Jumin Han is a very complex individual. At first glance, he seems smart, calculating, cold, and closed off. While those do apply to him, he is a much deeper character. He’s caring (albeit in his own, weird way), he’s funny, and he’s trying to learn more about the world and his friends. I firmly believe that Jumin is autistic, which would explain a LOT of why he does things the way he does it. Some argue it’s because of his upbringings, which is true as well, but coming from an autist, he shows a lot of signs of having autism (he could have schizophrenia as well. I think NPD [or at least a personality disorder. It’s easy to develop one with an abusive childhood] is possible as well, but I will add those reasons later).
First, a little background information. Jumin Han is a 28 year old businessman; more specifically a director of C&R. His father is the boss of the entire company, which will go to Jumin once he retires. He is a very hardworking individual and loves his cat, Elizabeth the 3rd, more than anything. He tends to overwork his secretary, although unintentionally, and she does voice this (where he can see it) rather often. His relationship with his parents is rocky; Jumin’s mother was very materialistic and debatably abusive towards him, while his father fails to realize he’s a human being more than once. Jumin says his relationship with his father is good, but his father’s actions cause him immense stress in his route.
Let’s get onto his childhood now. Jumin grew up in the richest neighborhood in the country. He and his best friend V grew up as neighbors, both being catholic. Growing up, he felt as though he had to repress his feelings, as no matter what reaction he gave to anyone, they all reacted the same. He even admits he feels too much all the time, but fears it’ll hinder his efficiency at work and decides to bury said feelings. This leads him to have crippling and severe loneliness, and since his parents were not emotionally there, Jumin does not know how to deal with that. He labels himself as a monster, an ugly creature, for how lonely and paranoid he always is.
The reason he loves Elizabeth so dearly is because he projects those feelings onto her. Jumin convinces himself she’s the only thing he needs in this world, and later has a near breakdown when realizing their relationship is a lie—going so far as to take time off work with no specific reasons given to his secretary (Jaehee Kang). He shows being very upset knowing Elizabeth has no real understanding of him. Another person who was close to him, Rika, taught him lots of things. It’s hinted that he had feelings for her at one point in time, as he sincerely believes she could see everything he felt and didn’t judge him for it. However, when asked (by Rika) if a relationship could’ve been possible between them if she had never met V, Jumin becomes visibly uncomfortable by the question and asks her not to say things like that.
Since Jumin has never been in a relationship before, his and the MC’s relationship isn’t very good at first. However, they help him overcome his paranoia and fear and helps untangle all of the emotions he said “were knotted inside” for years. Zen, another one of the RFA members, is not fond of this relationship, as he and Jumin have always butted heads. Zen isn’t fond of Jumin because of his upbringing and the fact he reminds him of a family member he hates. Contrary to Zen, Jumin has a strong distrust for women as he watched his dad get with lots of women who were not very good people (specifically towards him).
Jumin joined the RFA since V (his best friend) and Rika were the ones who created it. Despite his cold exterior, Jumin is actually often the mediator of the RFA, using his logical personality to override the overly emotional thinking of members like Yoosung and Zen. He shows compassion for the other members for sending bodyguards to each of them when it’s revealed there’s a danger. In other characters’ routes, he shows time and time again how he cares for them. He often gives MC advice about their troubles, or sends MC to Zen’s house when he was injured. In Yoosung’s route, he even sends bodyguards to MC when Yoosung is incredibly worried about them.
Back to Jumin’s route—the members notice an overall more positive vibe Jumin emits after getting closer to MC. He still has a lot of trouble showing how he feels from living in a neglectful home, which is shown when he doesn’t realize he’s been talking about his troubles and feelings. An example of this is when he’s flirting with MC and only understands when pointed out, or when Jumin finds out about his father attempting to set up an arranged marriage and he confesses all his troubles (Zen, Saeyoung, and Yoosung all make jabs about how he’s turning the chatroom into his diary). When finally realizing what he had been doing, he tells MC that he’s leaving the chatroom to calm down, as he believes it’s pathetic that they have to see him like this.
