100 Days of Deception Episode 4 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
Kim In-kwon as Han Cheol-yong

Ga-kyung sees through the test

In a bare room, a blindfolded Lee Ga-kyung is told she is inside Jongno Police Station. Her questioner knows her real name and her pickpocketing turf at Gyeongseong Station. She insists she is Keum Seo-hee, a trainee interpreter at the Government-General, the Japanese colonial administration in Gyeongseong (Seoul). He demands to know who sent her to spy, suggests Yoo Philip or his wife, and offers to spare her and pay her whatever she was promised. Ga-kyung keeps denying it. Asked one last time who stands behind her, she names the people of Joseon, the colonial-era name for Korea, and shouts, "Independence for Korea!"

When the act falls apart, Ga-kyung picks out Philip as the man behind it, and Yoo So-ran arrives furious that he went behind her back. Ga-kyung lists the giveaways. Real Jongno officers torture prisoners in ways she knows from her neighborhood, and the room is too simple. Her questioner never touched the club within reach, she heard a streetcar on a route that never passes one, and a real station would have no reason to blindfold her. Saying she cannot risk her life for people who do not trust her, she keeps the advance as payment for the beating and dismisses her cry for independence as a way to end their show. As she reaches for the door, Philip points a loaded gun at her, and So-ran turns her own gun on him.

So-ran then tells Ga-kyung that Seo-hee was the name of her daughter, the girl the Inspector General killed, and asks her to help them. Afterward, So-ran tells Philip never to keep anything about Ga-kyung from her again. He asks whether she would really have fired, and whether bringing up Seo-hee was a plan of her own. So-ran tells him that Ga-kyung's hope of reaching America will keep her loyal. She must never find out there was never any way to send her there.

Secrets in the Sato house

At the Sato residence, Sato Hideo, the Inspector General's adopted son, has a short spell where he cannot breathe. A woman of the household wants to call a doctor, but he insists it will pass. Sato Hanako, the Inspector General's young daughter, shows him her writing practice and asks him to teach her the Joseon language next, because her mother was Joseon, as long as their father never hears of it. Hideo then asks the woman whether she knows his mother's Joseon name. She does not. He admits he has been searching for his mother since coming back to Gyeongseong and found something while packing in Tokyo that might lead to her, then asks her to keep that from his father too.

Elsewhere, Sato Shinichi berates a subordinate over the independence movement. He cites Lee Bong-chang's bomb attempt on the Emperor in Tokyo three months earlier. He also cites a group from Shanghai caught in Hwanghae Province on its way to kill the Governor-General, while the fugitive from the Yoo house is still loose. The subordinate reports raids and arrests but says the prisoners will not talk, and Shinichi calls him soft. Koreans keep resisting even after the bloodshed of the 1919 independence protests because of hope, he says, which outlives any bullet and must be crushed down to its roots. He adds that he was born and raised in Joseon and that its future will be shaped by his own hands, not by officials in Tokyo.

Hideo and the elevator

As they leave separately, Philip calls Ga-kyung by her real name, and she corrects him with her cover name. He warns her that if she puts So-ran in danger, she will not be safe either. Ga-kyung points out that his concern is for his wife, not for the Gugukdan, the independence group she now works for.

At the Government-General, Hideo finds Ga-kyung cleaning the office because he gives her no work, and he tells her to make sure Mr. Yoo knows he never ordered it. She stalls on returning the pawn ticket she took from his wallet, then promises to hand it over once he finds the pawnshop. When a call comes in for an English dictionary, Hideo sends her to the Publications Division on the fourth floor and tells her to take the stairs. He adds that he avoids the elevator himself by choice. Ga-kyung admits she never went to school and struggles to read Chinese characters, so he reads the label for her.

In the stairwell, Ga-kyung finds Hideo trailing her. She turns down his arm, then has to call for help because her ankle hurts too much to walk. He makes her ask politely, and she begs to ride the elevator just once with him beside her. He steers her down the stairs instead and tells her why she cannot ride it, even with him: "It's because you are... a Joseon person." Then he walks her out of the building, saying they are going out for work.

The Gugukdan's clinic

At the Hanseong Medicine Clinic, Ga-kyung confesses she has never been treated at a clinic before. Her right ankle is swollen. When she points out her bruises, she snaps that the doctor is one of the people who beat her. He leaves acupuncture needles in for 20 minutes and is called away when a mother rushes in with her son.

