100 Days of Deception Episode 7 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 (flashback)

A castella for So-ran

Late at night, a rain-soaked Lee Ga-kyung brings Yoo So-ran word that Keum Seok-jung, So-ran's husband, is dead. Sent off to sleep, Ga-kyung passes on his last request: that she buy So-ran a castella, a sponge cake, on her way home. On the morning of the March First Movement protest in Kyeam-ri in 1919, their daughter Seo-hee was sick and fretful, and So-ran asked him to stay home. He left anyway on important business, promising that in spring they would take Seo-hee to Gyeongseong (Seoul) to try castella, a cake So-ran had never heard of. She thanks Ga-kyung for the message and, once alone, breaks down.

Elsewhere, a child sounds out the word nabi, butterfly, and is praised. Sato Shinichi, the Inspector General, wants a close watch kept on Keum Seo-hee, the cover name Ga-kyung uses at the Government-General, the Japanese colonial administration. His adopted son, Kim Tae-ung, who lives as the interpreter Sato Hideo, says Seok-jung deserved a proper trial and asks whether he really belonged to the Gugukdan, the independence group. Shinichi says Hideo never used to ask such questions and wonders whether Joseon, the colonial-era name for Korea, has changed him. He reminds Hideo he was told never to let his feelings show, not even to his father, and says he looks like a pitiful child.

Two mothers

The next morning at the Government-General, Hideo tells Ga-kyung about his mother, a Joseon woman his father married after adopting him. He has no memory of his birth mother. They lived together only briefly, but she taught him what love is and how losing it feels, because one day she simply left. In a memory, a young Hideo calls for her and is told she is not coming back. He says he is telling her this to apologize for his words the day before.

Ga-kyung answers in kind: her mother also left her, married a Japanese man and then died. She calls herself unlucky rather than pitiable and hopes her mother was happy to the end. Turned out onto Jongno's streets with nothing, she has looked after herself ever since. Hideo calls her a good person, so he cannot understand why she chose Yoo Philip, a married man. She says she does not need his understanding, heads for the post office and mutters that she hates faking an affair.

Meanwhile, So-ran asks Philip to find a way to get Ga-kyung to America. The United States is not admitting Asian immigrants, Ga-kyung has no schooling for a student route, and the Government-General already knows her, so forged papers would be hard. Their plan was to pay her off at the end, knowing she could put them all at risk if she turned on them. So-ran pleads with him: she wants to keep Ga-kyung alive and keep her promise.

A file from Suwon

In the Government-General's mail room, a letter for a Mr. Sato of the Division of Regional Affairs has landed in Foreign Affairs by mistake, one of several Satos in the building. Then Ga-kyung spots an envelope from the Suwon Police Station, marked personal and confidential, for Sato Shinichi alone. Remembering that Seok-jung came from Kyeam-ri in Suwon, she suspects it concerns the village. A caller posing as the Regional Affairs Sato phones Inspector Matsui Kenji in Suwon and says the envelope reached him and was opened. To have it re-sent, Matsui lists the contents: the 1919 Kyeam-ri riot report, files on four main suspects, court and prison records, surveillance reports and a family photo of Seok-jung with his wife and child.

Next, Ga-kyung introduces herself to Ms. Yamada, the Inspector General's secretary, claiming Hideo talks about her constantly. Ms. Yamada is alone because a colleague is out sick. Her mail holds the Suwon envelope and a new-season catalog from Ginza Boutique, her tailor. Letter opener in hand, Ms. Yamada advises asking for Mr. Hashimoto rather than Mr. Kim, saying Joseon people are a little slow. Then she finds she has opened the confidential envelope instead of the catalog.

Inside the office, Shinichi is hosting Mr. Kim and his daughter Kim Myung-nam, a Gugukdan member. Mr. Kim says he lured her there with a promise of tonkatsu, a breaded pork cutlet. Shinichi admits he summoned Hideo without explaining that the meeting is about marriage. When Shinichi calls for Ms. Yamada, Ga-kyung offers to deal with the envelope so Ms. Yamada can go in before he gets angrier.

Alone with the papers, Ga-kyung reads the official casualty list for the 1919 Kyeam-ri riot. Keum Seo-hee is not on it. Hideo finds her there. She claims an errand, but he asks to see the hand she is hiding behind her back. She points to the chocolate she gave Ms. Yamada and begs him not to tell the Inspector General.

After Hideo sees the Kims out, Shinichi asks Ms. Yamada for the mail. She confesses she opened the confidential envelope by accident and swears she never looked inside. Shinichi goes through the files, including suspect cards for Seok-jung and Na Byeong-sun.

