100 Days of Deception Episode 10 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Kim You-jung as Lee Ga-kyung
Park Jin-young as Kim Tae-ung (Sato Hideo)
Kim Hyun-joo as Yoo So-ran
Lee Mu-saeng as Yoo Philip
Jin Sun-kyu as Sato Shinichi

The banquet bomb goes off

At the Government-General, the Japanese colonial administration in Gyeongseong (Seoul), the Governor-General opens the banquet for Joseon's first pneumatic tube system on May 15, 1932. He calls it a milestone in the modernization of Joseon, the colonial-era name for Korea, and a step toward prosperity reaching Manchukuo, Japan's new state in Manchuria. When an attempt to repeat the speech in English falters, he calls up Kim Tae-ung, who lives as the interpreter Sato Hideo, to render his toast in English and then to drink with him. As the glasses go up, a voice recalls that the bomb is set for 6:20 p.m. and that the listener should get as far away as possible.

Moments later, an urgent word reaches the Governor-General and Sato Shinichi, the Inspector General and Hideo's adoptive father. The banquet is cancelled for an emergency, and the chief of police is told to check security and report to the Governor-General's office. The news is that soldiers attacked Prime Minister Inukai in Tokyo at 5:30 p.m. As the top officials leave, guests and foreign reporters crowd Hideo for an explanation. He can only apologize and send them home. In the crush, he and Lee Ga-kyung, who works at the Government-General as the trainee Keum Seo-hee, find each other.

Then the bomb explodes. Ga-kyung pulls Hideo clear of the blast, and he asks whether she is hurt. Officials shout for a stretcher and order everyone out in case a second bomb is waiting. Hideo tells Ga-kyung to leave and turns to help the wounded. She finds Yoo So-ran, the operative she works for in the Gugukdan independence group, still inside and urges her out before they are all caught. So-ran asks why Ga-kyung, who is leaving for America anyway, is acting loyal. Nearby, Kim Myung-nam, a Gugukdan member, steers her father toward the exit.

Songjeon falls

Elsewhere in the building, Shinichi holds Songjeon, a Gugukdan member. He demands to know who is behind the blast and whether Songjeon belongs to the Gugukdan. Songjeon answers only with a call for Korea's independence. When Hideo arrives, Shinichi tells his son the man is an independence fighter and orders him to shoot, then to kill. Hideo cannot pull the trigger, and Shinichi fires himself. So-ran sees Hideo holding the gun.

After the gunshots, an officer finds the Inspector General and warns of more bombs. So-ran kneels over Songjeon and begs him to wake up while someone tells her they have to go. In the chaos, Shinichi is wounded and So-ran escapes with a bullet in her shoulder. Outside, Myung-nam bundles her father into a car and tells Ga-kyung to head straight for Gyeongseong Station. When Ga-kyung asks about Mrs. Yoo, Myung-nam reminds her she is meant to be going to America.

Police hunt the streets for a suspect they now know is a woman. A contact asks Ga-kyung whether Songjeon got out, and she does not know. The contact hands her a bag with all her papers for America and food So-ran packed for the voyage, and tells her to wipe her face before any security check. At the Government-General, Hideo is told it is time to go, but his father's order to shoot echoes in his head. Shinichi shouts his name, says he is finished going easy on him and reminds him, "You're nobody if I'm dead."

Shinichi writes the official story

The Governor-General learns that the head of Foreign Affairs died at the scene and that a senior Communications Bureau official died before reaching the hospital. He rages at Shinichi, calls him a colonial resident unfit for his post and orders him to resign. Shinichi asks whether a resignation would make anyone forget a bomb inside the Government-General. He points out that only two weeks have passed since Yun Bong-gil's Shanghai bombing, that a League of Nations team arrives within two months and that the foreign press saw everything. His proposed official line is that a mentally unstable Japanese man acted alone and no independence fighter ever got inside. Someone then says that it all went as planned, that outrage fades and the clean-up is what counts, and that there is no reason to refuse someone who offers to wield the sword for them. A promise follows to catch the culprit that night.

The pawn ticket, the receipt tied to Hideo's search for his mother, turns up where it was left for him. Hideo asks why it was put there and whether she wants nothing more to do with someone like him.

Ga-kyung turns back for So-ran

At the station, Ga-kyung opens So-ran's bundle and finds a castella, the sponge cake So-ran's late husband, Keum Seok-jung, once promised to take their daughter, Seo-hee, to try. So-ran's message tells her to live her own way in America, as neither So-ran nor her daughter could, and to be happy. Ga-kyung recalls So-ran repeating his promise of a spring trip to Gyeongseong for castella. The train for Incheon, the port city, is called for departure.

