As You Stood By Ending Explained: Do Eun-su and Hui-su Overcome Their Abusive Relationship and Find Happiness?

As You Stood By Ending Explained: Two women, stuck in a kill-or-be-killed situation, choose to save themselves and attack. However, that comes with its own set of complicated consequences.

The series has 8 episodes, each with a runtime of around 60 minutes, and is based on Hideo Okuda’s 2014 novel Naomi and Kanako.

As You Stood By Ending Explained

The episode opens with Eun-su’s point of view, as she becomes acquainted with So-baek and reels from the abuse that her mother faces at her father’s hands to this very day. She is traumatised by what she has overheard during her childhood and finds it hard to overlook these things in the present. Thus, when one of her customers dies after enduring years of abuse at the hands of her wealthy husband and she is unable to put a stop to it, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

The time for proving her newfound confidence comes unexpectedly when she realises that her best friend, Hui-su, is going through something similar at the hands of her husband Jin-pyo. To the world, Jin-pyo is the perfect husband who buys her the world. However, at home, he is a terrible husband who beats her black and blue. She even tried to file a police report against him but is unable to because her sister-in-law, Jin-young, who is a police officer, stops her from doing so.

As Hui-su and Eun-su get acquainted, she immediately jumps to trying to save her friend as she sees Hui-su slowly getting more and more spent at Jin-pyo’s hands. At first, Hui-su refuses to rock the boat, but soon realises that Jin-pyo won’t stop and comes up with a plan with Eun-su.

Taking the reins, Eun-su recruits Jang Gang, an undocumented man working for So-baek, who looks exactly like Jin-pyo, to take his place and go to China, while they get rid of him. The plan works out flawlessly but the complication arises when Jang Gang decides to return to South Korea after realising what’s happening to blackmail the women out of more money.

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What happens to Jang Gang?

Jang Gang gets tossed around as he desperately tries to get money out of everyone around him but is eventually killed at Jin-pyo’s mother’s hands, when he pushes the wrong person a bit too much.

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Why does Jin-young go after Hui-su?

Jin-young desperately tries to keep his brother’s secrets under wraps as a promotion is underway for her. However, what she thought to be her brother running away soon turns out to be a murder case for her. She tries to keep her brother’s involvement under wraps while trying to make Hui-su out to be unstable and manipulate her into ending her life. However, Eun-su saves Hui-su at every turn and foils her plans.

Eventually, Jin-young gets caught in her own lies when her colleague sees through her and starts to suspect her trying to derail the investiagtion. Eventually, she is caught red-handed with Jang Gang’s dead body in her trunk and, by then, her jig is up.

What happens in the end?

Unable to live with her guilt any longer, Hui-su turns herself over to the police and so does Eun-su. Eun-su’s mother eventually leaves her father as well, having lived with his abuse for long enough. In the end, the two get out after serving their time in jail and live together happily in Vietnam with So-baek.

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