The Price of Confession Ending Explained: Who Escapes Justice and Who Takes the Fall

Spoilers ahead for The Price of Confession. This one is grim, twisty, and not big on catharsis. It starts like a straight-up wrongful-accusation thriller and slowly mutates into something darker about who gets to call it justice when the system looks the other way.

The setup: a murder, a deal, and a spiral

We meet Ahn Yun-su (Jeon Do-yeon), a soft-spoken art teacher whose husband, Lee Ki-dae, turns up dead. She becomes the main suspect, lands in prison, and gets pulled into a truly awful bargain. Inmates whisper about a woman nicknamed the witch: Mo Eun (Kim Go-eun), already behind bars for killing a married couple. Mo Eun offers to confess to killing Ki-dae — if Yun-su murders that couple's son, Ko Se-hun. Yes, the parents Mo Eun killed are Se-hun's mother and father. Yes, this is as bleak as it sounds.

Mo Eun is not who you think she is

The show slowly flips the script on Mo Eun. She is not a cartoon psychopath; she is Kang So-hae, a doctor who was stuck working in Thailand during the COVID lockdowns. While she was trapped there, her younger sister So-mang was raped by Se-hun, who filmed the attack and blasted it online. His wealthy family made sure he slipped the consequences. The video kept spreading. So-mang and their father both died by suicide.

Then So-hae's friend — whose name was Mo Eun — died of COVID. So-hae took her identity, came home, killed Se-hun's parents, and set her sights on making Se-hun face what he did. That's the headspace she is in when she approaches Yun-su with that bargain.

The Se-hun problem

Yun-su agrees to the deal but cannot go through with killing Se-hun. Instead, she stages a photo to make it look like she did, tells him to lay low, and leaves. Days later, Se-hun turns up dead anyway, and all the signs point back to Yun-su. It looks terrible — by design.

So who killed Ki-dae (and Se-hun)?

The finale finally pulls the sheet off the real culprits behind Ki-dae's murder: attorney Jin Yeong-in, a public defender, and his wife, star cellist Choi Su-yeon. Yeong-in had donated an artwork to the university hosting Ki-dae's show. When the university president asked Ki-dae what he thought, Ki-dae said it looked plagiarized. Yeong-in and Su-yeon pushed for an apology; Ki-dae ignored them. They showed up at his studio while he was waiting for Yun-su. Things escalated. Su-yeon smashed a wine bottle over his head and then used one of his art knives to finish the job. Yeong-in cleaned the scene and slipped out — right before Yun-su arrived and found her husband dead.

Once Yeong-in learned about Yun-su's deal with Mo Eun, he weaponized it. He set things up to frame Yun-su for Ki-dae — and later killed Se-hun himself after Yun-su left him alive. That staged photo Yun-su took? It made the frame-up easier.

The last turn of the screw

Yun-su and Mo Eun eventually track down a crucial video: a kid recorded proof that Yeong-in murdered Se-hun. They confront Yeong-in back at Ki-dae's studio, where he has returned to wipe Su-yeon's fingerprints off one of Ki-dae's metal plates. A fight breaks out. Mo Eun is mortally wounded, but she manages to stab Yeong-in. He admits what he did, and dies from the injury. It is messy, tragic, and the closest thing the show offers to payback.

Who pays, who walks, and what that says

Yun-su is cleared of murdering her husband. She still faces consequences for conspiring in the Se-hun plan, but the court gives her a suspended sentence instead of locking her up for life. In the final moments, she leaves the country with her daughter and flies to Thailand to honor So-hae — leaving her watch at a quiet spot tied to Mo Eun's memory.

Prosecutor Baek Dong-hun, riddled with guilt over helping railroad Yun-su earlier, tries to nail the person who actually killed Ki-dae. But Su-yeon, the one who swung the bottle and the knife, slips the net. There is a fingerprint of hers on one of Ki-dae's works, but she pins everything on her now-dead husband Yeong-in and shows zero remorse. With no decisive, usable evidence, she walks.

The show refuses a tidy ending. Some truth comes out, and the worst villain dodges real punishment. The emotional math does not balance — which is the point.

Quick facts

• Title: The Price of Confession (Korean title: 자백의 대가)
• Type: South Korean mystery thriller TV series
• Main cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Kim Go-eun, Park Hae-soo, Jin Seon-kyu
• Writer: Kwon Jong-kwan
• Director: Lee Jung-hyo
• Premise: An art teacher becomes the prime suspect in her husband's murder and strikes a desperate deal with a notorious inmate who promises to confess in her place — if the teacher commits a second crime
• Network / Platform: Netflix (global)
• Premiere date: December 5, 2025
• Genre mix: Crime, psychological thriller, legal drama