Jumin’s mental stability was already deteriorating due to his father being manipulated, but it becomes even worse when Zen opens up about a prophetic dream he has about Elizabeth escaping his house. Jumin insists he doesn’t believe it and that it is “nonsense,” but his paranoia increases tenfold and convinces himself that Glam (his father’s girlfriend) and Sarah (his arranged fiance) will steal Elizabeth. In an attempt to calm himself down, he buys a cage to keep her in. Jaehee and Saeyoung’s concern for Jumin increases, and they suggest MC go visit Jumin to calm him down. When they arrive, Jumin is shocked but elated to see them. He becomes smitten with MC, but because he doesn’t understand his emotions, his interest in MC starts to be a little rocky; he first insists they stay the night, which doesn’t seem too bad. However, it continues to become more obsessive.
Starting around this point of time in the route, the player can decide to help Jumin become more stable, or to decrease his stability even more. MC is able to call the cage “pretty” and it’ll be the start of unhealthy thoughts in Jumin’s head. When it becomes more apparent of Jumin’s possessiveness is when Zen asks for a picture of Jumin and MC together and Jumin vehemently declines and says he wants to be the only one to look at them. After a while, Jumin’s paranoia dies down and he finally lets Elizabeth out of the cage to feed her, she escapes and it causes his emotional state to plummet. When MC offers to help look, he becomes more aggressive and insists that they never leave the penthouse ever again.
Because of these events happening, his repressed emotions become too much for him to handle and Jumin, in turn, becomes obsessed over “protecting” MC, refusing to let them leave. He does, however, ask MC for time to sort out his emotions because he wants to be a better man and hates the way he’s acting towards them. He goes on to state that if something were to happen to MC because of his feelings, he would never be able to forgive himself. His instability worsens as he refuses to show up to work, convinced he can’t let MC out of his sight. He starts subconsciously treating MC the way he would Elizabeth, asking to buy them clothes, or to go shopping. If the player decides to encourage these feelings of replacement, it goads into his possessiveness and continues to decrease his health. The other option is to let him know that they are just concerned for his health, which helps Jumin stay grounded. Depending on these choices, the branch will go two different ways; one being Jumin falling victim to his own obsessiveness.
When MC suggests they leave for a while, he slams the door behind them and traps them with him; he is confused as to why they would ever want to separate from him. He states that only he knows what’s good for them and that there is no reason the MC would ever need to leave. Jumin ends up apologizing for the outburst. Later on, when Saeyoung and Yoosung go on a mission to infiltrate the danger from earlier, they spot Elizabeth exactly where she was in Zen’s dream. They try to bring her back, but Jumin declines as he comes to the conclusion that he was unfair to her for treating her more than a pet; he also says he doesn’t need her anymore now that he has MC.
All of this may stem all the way back into his childhood with his birth mother. He resented her and vowed that he would do anything to be the opposite of his mother, Carolyn. Jumin states that he didn’t care if he lost his money and honor in doing so, as long as he isn’t like her. She tells him how little she cares for him, telling him that conceiving him wasn’t anything special as other mothers make it out to be. She says it was the right thing to do to make the best CEO with the best genes. She would use Jumin’s good genes to make deals with others just to benefit herself.
Jumin blames the way he turns out on her as well, stating his therapist encourages him to ignore her actions and words, since most of them revolve around how she has no need to take care of Jumin, as it’s a task that doesn’t help her in any way. Later on, it’s revealed that Carolyn was even worse than first thought. She would mentally and physically abuse Jumin, as she made him the way he was: “perfect, with no twists or turns.” This, however, made him “far from a human being”, making him nothing but a child, but rather that “he’s exactly the way she wants him to be, but he’s creeping her out.” Carolyn asks Jumin why he can’t have fun like ordinary children, in which he responds with “You are the one who made me like this.”
This angers Carolyn further, which results in her forcefully locking Jumin in a basement filled with toys on multiple occasions in an attempt of making him “normal.” Jumin later says in one of the after endings that the longest time he spent down there consecutively was 17 hours and 14 minutes. Carolyn becomes satisfied that Jumin likes her, but also hated it, which made her avoid him completely. He mentions that both of them wanted a normal, loving mother-son relationship, but “both of them had no love to provide each other with.”
