Gun Aimed at Kim You-jung's Spy Moments After Her Fake Love Confession to Park Jin-young

Lee Ga-gyeong (Kim You-jung) ends episode 3 of tvN's weekend drama 100 Days of Deception with a gun pointed at her and a stranger calling her a spy by her real name. It follows a made-up love confession she used to talk her way past Kim Tae-ung's suspicion. The episode aired on the 17th.

A confession that was part of the job

Kim You-jung's character even fabricated love to avoid the suspicion of Park Jin-young's character. Entering the Government-General of Korea as the concubine of Yoo Philip (Lee Moo-saeng), she told Kim Tae-ung, also known as Sato Hideo (Park Jin-young), "I've liked you since the first time we met." Even that was a performance for the mission. After Kim Tae-ung left work first, Lee Ga-gyeong began her real task. She picked the lock on a drawer and copied out a document listing Sato Shinichi's schedule. While appearing to be a woman smitten with Kim Tae-ung, she was in fact gathering information from inside the Government-General of Korea. The gap between the lips that confessed love and the hands that stole secret papers underlined how dangerous her mission is.

Four meetings, one demand for the truth

Kim Tae-ung had already pushed her hard. He said he would accept her as a colleague if she told him one true thing, just once, and asked directly why she had come into the Government-General of Korea through Yoo Philip and why she was approaching him. Even for someone so practised at lying, it was a hard question to brush aside. What he wanted was not a plausible excuse but a truth that would convince him. He asked whether she had ever spoken honestly even once, and went through their encounters one by one. Gyeongseong Station, Huiwon and the pawnshop could be written off as coincidence, he said, but a fourth meeting was different. Having got into the Government-General of Korea through Yoo Philip, she owed him an explanation of why she kept getting entangled with him.

Cornered, she looked at him and said, "I like you. Since the first time we met. That's why I came here." When Kim Tae-ung doubted her, asking whether she said such things to just anyone, she added with even more nerve that she had said it only to him, "for the first time in my life." By acting out the strongest emotion for a man who demanded sincerity, she got through the crisis.

Sparring in English

Before that, Kim Tae-ung had confronted her in English. "Pickpocket, then live-in maid, and now an interpreter at the Government-General of Korea. What's the reason for all this?" She answered, "To make a living." He sneered that if she wanted romance she should go to her sweetheart's newspaper office, and asked whether this was a playground and whether the Government-General of Korea looked like child's play. It was a sharp rebuke: had she come into a place where she might have to risk her life, putting love or personal feelings first?

She did not back down. Also in English, she replied, "I never went to school. How do I get a job if I don't cut corners? And who keeps their lover at the same workplace, right beside them? They'd be found out immediately." She exposed her lack of formal education while pointing out a flaw in his reasoning. The scene showed her cleverness, as she tries to survive despite the limits of her schooling and status.

A borrowed identity, and why she took the deal

Kim Tae-ung's doubts had a basis. Yoo Philip had joined in the lie. When he met Sato Shinichi (Jin Seon-kyu) and Kim Tae-ung, he asked them to look after Geum Seo-hee, and when asked why he took such special care, he said "That girl is my this," raising his little finger. The hint that she was his concubine gave her a pretext for entering the Government-General of Korea. But the explanation only deepened Kim Tae-ung's suspicion, because her path from pickpocket to live-in maid to interpreter at the Government-General of Korea was hard to accept. She had introduced herself to the Satos as Geum Seo-hee, a live-in maid working at the home of Yoo Philip and Yoo So-ran.

Her task under the deal was to work as a spy for three months and then leave for the United States. She was to enter the Government-General of Korea as an interpreter and extract Sato Shinichi's schedule, which meant working alongside his son, Sato Hideo.

Her reason for choosing that path was a desperate wish to get to the United States. She had saved money for years, but Ma Mun-mak took it and her plan fell apart. Yoo So-ran (Kim Hyun-joo) then offered to send her to the United States if she became a spy. Yoo So-ran, who poses as the wife of the Korean-American Yoo Philip, persuaded her that her husband's help could get Lee Ga-gyeong there. Since the United States does not accept adoptions of Asians, it was effectively a last chance she could hardly pass up.

What to watch next

The episode closed with Lee Ga-gyeong aiming a gun at an unidentified figure while on her way home. The stranger said, "Stop. You're a spy, aren't you? Geum Seo-hee, no, Lee Ga-gyeong," naming the identity she had concealed until then. It leaves open whether she has been exposed before she could extract any information from inside the Government-General of Korea, or whether her mission was in danger from the start.

Her lies have only just begun. The name Geum Seo-hee, the status of Yoo Philip's concubine and the love for Kim Tae-ung were all invented for survival and the trip to the United States. Viewers will be watching how much more elaborate the lies become over the 100 days of the title, and whether she can truly be free of them once the mission ends. Attention also falls on the possibility that a false confession made to dodge suspicion could turn into real feeling between the two.

With Lee Ga-gyeong's desperate goal, Kim Tae-ung's efforts to see through her lies and Yoo So-ran, who drew her into spying, all tangled together, 100 Days of Deception raises both the tension of a spy drama and the flutter of a romance. The key question going forward is whether Lee Ga-gyeong's "I like you," spoken to survive, stays an act to the end or turns into a feeling even she did not expect.

Read the original (Korean)