Later, Ga-kyung gives So-ran a photo of Seo-hee, saying she noticed So-ran had none. With no picture of her own mother, Ga-kyung can barely recall her face.

A bride for Hideo

Shinichi phones Matsui himself for the full list of what was sent and learns a family photo was among it. When Hideo comes in, Shinichi tells him the wedding will follow the League of Nations commission's visit to Gyeongseong this summer. Mr. Kim plans to hand his Joil Textile Factory to Hideo within three years, and Shinichi wants him to move there instead of wasting time interpreting. Hideo asks whether the match serves his father rather than him; Shinichi calls it a fair exchange for someone in Hideo's position. When Hideo points out that his father's own marriage was no bargain, Shinichi says he paid dearly for that failure, chose his next wife by what he needed and regrets nothing, including making Hideo his son. He also notices Hideo's hurt hand.

In a car, Myung-nam tells her driver that her father wants her to marry the Inspector General's son. The driver brakes hard, blaming a puppy, and she confirms it.

Shinichi finds nothing unusual in the Suwon files. Seok-jung is dead and his daughter died in 1919, so he orders a subordinate to find Seok-jung's wife or learn when and how she died. Confirming that Seok-jung asked for Keum Seo-hee by name as his interpreter, he orders a full check of her past.

A quarrel in the street

In the Gyodang-ri shanty town where Ga-kyung used to live, Bang Kkot-nim saves the medicine Ga-kyung gave her instead of taking it. A neighbor with a leg wound from fighting for the country shares potatoes. Neighbors talk about a starving mother whose baby died because she had no milk, and guess her new baby wrap came from Ga-kyung. Ga-kyung left something for everyone, including a bicycle for Lee No-ma, and they believe she has gone to America without a goodbye. They miss her and assure each other she will be fine.

Hideo apologizes to Ga-kyung for suspecting her. She says she is always the first one blamed when something goes missing, and he tells her he trusts her. She plans the most expensive meal in Gyeongseong, on him, and he teases that she has already emptied his wallet once. On the way, a man berates No-ma, a delivery boy with no bicycle, who offers to run faster than one. Hideo recognizes him as the brother of a child he tutors, but Ga-kyung holds him back, saying the boy would be ashamed to be seen.

Ga-kyung tells Hideo not to pity people like that, asks whether his father would approve and calls the boy beneath him. Hideo says she sounds more like an official than he does. Before she joined the Government-General, he reminds her, she was no different, and neither was he. She shoots back that he came from the streets but now passes as Japanese, and calls a Tokyo Imperial University graduate tutoring a poor Joseon child obnoxious. She apologizes, but he thanks her for the reality check, puts off their dinner and leaves. Alone, she wonders how he knows No-ma and how the bicycle was stolen.

At a Gugukdan meeting, Myung-nam announces she will marry Sato Hideo after the foreign commission leaves. The others call it too dangerous, and one member says independence cannot come at the cost of her life. Another notes that the engagement ends if the Inspector General dies, so Myung-nam agrees to use her place as Hideo's fiancée for now. Pressed, the member admits that years ago they endangered a woman's life and caused the one she loved terrible suffering.

At the hospital, nurses say Hideo visits often and asks them to look after Suzuki Hiroyuki, his colleague, who has no family. On their rounds, Suzuki wakes. He asks, "Is my name still Suzuki?" and asks whether independence has still not been won.

A night at the beer hall

Ga-kyung catches Hideo at a streetcar stop to apologize and offers him a drink, but he insists on paying, as promised. At a beer hall, Hideo asks whether Philip takes her to places like this, and she says being seen together would look bad. She asks for Hideo's Joseon name. Getting no answer, she asks whether he became an interpreter for money, as she did. He says he belongs nowhere and would not know where to aim a gun if he held one. She says money at least never lies.

Ga-kyung says she once did not know where she belonged either. In a memory, a child tells her mother that a man called the children Joseon pigs. She tells the child to keep walking, because the ground underfoot is more real than any thought and is the child's own path. Ga-kyung, recalling taunts that she had Japanese blood and no known father, says she kept walking but found no path. Just as she was ready to give up, she saw one: America, home of the world's tallest building, which she was told she could climb to the top.

Hideo asks what she will do there. She does not know yet, says a path shows where it leads only once you take it, and urges him to take one step forward. Her trick: close your eyes, count to three, open them and make the first thing you see your goal. Everything except breathing costs money, she says, but this costs only a blink. Hideo agrees she may be right. When she cannot hear him over the noise, he tells her, "It's Kim Tae-ung. My Joseon name."

Up next: 100 Days of Deception Episode 8 Recap. See every episode in the 100 Days of Deception episode guide.