Agent Kim Reactivated Episode 1 Recap

Manager Kim keeps his head down

On a street at night, a driver blocks traffic while his friends shout about how long their food is taking. The driver says Manager Kim bumped into his car and broke something on it, and accuses him of staging an insurance scam. Kim answers that his arm is fine and they can go, then apologizes when the driver keeps at him. The driver punches him and declares the matter settled, his friends laugh about the blow, and Kim does not hit back.

At home, Kim has a parenting guide titled Your Child's Rebellious Phase. The door to his daughter's room carries a sign that warns people not to enter without permission. Kim wakes his daughter, Kim Min-ji, who snaps at him for pushing breakfast. On her school emergency contact form, the line for her mother is marked with an X. When he asks for a close friend's details, she names Kang Hye-ryeong and reels off a phone number, and Kim quietly repeats the name to himself.

Downstairs, the owner of the laundry under their flat offers to alter Min-ji's uniform. Min-ji turns the offer down, saying she never knows when she will change schools again. The owner then tells Kim about seeing thugs pick on him the other night and is sorry for not stepping in. When the owner offers to press his suit, he runs for his bus, and the owner remarks that father and daughter are exactly alike.

At Sangsaeng Savings Bank, Kim is the first one in, as usual. He tells Mr. Kang from the treasury division that a 95,000-won Chinese meal went on the corporate card, with no receipt, on a day Kang was on leave for his wedding anniversary. Kang mocks his sharp memory. He tells Kim to learn to bend the rules and book it as a company dinner, and Kim does as he is told.

A birthday gift and trouble at school

Kim's coworker Jung Sang-a catches him browsing self-defense items. He explains that Min-ji's birthday is coming up and that his daughter, a high school junior, avoids talking to him. Sang-a calls it a late rebellious phase and insists on helping him choose a present after work.

At school, Hye-ryeong borrows Min-ji's gym clothes. Ju Hye-ri shows off a limited-edition gift from her father's business trip. When Min-ji catches their attention, the girls warn each other off her old-widower smell. A boy, Kim Nam-hoon, comes by to see Hye-ri. Min-ji walks into the restroom while Hye-ri's group is vaping there. They needle her about her smell, she tells them the smoke smells worse, and one of the girls calls her pathetic.

After work, Sang-a takes Kim's credit card and leaves him in a pre-order line for dessert. He cannot open the screenshot she texts him and is nearly sent to the walk-in line before the order goes through. She comes back with a 500,000-won T-shirt, and he asks for a refund, saying no high schooler needs a shirt that costs that much. Sang-a calls it his answer to the worst case: the day his daughter asks what he has ever done for her.

At home, Min-ji tells Kim to stop washing her clothes with his because they come out smelling like an old man. He tells her she can wash her own clothes, then. That night, she scrolls through Hye-ri's posts, finds a photo tagged with Kim Nam-hoon and likes it by accident. She finds Kim dozing and sends him to his room. She starts to bring up their earlier exchange, then says only that she forgot the dishes. The next morning, Kim decides to make her favorite, soy sauce egg rice.

At school, Min-ji's gym clothes are gone. Hye-ryeong claims she returned them, and a classmate points Min-ji to the trash can, where she finds them while the other girls laugh. She turns up for PE in half a kit, and the teacher spots Kim Nam-hoon's name on what she is wearing.

Three old friends meet for their yearly dinner

At the Pure Taekwondo studio, Sung Han-soo cuts a children's class short. Nearby, Park Jin-cheol helps children across a road, then takes over an elderly woman's cart despite her protests. In voice-over, he praises himself for being a guiding light. He kicks in the door of Han-soo's office, where Han-soo is busy with a war game, and reminds him that today is the one day a year they meet Kim.

At a barbecue restaurant, Jin-cheol peels off his jacket to show a T-shirt printed with the face of his high school daughter, Da-bin. He misses her, he says, and fears she will drift away. Kim says he must leave early because Min-ji is home alone, and hands them money for their children. His friends ask to meet more than once a year. They understand the choice he made after his wife died, they say, but he needs a life of his own, and Min-ji will soon have a boyfriend.

