kicks Su-ho’s head, the camera angle mirrors earlier scenes of his adoptive father’s abuse. This wasn’t an accident. In that moment, Su-ho stopped being Su-ho — he became every person who had ever had power over Beom-seok and used it.

The tragedy is that Su-ho had no idea he carried that symbolic weight. He was just trying to reach his friend.

Hong Kyung’s performance across the entire series earns its place among the best acting in recent K-drama — the way he tracks Beom-seok’s hero worship curdling into resentment, his need for acceptance hardening into violent entitlement. The final episodes, where love and hate become genuinely indistinguishable, are some of the most psychologically honest scenes I’ve watched.

Would Su-ho Ever Forgive Him?

This is the question that never leaves the comment section.

My take: Su-ho wouldn’t forgive Beom-seok — but not out of bitterness. He simply wouldn’t see the point. Su-ho doesn’t have the mental makeup to let the past hold him in place. If Beom-seok showed up to apologize, Su-ho would probably say “okay, got it” and move on — back to his grandmother, back to Si-eun, back to the present. Not forgiveness. Just forward motion.

Which is, in its own way, more devastating than anger would be.

What Beom-seok’s Story Is Actually About

Love without emotional intelligence. Attachment without boundaries. Need without self-awareness.

Beom-seok’s obsession with Su-ho wasn’t the opposite of love — it was love distorted by trauma into something unrecognisable. And Weak Hero never lets us look away from that, or simplify it into a clean villain arc.

That’s what makes it stay with you.

Full breakdown of Su-ho and Beom-seok’s friendship arc: 👉 HERE

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