At the Yoo house, So-ran insists on staying home despite her wound, because an empty house would draw suspicion. Then the police knock, with Hideo at their side. Hideo says they are checking on any banquet guests who might be injured. Someone notices So-ran is wearing only one pearl earring, and guns come out. So-ran says the other earring is in a drawer, but the officers insist on looking themselves, and her husband, the American correspondent Yoo Philip, protests.

Ga-kyung walks in calling for the madam, and the guns swing toward her. She introduces herself as Keum Seo-hee, an English interpreter trainee who works with Interpreter Sato Hideo. She asks Hideo to check the drawer, then points out the missing earring lying under his foot. So-ran says it keeps falling out. The police announce they must examine the shoulders of both women who attended the banquet. Philip objects, but Ga-kyung bares her shoulders for them and is cleared. Before the officers can check So-ran, Hideo calls a halt and leads them out.

Once the officers are gone, So-ran, now bleeding, asks why Ga-kyung came back instead of catching her train. Ga-kyung says the envelope in the bag held three full months' pay, though she had said she would quit after one. She will finish the three months, then go to America. Taking the money and running, she says, would make her "a crook, not a spy."

Asked how she knew, Ga-kyung explains. Police stopped her on the way to Incheon, where she claimed she was going to care for an American missionary's baby. They checked her arms and made sure she still had both pearl earrings. So-ran asks where the spare earring came from. Ga-kyung banged on the door of the First Jongno Pawnshop at night. She took an earring the pawnbroker said was popular with stylish women and promised to return it the next day.

The worry is that Hideo came because he suspects them. The counter-argument is that Hideo halted the shoulder check once he grasped the risk of stripping a foreign reporter's wife. So-ran then reveals that Songjeon, who went into the banquet as a cook, is dead, and that she saw Sato Hideo kill him.

When Hideo returns home and is asked what happened, he turns down a doctor and says goodnight. Earlier that evening, police were told that the accomplice escaped shot in the shoulder and that every female guest must be checked. A pearl earring left at the scene was the lead. When officers named Yoo Philip's wife, Hideo stepped in, warning that careless handling of a WWP News correspondent could become a diplomatic incident, and went along. Now he replays Ga-kyung pointing at the earring under his foot and baring her shoulder, and he begins to doubt.

The Gugukdan claim the attack

A Gugukdan statement claims the bombing and its heavy toll among Japanese officials. It honors Comrade Songjeon, a Japanese member of the group who died in the attack. A newspaper runs the claim on its front page. In the Gugukdan's circle, the story brings relief, and someone wonders whether Suzuki Hiroyuki, Hideo's colleague, tipped off the paper.

At the Kim home, Myung-nam's father, Kim Seung-eok, reads another paper's headline blaming a deranged loner and calls the bombers lunatics. When she shows him the Gugukdan report, he forbids the group's name in his house. He boasts that a stomachache kept him in the bathroom through the toast and spared him, then praises the coffee she pours before his stomach turns again. Myung-nam tells her father's secretary, Lee Young-bok, that she put the rest of the laxative into his cup. She asks whether her comrades would have protected him if Joseon's most notorious collaborator were not her father, and whether saving him was right.

In his office, Shinichi says the Governor-General summoned him to his residence that morning to shout at him. He learns that Joseon Central News printed the Gugukdan's claim from an anonymous tip and says it burned the original. The paper has been ordered shut down. At least four women at the banquet wore pearl earrings, and Shinichi asks whether none of them was wounded. The officers who went to the Yoo house then report that they checked Keum Seo-hee, but that Interpreter Sato said they did not need to check Mrs. Yoo. Shinichi remembers Philip introducing his wife as Chinese and a button of hers that came off. He orders inquiries in Kyeam-ri, the village burned in 1919, to find anyone who knows her. His subordinate asks whether she might be Seok-jung's wife.

Hideo confronts Ga-kyung

Hideo calls on his father and is congratulated on his engagement. The person greeting him privately sneers, with a slur for Joseon people, that he will soon stop passing as Japanese. Shinichi's wound is deep, but he says that plenty of people want him dead and he will not die. Hideo apologizes for acting rashly the day before and letting his feelings rule him. When he asks what else has been found, Shinichi tells him to focus on the foreign press and the League of Nations visit. Shinichi then asks why he went to Yoo Philip's house, and Hideo says he feared the officers would offend the foreign press. Shinichi notes that Philip's report alone matched the official story and remarks that Hideo seems close to him.

In the English Translation Unit, Ga-kyung is remembering So-ran's account of Songjeon's death when Hideo walks in. He asks what he should call her: Keum Seo-hee, or Lee Gae-ttong, the name she once tossed him. He asks for her real name. Then he asks, "You are… a spy, aren't you?"

Missed the last one? Read the 100 Days of Deception Episode 9 Recap. See every episode in the 100 Days of Deception episode guide, updated as the tvN drama airs.