100 Days of Deception Episode 5 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
Kam Woo-sung as Keum Seok-jung
Kim In-kwon as Han Cheol-yong

The ambush falls apart

At the Government-General, the Japanese colonial administration in Gyeongseong (Seoul), Lee Ga-kyung is still grumbling. Yoo Philip never thanked her for the call she made in English. Sato Hideo, the Inspector General's adopted son, startles her. Remembering he is supposed to treat her well, he says he will take her to a photo studio himself for her ID picture. Across town, the Gugukdan, the independence group Ga-kyung spies for, are caught in gunfire they cannot trace. They drag Jang Jeong-yeop into a car and beg him to stay awake as the police close in.

Police chase a tall young man in a mask into a shop and up to the second floor. Behind a fitting-room curtain they find a young woman. They are told she is the only daughter of the Joil Textile Factory president, there to be measured for clothes. A card goes to the officer, with a reminder that her father dines with the Governor-General next week, and the police back off. Lee Young-bok is wounded. He calls her Miss, asking if she is all right, while Kim Myung-nam pleads with him to stay with her.

A photo, a delivery and a little girl

At the photo studio, the photographer has forgotten his glasses. He asks Hideo to look through the camera and say when Ga-kyung is in focus. Hideo watches her through the lens and keeps saying he cannot tell. Then a deliveryman walks in with seolleongtang, an ox-bone soup, and asks for water from the back room. Ga-kyung recognizes Lee No-ma and pulls Hideo into hiding with her, which the owner takes for romance. Outside, No-ma's sister, Bang Kkot-nim, asks him for candy.

On the street, Hideo asks whether Ga-kyung has been crying. He guesses the deliveryman is a debt collector, or a lover she cheated on. Offended, she storms off and ignores him calling after her as Ms. Keum. At a candy stall nearby, Kkot-nim says she just glimpsed someone who resembled Ga-kyung. No-ma insists Ga-kyung has gone to America and will not be back.

In Jongno, the district at the heart of Gyeongseong, police search the streets beside a wanted poster for Han Cheol-yong. Officers seize No-ma in the sweep. He protests that he is far younger than the suspect and that his sister is waiting. Left alone, Kkot-nim drops a packet of children's medicine, and Hideo picks it up for her. She tells him her brother went to deliver soup and never came back.

In a hiding place, Keum Seok-jung's friend reports that Jongno is crawling with police. Seok-jung asks about Shinichi. The friend tells him to worry about his own wound, which needs a hospital, even though wanted posters hang there. He has also heard that the Gugukdan went after Shinichi in Dongsung-dong and failed, with losses on both sides.

Hideo carries Kkot-nim home through the Gyodang-ri shanty town while she boasts about her brother. He used to pull a rickshaw and now delivers by bicycle, and he claims she may only eat seolleongtang once a month. Hideo is feeding her porridge when No-ma bursts in and demands to know who he is. At the Yoo house, Ga-kyung fumes over Hideo's talk of lovers and cheating and worries about Kkot-nim's cough.

The Gugukdan count their losses

That night, police find Seok-jung and take him away. Fukuda, the police chief, credits Sato Shinichi with the plan that drew the Gugukdan into the open. Shinichi is angry about how many officers died to kill one man. He orders the group wiped out, starting with the intruder from the attack at Philip's house. An officer then announces that they have caught him.

Gugukdan members learn that Cheol-yong is dead and the police have his body. They slip into his room to clear it before a search, only to find he had emptied it himself. His farewell letter plays over the scene. No nation has the right to rule another by force, he writes, and Korea's independence will come; if his death brings it a second sooner, he regrets nothing. He signs it as a man of Joseon, the colonial-era name for Korea. Elsewhere, his comrades cry out over Jeong-yeop.

The Governor-General, the highest Japanese official in Korea, returns to Gyeongseong unannounced. He tells Shinichi he must hide his travel plans because of men like Lee Bong-chang, and asks about the shootout near Keijo Imperial University, Keijo being the Japanese name for Gyeongseong. Told one attacker was shot dead, he remarks that subversives have run wild since Shinichi took office.

At the Kim house, Myung-nam tells the wounded Young-bok he cannot die or he will lose his job. Her father complains that his butler skipped seeing him off over a stomach bug, and he blames Young-bok's lowborn blood. Myung-nam mutters that her father thinks he is Japanese. She gives Young-bok three days off, which her father insists will be unpaid.

