I have very little doubt he is the childhood friend for multiple reasons. First and foremost, he knows so much about their childhood and much of the story line makes much more sense with him being the childhood friend. Second the childhood friend already displayed many of the obsessive and possessive tendencies we see in Hwon. It is very easy to image him drugging him in present day when you think about how much more fucked up he would have become after his obsession left him to die. For those of you saying "But the childhood friend did have a mole in the flashbacks, so Hwon must be the beggar" Well the flashbacks were based on Woojin's faulty memories. If you go back to Chapter 31 with Hwon's flashback of waking up in the hospital, you can see he doesn't have the mole under his eye. That's just my reasoning ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I have very little doubt he is the childhood friend for multiple reasons. First and foremost, he knows so much about their childhood and much of the story line makes much more sense with him being the childhood friend. Second the childhood friend already displayed many of the obsessive and possessive tendencies we see in Hwon. It is very easy to image him drugging him in present day when you think about how much more fucked up he would have become after his obsession left him to die.
For those of you saying "But the childhood friend did have a mole in the flashbacks, so Hwon must be the beggar" Well the flashbacks were based on Woojin's faulty memories. If you go back to Chapter 31 with Hwon's flashback of waking up in the hospital, you can see he doesn't have the mole under his eye.
That's just my reasoning ¯_(ツ)_/¯
She confirmed he was the childhood friend -the author did