The Power of Awareness in Healer

As you do, I was gushing about Healer, one of my favorite K-dramas. In Healer, Ji Chang Wook’s title character did cool parkour style action and great fight scenes, but what stood out from other action heroes was his situational awareness. He always sensed when someone was following him and knew when he was walking into a trap before the bad guys attacked. The day after this enthusiastic one-sided conversation I got an offer to review an advance copy of The Power of Awareness, a personal safety how-to book. Since I can’t practice most of the exercises while social distancing, I thought I’d read using Healer to illustrate its principles.

An Interest in Awareness

I have to say up front that I am not the target audience for this book. The publisher has tagged the book “Political, Military, Current Affairs” and “Mens’ Interest.” The full title is: The Power of Awareness and Other Secrets From the World’s Foremost Spies, Detectives, and Special Operators on How to Stay Safe and Save Your Life.

So … not me.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested. A long time ago, a friend told me about surviving a dangerous situation, and said, “I’ve been taught my whole life how to be a good victim.” And I was floored. I’d been taught my whole life how not to be a victim.

{I am not victim blaming. The person who hurts others is always morally responsible for their crime. A person should be able to walk down the street naked and carrying buckets of cash and get where they’re going unharmed. But given the existence of people with bad intentions, I’m going to focus my energy on not giving them a chance.}

Despite the very manly nature of the book, most of the examples (outside of war zones) involve women. That makes it more relevant to me. But since it’s marketed to men, makes me cringe on behalf of all the women who have been navigating parking garages and after-hours elevators their whole lives whose husbands are going to mansplain safety to them after reading this book.

The Power of Awareness

But looking past all that, the book is pretty down to earth. Schilling’s primary messages ring very true to me: pay attention and trust your gut. I appreciated that one of his first examples was the time all his stuff got stolen in Mexico. Also, I loved the movie references in the section headings. So I read the book while rewatching Healer and compared notes.

Situational Awareness

In the first episode, Healer takes a small job. As he enters the subway station where he’s to pick up “the package,” he stops. He already knows the job will go south because he has spotted five men with earpieces scattered around the platform.

Schilling doesn’t teach you how to do that. But he does talk about how to gauge a situation or a place based on familiarity and potential dangers to decide how alert you need to be. I think most people do this instinctively to some extent (remember Denis Leary’s “good block, bad block” New Yorker impression?). But it really highlighted that a lot of Healer’s “superpower” was actually closely observation of his surroundings. Seeing what’s there instead of what you expect to see is central to situational awareness.

In the book, Schilling is critical of people walking around with earbuds in and staring at their phones. On the other hand, Healer has always got stuff stuck in his ears (he’s getting information and instructions from his handler) and stares at his cell phone to look harmless and hide his face from CCTV cameras. But it’s true lots of people get hit by cars or fall and hurt themselves while staring at phones in real life.

I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This

It’s harder than he makes it sound, but I loved Schilling’s defense of intuition and trusting your gut even when it required rude or socially awkward behavior. It’s something my family really emphasized when I was growing up.

In episode 11, none of Healer’s traps have been sprung, but he senses that someone is in his lair, and even knows who it is. Before opening the secret door, he stops and addresses his long-absent teacher, “I know you’re there.” And he is.

In episode 16, Healer is tracking down a witness and gets a bad feeling about the place he’s been sent. But for the most part, he doesn’t seem to rely on intuition very much. Healer usually operates with certainty through careful observation and loads of experience.  (Kang Chul in W is a much better example for intuition).

Houston We Have a Problem

The next step in the Power of Awareness is determining the problem. Healer’s world is so full of trouble that he isn’t always right about this. In episode 8 he drives up to Chae Yeong Sin’s house and sees a bunch of toughs standing around in front of it. Assuming trouble, he starts to drive away, but Yeong Sin hops out of the car and runs up to them in excitement. These ex-cons have been her ahjussis since childhood.

But in episode 10 when they are leaving the press conference at a swanky hotel, Healer spots two guys sitting in a nondescript car in the parking garage. He correctly determines they are after Yeong Sin. Anticipating the need to make a run for it, he hands her the comfy shoes she usually wears to replace the stilettos she wore in the hotel.  

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

Schilling talks about the importance of planning your response to a problem. He distinguishes between deliberate planning, when you have time to work out the details, and hasty planning, which is basically deciding what you’re going to do, like “run away.”

