PremiumKarma K-drama Ending Explained: Pondering over how Park Hae-soo's character dies and who survives at the end? Here's the full theory
Karma K-drama Ending Explained: Park Hae-soo's thriller series has been garnering a lot of attention. But how did Hae-soo die at the end? Did anyone survive?
Park Hae-soo in Karma
Last Updated: 09.10 PM, Apr 07, 2025
SPOILER ALERT! This article contains detailed explanations of the Karma K-drama ending. Avoid reading further if you haven’t seen Park Hae-soo's thriller series!
Karma, a thriller K-drama, was released on Netflix on April 4. Consisting of 6 episodes in total, the thriller K-drama follows 6 characters and their ill-fated choices that lead them to face the final Karma (the good or bad effect of doing something). Starring Park Hae-soo, Shin Min-a, Lee Hee-jun, Kim Sung-kyun, Lee Kwang-soo, and Gong Seung-yeon, the series explores the themes of fate, revenge, and most importantly, consequences. As the series is out and if you have watched it already, here is the ending explained that you are waiting for.
Karma K-drama ending explained: Here's why Park Hae-soo dies at the end
Karma revolves around six characters but all are interconnected in a shocking way. Even though there are six characters, Park Hae-soo is the main whose bad deeds literally led the others to commit crime.
The incidents are -
Lee Kwang-soo's character, who has a charming girlfriend, Lee Yu-jeong (Gong Seung-yeon), makes a deadly decision after falsely thinking of committing a crime.
Shin Min-ah's Ju Yeon, a surgeon, is haunted by her childhood trauma of being a rape victim.
Lee Hee-joon's Park Jae-yeong is threatened by his landlord for not paying the rent, hence, he plots to kill his father to capture his insurance money.
Kim Sung-jyung's Gil Ryong loses his job and is asked to do something that involves a large sum of money.
Park Hae-soo's character commits murders and disguises himself to avoid the consequences.
Karma begins with an under-construction building catching a fire, with one person who barely survived. He is Park Hae-soo. At first, it is impossible to understand that Hae-soo is the one who set the building on fire. Now, flashback to the plot, some days before the fire incident, we see Lee Hee-joon's Park Jae-yeong is being threatened by his landlord to pay his due rent and is informed that in case he fails to do this in 30 days, his organs will be taken out. Now, pondering over who the doctor is that will do the surgery? He is Kim Nam Gil's Yun Jeong-min, the boyfriend of surgeon Ju Yeon.
Jae-yeong recruits Gil Ryong to kill his father so that he can get his insurance money to pay the bill. Gil Ryong takes the help of his friend, Hae-soo (the witness), to kill Jae-yeong's father. Let me tell you here, Gil Ryong and the witness became friends when they were behind bars together. Now, coming to the point, they mess up the incident while murdering his father as the latter does not die after their car hits him.
So, Hae-soo (the witness) covers his mouth tightly and murders him, and throws his body from an overbridge, and the body falls on a couple's car. The couple is none other than Lee Kwang-soo's character and his girlfriend.
Now, the viewers are shown this overbridge incident in a way that it seems like Lee Kwang-soo's character and his girlfriend hit the man. To avoid the police case, Kwang-soo plans to bury his body in a far place, and before doing it, he sees Hae-soo passing by them on a cycle, pretending he does not know anything. Sensing a danger, Kwang-soo bribes Hae-soo to help him bury the dead body. Now, what the viewers do not know at that time is that Hae-soo and Kwang-soo's so-called girlfriend are together in this business of betraying people and taking money from them.
Meanwhile, after burying the body, Hae-soo keeps wanting more money from Kwang-soo. At the end, when Kwang-soo realizes that his girlfriend is a friend of Hae-soo, he kills her, and Kwang-soo is later killed by Hae-soo. This way, Hae-soo becomes the prime suspect in two murders already.
Now, back to the hospital where Hae-soo, after the fire incident, is taken to. By that time, he had already killed both Gil Ryong and the debtor by setting the building on fire and disguising himself as the debtor, Park Jae-yeong. When the lady surgeon hears the name, Park Jae-yeong, she remembers her trauma-filled childhood as Jae-yeong raped her with his other friends. Notably, she dated Jae-yeong but the latter molested her. However, she does not remember the face, and this is why she mistakes Hae-soo as the real Jae-yeong. She wants to kill him but is stopped by her boyfriend. This is how she is saved from the bad Karma. As for the other friends who gang raped her with Jae-yeong, they all met Karma as they died due to overuse of drugs and other reasons later.
However, Hae-soo who disguises himself as the debtor, does not know that the debtor had the bills to pay and on the deadline day, he is taken by the landlord's men and as promised his organs are taken by doctor Yun Jeong-min. This is how Hae-soo faces his Karma and dies at the end.
More about Karma
For the unversed, Karma is based on a Kakao webtoon, Ill-fated Relationship by Choi Hee-seon, and is the story of six individuals dealing with a dark past, exploring the themes of fate, destiny, and the consequences of ill-fated human choices.
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