Now that the backstory is completely done, here will be reasons to believe Jumin Han is autistic. An obvious one that is apparent throughout all routes, is that he does not express his emotions and goes so far as to not even understand them properly, which results in multiple “meltdown” like states. Another example, which is more subtle, is how bothered he is by things when they aren’t according to schedule, or are “off.” In the spaceship reveals, he says multiple times that various objects are “slanted” and voices his dislike for it. He says it about a pen, and goes on to say that everything is “off by one degree.” Jumin also expresses his love for ruled notebooks as it’s very orderly. He is very creative and tends to indulge in something that could be considered a special interest; cats. Jumin is constantly coming up with new projects related to cats in some way; an example are the cat hotels and another is him going into detail about how he could develop cheese and wine safe for cats.
There are even regular projects he comes up with that seem to only exist to comfort him more—like developing a cube folder that “accentuates the beauty of the perpendicular.” He immediately recognizes consistency in everything, including daily life, and it makes him happy. Jumin also mentions how much he dislikes bowties, saying he didn’t like how they felt. This could be a case of having increased sensitivity to texture, often seen in autists. Another case of clothing talk is when he stresses over which shoes to wear. Jumin mentions footwear on multiple occasions, one even being about how uncomfortable glass slippers must be to wear in reference to Cinderella.
In another story, he is still enamored with his cat. There is a conversation where he gives the exact degree of his head turn to cause his cat to do something he likes, and the other members are perplexed as to how he would know that. This ties into the specific thinking many autistic people have, and how he is technical with his speech. Jumin knows these things because he has a great interest in his cat and math. Later on, Rika says “That’s Jumin Han to you. He must have rulers and protractors in his eyes.” This is further proof that Jumin sees the world in one way and has trouble accepting anything else.
Moving onto speech, Jumin doesn’t seem to comprehend a lot of jokes and social cues. He doesn’t understand play on words often, and his jokes also go over many heads as he says it with a straight face/tone. Jumin mentions how he needs to read the urban dictionary more often, as he doesn’t comprehend a lot of things said to him. He also doesn’t understand human psychology, as he puts it, and says it leaves him perplexed. Jumin mentions a couple times how he dislikes lying, which is common within autism. Autists often have a very hard time lying in general. He mentions on countless occasions how he isn’t fond of change at all. He also gets overwhelmed when he is surrounded by bodyguards. He recognizes little mistakes in writing instantly and is upset by it until it is changed. Another thing related to small details is instantly seeing a single cathair on Jaehee and it becomes the only thing he can focus on.
When looking at another story (specifically first couple days and V’s route), there are numerous times when Jumin is portraying autistic traits. It is very clear that Jumin is incredibly passionate about his writing utensils. His interest seems more strong than the average person, and he is shown getting excited over same day shipping of his pens. Along with that, he is shown making many jokes (as well as genuine interest) regarding party guests that others seem to have trouble understanding. He has a childlike interest when inviting a vampire and Yoosung fails to understand the joke behind it. He later discusses with MC about inviting Pluto, the planet. He moves on to joke about having the party on Jupiter and Jaehee doesn’t understand him or MC’s jest. In this same conversation, he reads MC’s intention incorrectly and even goes on to give evidence as to what her tone may be.
Later on, Jumin asks to invite a bowl of udon to the party. Once again, everyone fails to understand he is making a joke despite really having the contact information for it. The members seem almost exasperated with his idea of humor. This ties into Jumin’s speech and delivery for many jokes. Not only does he not comprehend other people’s jokes, no one comprehends his. This is incredibly common among autistic people and is often the reason why people consider us less intelligent. We know Jumin is smart because he graduated from a very prestigious university overseas and is the head of a company.
Although these examples could just be a result of the abusive childhood he lived in, they are all good reasons as to why Jumin Han may be autistic. As mentioned above, he is a very complex character, one of the most in my personal opinion. Jumin has lots of depth, and is a very caring individual. These reasons may not be sufficient enough to some, but it is very easy to project onto Jumin with how many traits he shares.
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