Healer is an expert at both types of planning. In the final episode, they have a day to plan an airport connection with a whistleblower and collect the evidence that will bring down the Elder. The plan they devise is as elaborate as any heist movie, the sort of thing you want to watch over and over to pick out all the details and connect the through threads. In one high-risk scheme, they bring down the bad guys, protect the witness, give Healer a clean slate, and establish Young Sin as a serious reporter.

But hasty planning is Healer’s usual MO. In episode one, when he steals data off an unnetworked server in a busy corporate headquarters, all he brings is a cell phone. He uses key cards, lab coats, storage boxes, and mail carts he finds onsite to create multiple disguises on the fly and gain access to the entire facility, including the secure server room.

Act Decisively

Once you’ve made a plan, commit to it entirely. Action heroes never waffle, and Healer is no exception. In episode 12, searching for the truth about his father’s death, he discovers someone has stolen the police records from the archives. He’s so committed to the plan that he reveals his secret identity to formally request the records, knowing that it will bring whoever stole the documents to him.  

R&R (and R and R)

Run Away

I used to have a martial arts teacher who said, “The first rule of aikido is get out of the way.” It’s true that aikido is about redirection instead of blocks. But it also means the most successful conflict is the one you avoid. Before or after a fight, you want to distance yourself from trouble. Healer always disappears without a trace, even though he’s often nearby enough to keep an eye on the situation. When he escapes Kim Moon Sik’s house, he watches from a tree as security guards scramble to find him. When he delivers rescues Yeong Sin from the falling elevator, he hides just around the corner until Moon Ho shows up to take her home safely.

Regroup

Regrouping is about making sure you’re actually safe before you relax. When bad guys tail Healer and Yeong Sin in episode 10, he takes decisive action to lose them (making a sharp turn from the back seat when a semi separates them from the tail) then hopping out of the car at the next intersection and running into a building. But he doesn’t relax until he sees their pursuers drive past, still following the car they jumped out of.

Report

A top cybercrimes policeman has been chasing Healer for five years and for most of the show he’s wanted for a murder his last client committed. But he still reports crime when he can. In episode five, Healer and Yeong Sin are fleeing the gangster’s mansion, chased by thugs. He intentionally crashes into the cop’s stakeout car right outside, then disappears while Yeong Sin describes the crime they just witnessed.

In episode 15, when he discovers the Elder’s spy in the police department, he sends an anonymous tip that include photographs of all the evidence he found in the corrupt cop’s apartment – and leaves the corrupt officer tied up in his closet for the police when they come to investigate.

Recover

Contrary to the tough guys walk away from explosions mythos, the final step in The Power of Awareness is to seek help recovering from trauma. Healer does not do this. Orphaned and abandoned at a young age, his teacher and handler eventually become proxy parents. But they are traumatized and cynical themselves; they can teach him how to crime, but not how to human. In contrast, Yeong Sin, whose life was shattered by the same events, did find support from her adoptive father, who taught her how to trust again. Twenty years later, she is happy and living well, while Healer is still closed off and alone. She provides the support he never got, and arguably, is the actual “healer” of the story, which is as much about Jeong Hoo’s recovery as it is about solving the decades-old mystery.

Guns and Data

The Power of Awareness includes sections on special topics like active shooters and personal information. Firearms make an appearance in Healer, but only in the final climax. Gun violence outside of organized crime and warfare is so rare in Korea that in Descendants of the Sun, the special ops character is surprised when a civilian doctor can identify his partially healed gunshot wound.

Cybersecurity, on the other hand, is central to the story. The addresses on all of his fake IDs are fake. Healer is famous for having never allowed an image of his face to be captured. Even bystander cell phone videos only caught the back of his head in episode one. In fact, he often walks on rooftops rather than sidewalks to avoid CCTV and black box cameras.

Healer doesn’t just photograph lanyards, he steals them; instead of peeking over shoulders at cell phones he pickpockets them, downloads spyware, and replaces them before they are missed. Naturally he has top notch security on his own devices. The phone numbers his organizations call from don’t even exist. An early episode relates a famous story of a hacker who tried to trace the IP of Healer’s email address. After three days they traced it to their own apartment. The only apps Healer uses are the ones his team wrote. The only contacts in his phone are dedicated numbers for his handler, his helper, and his favorite fried chicken place. And of course, he’s not on any social media.

So there you have it, folks. Healer is the perfect action hero, and he owes it all to the power of awareness. And the incomparable Ji Chang Wook.