Who Is Sarah Kim — and What Is an Identity?

Main theme — Identity as Fact vs. Identity as Story

Most people in the series, especially from a legal aspect, treat identity as an absolute:

• A birth certificate
• A legal name
• A record in a database
• A past that cannot be rewritten

But Sarah rejects that framework entirely. To her, identity is closer to luxury branding than legal documentation. It is crafted, curated, marketed — and believed into existence.

The Identities, phases and lessons

1️. The Born Identity — The Erased Origin

This is the identity in the series that the police and many others view as “real.” It has a name, a date, a location, and legal proof. But to her it’s passive: assigned, not chosen.

We aren’t given details, but she hints leaving it was for survival — she needed to run away. And narratively she must erase it for any new story to survive.

In most dramas, the past defines the character forever. Here? Her past is just version 1.0 — a version that cannot survive alongside the identity she intends to build. One that must disappear for the other to exist.

2️. Mok Ga-hui — Identity as Survival

This is the first self-authored version we learn about.

Not powerful. Not glamorous. Just necessary.

Mok Ga-hui exists because survival requires a name — something to put on paper, on forms, on name tags.

But this identity becomes unbearable under the weight of narratives she both inherits and intensifies. She is conned. Dismissed. Treated unfairly. In chasing a sense of luxury and worth that feels out of reach, she makes decisions that accelerate the very narrative that traps her.

It is during this phase of hopelessness that she realizes something destabilizing: if value and luxury can be fabricated, then so can worth. As Mok Ga-hui, she feels trapped inside a narrative too heavy to escape.

But if luxury can be crafted through story, perhaps an identity can be crafted as well.

3️. Kim Eun-jae — Identity as Weapon

Now we enter calculated authorship.

Kim Eun-jae is revenge — a role designed to infiltrate and destroy. This is the first time she writes a narrative with intent.

But here’s the twist: she plans the perfect story — con, kill, take everything — and then she breaks her own script. She saves him.

Why? Because narrative control isn’t the same as moral clarity. She proves she can author a story that works, but it is not an identity she is willing to continue at the cost the narrative requires.

4️. Sarah Kim — Identity as Empire

Now we meet the fully realized concept.

Not survival. Thesis.

Sarah Kim is elegant, powerful, strategic, justice-minded — anti-luxury while mastering luxury. This is the first identity she doesn’t use as a bridge. It is the destination.

She builds an empire exposing the illusion of luxury — while simultaneously constructing herself as luxury itself. That contradiction is intentional.

Sarah Kim is manufactured mystique, scarcity, exclusivity, and moral branding. People don’t just believe in her. They invest in her.

She has mastered her art — creating an identity so compelling that others will go to great lengths to belong to it, and even to steal it. It becomes the one identity she both wants and needs to protect.

5️ Kim Mi-Jeong — Identity as Sacrifice

This is where the show becomes almost philosophical horror. To protect the identity she crafted, she must let that version of herself “die” and become the very story that once sought to steal it.

Which raises the final question: If identity is only story… why does losing one feel like death?

This is the ultimate inversion: she once created identities as a means of survival. Now she has one that she must protect at all costs.

The Core Theme: Narrative Is Power

The series argues that luxury is narrative, status is narrative, justice movements are narrative — and identity is narrative. But it also quietly asks what happens when you believe your own story too completely.

Because once an identity is built, it must be maintained. Every word must align with it. Every action must reinforce it. Every weakness becomes a liability. At some point, Sarah stops being someone who uses identity and becomes someone who must protect it. That is the cost.

So Who Is Sarah Kim?

She is not the born name, the runaway, the loan shark’s wife, or the alias used to hide.

She is the identity she chooses to protect.

Closing thoughts

The show feels almost meta about fandom culture too. The search for who she “really is” echoes the series’ central question — whether identity is something fixed or something authored.

And perhaps the point is that there isn’t one absolute answer. Her identity is the story she chose to keep and protect.