Ji-woo

Ji-woo is a main character in the South-Korean drama movie Innocent Witness.

Character creation
Director Lee Han met with autistic people and doctors and read books on the subject for research. Actress Kim Hyang-gi worked worked with a family with an autistic family member. Costar Jung Woo-song stresses that the movie is about people's attitudes towards autism, not about autism itself.

Synopsis
Ji-woo is the sole witness to a potential murder. Soon-ho, lawyer of the suspect, tries to befriend her in order to be able to discredit her testimonial in court.

Autism
Ji-woo is stated to be autistic multiple times within the movie; it is a key plot point. The lawyer of the defendant tries to convince the jury that due to her being autistic, she cannot read people's intentions and thus cannot reliably say whether the physical altercation that she witnessed was the defendant trying to murder the victim or merely the defendant trying to prevent the victim from committing suicide.

Ji-woo is said to very intelligent by her mother; she could speak in full sentences at age 1 and was very quick to learn to read advanced books. She also has savant-y skills in that she can count a number of objects within the blink of an eye (like 267 dots on a tie). She is very sensitive to sounds, which makes certain situations difficult: there's a dog on the route from school to home that always barks, which she finds overwhelming. However, her acute hearing also enabled her to hear exactly what the defendant was saying while struggling with the victim, despite Ji-woo being in her room across the street from where the crime happened.

She attends regular schooling and while she succeeds academically, she is severely bullied by her classmates.