Meanwhile, the Gugukdan study a newspaper story about a 16-year-old girl who wins the Governor-General's award at the Joseon Painting Exhibition. With the Governor-General away in Tokyo, the Inspector General will present the prize at 7 p.m. two days later at the Keijo Imperial University library auditorium, Keijo being the Japanese name for Gyeongseong. The date matches a speech on the schedule Ga-kyung copied, which they call the first intelligence from the girl So-ran vouched for. They decide to strike, and they agree to tell Ga-kyung nothing in case she tips off the authorities.

Back in the treatment room, Ga-kyung tries to leave early. Hideo dares her to write a four-character phrase on his palm, one meaning strict obedience to superiors. She writes the character for abdomen in place of the one for obey. He bandages her ankle himself, a skill he says the Army Academy teaches first, and does not answer when she asks why he became an interpreter instead of a soldier. He then raises her claim from the day before that she likes him. If she meant it, he says, she should keep it from Mr. Yoo, because Hideo needs to stay on good terms with him.

At the dispensary, Hideo notices bruises on her wrists and ankles and asks whether someone is hitting her. Philip appears, says he is picking up medicine for his ailing wife, and asks to take Seo-hee home. Outside, he keeps his arm around her as a lover would and accuses her of leading Hideo to the Gugukdan's den. She protests that Hideo brought her there. When Hideo catches up to hand her the ointment, Philip plays along as if they have been caught together.

A warning the Gugukdan ignore

At the Yoo house, Philip mocks her ankle as an excuse for learning nothing, and Ga-kyung asks whose fault her injury is. She is told to lie low until she heals. So-ran gives her the Gugukdan's long-gathered files on Government-General staff. Asked whether anything else happened at the clinic, Ga-kyung keeps Hideo's words to herself and says he is kind to her only because he thinks she is someone's lover. She guesses the Yoos are not really married but that Philip cares for So-ran, then apologizes for asking about Seo-hee's father.

Before bed, So-ran asks whether Ga-kyung has heard anything more about the speech at 7 p.m. on Monday. She has not, but then remembers Publications Division staff grumbling about their briefing to the Inspector General on a Joseon history book, set for that same hour. She tells So-ran, bristles when So-ran seems to doubt her, and gets no reason for the question.

At a Gugukdan meeting, So-ran passes on that Shinichi will be at the Government-General during the ceremony. The others list their own checks. The winning girl's mother, a worker at Joil Textile Factory, has asked for a shift change because the school expects the Inspector General. Jongno police have been told to staff the ceremony, and the university library has been told to prepare its VIP room. They suggest Ga-kyung misheard and ask So-ran to trust them instead.

On the day of the operation, Ga-kyung lingers by Hideo's desk and asks whether he is preparing for the briefing. He says his division chief reports, then asks how she knows about it, since he never mentioned it. She claims she overheard it in a hallway. He warns her to stop wandering the building because people are watching.

Over a map, the Gugukdan set So-ran's ambush post on the second floor above a drapery shop. To reach the university from the Government-General, Shinichi must pass Changdeokgung, the old royal palace. The plan is to block the direct road, force his car onto a detour and send a gunman after it on a bicycle. Han Cheol-yong is reminded that his photos are posted all over Gyeongseong. He waves that off, turns down a member with three children and claims the bicycle himself, invoking the cycling champion Uhm Bok-dong. On the first route, a spill blocks the road and drivers are told to turn back.

Later, Hideo tells Ga-kyung to go home and bring a photo for her staff ID, suggesting Philip's newspaper camera when she says she has none. Left alone, she phones the Publications Division as Keum Seo-hee of the Foreign Affairs Division and arranges to collect Hideo's English dictionary around 7 p.m. She then calls Philip at the WWP News office and, in English, tells him Shinichi's evening appointment is a briefing, not a speech. He scolds her for calling from the Government-General and cuts the call short. She grumbles that she spoke English to fool the operator and got no thanks.

On the street, Cheol-yong asks So-ran to let him take this shot himself, close up at the car window, and jokes that he wants to marry before he turns 60. Then gunfire breaks out, and the team cannot tell where it is coming from. They scramble into a car with Jang Jeong-yeop wounded. A comrade begs him to stay awake, and someone cries out for their chief.

Up next: 100 Days of Deception Episode 5 Recap. See every episode in the 100 Days of Deception episode guide.