Hwang Dongsoo

Hwang was a big, muscular man whose black hair was shaved into a buzz cut, and his eyes blazed bright red whenever he grew angry or used his powers. Visiting Korea, he sported a red t-shirt, gray jeans, and a gold chain at his neck. The outfit he wore while torturing Jinho ran darker: a grayish-blue jacket marked on the back with a flaming skull, worn over a red undershirt and black pants. Across the new timeline his look stayed mostly unchanged.

Selfish and murderous, Hwang valued human life little and brimmed with overconfidence, genuinely sure he could stand against obviously stronger foes such as Sung Jinwoo and Sung Il-Hwan without ever weighing the chance of defeat. He was a bully who relished lording his power over weaker people, a habit he shared with his brother. For all that, he respected raw strength above all, backing off nervously once Thomas Andre cowed him with a display of force. He could scheme when it suited him, abducting Jinho despite warnings because he expected Thomas to shield him from any retaliation if Jinwoo struck; never imagining Jinwoo might outclass Thomas, he made a fatal misjudgment.

Before the main story began, Hwang took Norma Selner's offer of an upgrade and moved to America without hesitation, joining Thomas Andre's Scavenger Guild; Koreans branded him a traitor and his standing at home collapsed, with even his brother resenting the choice. Years later, after his brother died in a botched raid, Hwang correctly guessed that one of the two survivors, Jinwoo or Jinho, was responsible and flew to Korea to kill them. Woo Jinchul met him on arrival, but Hwang made his intentions plain and tracked Jinwoo through his hunter's license, only to find the man had entered a Red Gate that the White Tiger Guild had already purchased. Convinced the man was already finished, he nearly clashed with Baek Yoonho before giving up and flying home. He was later brought in to question Sung Il-Hwan, taunted him about his dead son, and was beaten to a pulp and warned to stay away from the family.

When Korea launched a fourth Jeju Island raid, the Association rejected his request to join, knowing he sought revenge, so he stayed in the States. Once it was announced that Jinwoo would represent Korea at the International Guild Conference, Thomas warned him off, yet Hwang had already plotted to target Jinho instead, kidnapping him to an abandoned factory. Jinwoo's shadow soldiers led him straight there, and he used Shadow Exchange to reach the scene. Outmatched, Hwang attacked anyway, was brutally beaten, and was flung aside when Thomas arrived demanding his release, exactly as Hwang had hoped, so Thomas would kill Jinwoo for him. After Jinwoo defeated Thomas, he slew Hwang and extracted his shadow as Greed. In the Ragnarok novel, Hwang lived as a petty crook before awakening as an S-Rank, fell in with the Outer Gods Cult, and was reshaped into Itarim's High Priest, only for Il-Hwan to kill him again and Suho to revive him as Greed once more.