In Gyodang-ri, No-ma learns that Kkot-nim now calls Hideo teacher. She has asked him to teach her to read, and he has promised. No-ma mocks him as a pale block of tofu.

Ga-kyung in the interrogation room

At the Government-General, Hideo tells Ga-kyung things are tense and she should stay put. On her way to the restroom, she passes a Japanese supervisor berating Joseon workers over a dropped pipe, and she hears them curse him afterward. Fukuda stops her in the corridor, recognizes her, hears her give her name as Keum Seo-hee and asks after Mr. Yoo. Hideo arrives and sends her up to the Publications Division. Fukuda shows Hideo a scratch from the Dongsung-dong shootout. Once Hideo leaves, Fukuda remarks to himself on the two Joseon-born people working together.

Back in the office, Hideo explains the failed attempt on the Inspector General, and then Ga-kyung is told she is needed outside the office. At Jongno Police Station, Fukuda says his prisoner has not said a word and may not understand Japanese. Ga-kyung asks whether the fugitives have been identified, and Fukuda tells her she does not need to know. The prisoner fits the description of the man who broke into the American reporter's house. An old gunshot wound has left him feverish.

That night in Gyodang-ri, Hideo teaches Kkot-nim the first letter of the Korean alphabet while No-ma keeps watch outside for their boss. Kkot-nim tells her new teacher that he looks worried. He insists nothing is wrong.

At the Governor-General's office, officials hear that a League of Nations commission will soon arrive to judge Manchukuo, Japan's new state in Manchuria. The Governor-General makes public order the top priority and orders Shinichi to handle the foreign press with care. Once Shinichi leaves, a commander warns the Governor-General about Japanese colonial residents like Shinichi. They are an inferior lot, he says, and should be watched.

In the interrogation room, Fukuda pours insults on the silent prisoner. He calls the independence movement a dead hope that will bring the man a lonely, meaningless death. Ga-kyung softens and shortens each line, and she stops herself halfway through the slur. When Fukuda shouts her full name, the prisoner finally speaks. He knows her as the live-in maid from the Yoo house and demands, "Why are you using that name?"

Hideo walks in and asks Fukuda what he has actually learned: the man's name, his motive, anything about the Gugukdan. Fukuda calls him a Joseon nobody and asks whether he really thinks he is the Inspector General's son. Shinichi is in the doorway. He tells Fukuda to finish: "If Hideo isn't my real son, then what is he?" Fukuda begs for forgiveness. Shinichi apologizes for the trouble and has Ga-kyung taken home, then reminds Fukuda that she is close to an American reporter and that foreign reports caused trouble after 1919.

On the way home, Hideo apologizes and asks her to keep the day from the foreign press, meaning Mr. Yoo. Back at the station, a second prisoner insists that he and the other man are not Gugukdan. The police find him in their files: Na Byeong-sun of Anseong in Gyeonggi Province. Shinichi orders his wife and children brought in to hang before him, and Na Byeong-sun answers only by echoing the mention of his family. Ga-kyung coldly thanks Hideo for the reminder of how she got her job, and she leaves alone.

Ga-kyung walks out

At the Yoo house, Ga-kyung is packing. "I'm done playing spy," she tells Yoo So-ran. She admits she went to the station afraid So-ran had been caught at Dongsung-dong, and she repeats the insults she had to interpret. So-ran tells her nobody dies a meaningless death fighting for their country. Ga-kyung answers that she only took the job for America. The prisoner, she adds, was the fake deliveryman who brought a gun to the house on the night of the dinner to kill Shinichi. He stayed silent, she says, until he heard the name Keum Seo-hee.

So-ran tells her Seo-hee was the name of her daughter, the girl the Inspector General killed. Ga-kyung realizes the prisoner is the girl's father and So-ran's husband. She calls them all insane and asks whether independence is worth leaving him beaten and bloody. She is warned that traitors get no mercy, and she answers that they made her a spy without ever trusting her. She pulls free and runs out. Outside in the rain, someone calls her Keum Seo-hee, and she says she knows no one by that name.

Up next: 100 Days of Deception Episode 6 Recap. See every episode in the 100 Days of Deception episode guide.