On the terrace, a man refuses to put out his cigarette and turns on Jin-cheol, calling him a grunt and ordering him to do drills. The friends tell one another they are "just middle-aged men with glasses" and try to leave. When the man mocks Da-bin's picture on Jin-cheol's shirt, Jin-cheol charges him. Kim has vanished, and Han-soo asks around for him while someone phones the police. When an officer arrives, someone begs him to fire his gun.

At home, Kim finds a jacket marked with Kim Nam-hoon's name. Min-ji says she does not know who that is and heads out. Remembering his friends' warning, Kim wonders whether she has a boyfriend.

A school fight and a kneeling apology

At school, Min-ji returns the jacket to Nam-hoon with a carton of strawberry milk. He asks whether she liked his post, and he tells her to message him first, then says he will think about writing back. Then Hye-ri's friends drag Min-ji out and hit her, accusing her of going after Hye-ri's boyfriend. Min-ji says she only borrowed his clothes because they threw hers in the trash. Hye-ri tells her the real problem is her smell, which she calls the smell of a motherless child, and Min-ji throws herself at Hye-ri.

A teacher phones Kim, calls the fight an assault and tells him the victim's father chairs Juhak Construction. At that moment, Chairman Ju Gang-chan is in a hotel spa with Assemblyman Sim. He promises twice the political funding of last time if a redevelopment plan goes through, and the assemblyman agrees. Asked about the scars on his body, Gang-chan says he burned off his old tattoos with a torch as a pledge never to return to his former life. People who broke their promises to him, he adds, suffered more and disappeared. Then his wife calls to say Hye-ri was assaulted at school.

Outside the school, a man arrives saying the chairman summoned him. Gang-chan's right-hand man, Chief Nam, tells him the plans have changed. The man leaves, complaining that he is not a dog to be ordered around.

Inside, Gang-chan's wife berates Kim over Hye-ri's injuries. Min-ji insists that Hye-ri's group harassed her and struck first, and asks her father to believe her. Hye-ri's side demands a disciplinary hearing and a mark on Min-ji's record. Kim kneels, apologizes for falling short as a single parent and offers to have Min-ji transferred. Gang-chan accepts the apology and the transfer over his wife's protest. Told that Kim is an ordinary office worker, he warns the staff that the school and everyone in it will disappear if it happens again.

Min-ji does not come home

Outside, Min-ji asks why Kim knelt if he believed her, and whether it was because Hye-ri's father is powerful. She asks what he has done with his life and why he even had her. He is all she has, she tells him, and he should have taken her side. She says she will stay at Hye-ryeong's and will run away if he calls. When he reminds her that her birthday is tomorrow, she says she hates it: "It's the day Mom died."

At the memorial niche of the late Im Yu-jin, Kim remembers his wife telling him that honeysuckles mean love and devotion, and he apologizes to her. That night, Min-ji receives a message from Kim Nam-hoon's account asking her to meet at the school's back gate. Kim's call to her goes to voicemail, and her threat to run away replays in his head.

The next morning, Min-ji's phone is off. Kim calls Hye-ryeong on the number Min-ji gave him and learns Min-ji never stayed with her. At school, Min-ji has not arrived. Nam-hoon tells Kim he did not send the message: thugs took his phone, and all he heard was something about the back gate.

Kim holds out a hair tie

At a construction site, a man and a companion agree to act as though they know nothing, saying everyone has been told to keep quiet. The place is clean, they note, the weather is on their side, and nobody will find her. Kim walks up and introduces himself as Min-ji's dad. He holds out a hair tie he found on the ground and asks if it belongs to them. The man threatens him and dares him to strip down and fight.

A flashback shows a soldier struggling and demanding to be discharged on the spot. An officer refuses, because the soldier is Codename 66. Once a North Korean operative, he defected and was then recruited by South Korean intelligence. He served as a double agent five times and carried out 17 infiltration missions in the North. He also led an operation to assassinate North Korea's supreme commander, which put Chinese and Russian teams on his trail. If the North learns he is alive, the officer warns, it will cause a diplomatic crisis. Back at the site, Kim asks once more: "Where's Min-ji?"

Up next: Agent Kim Reactivated Episode 2 Recap. See every episode in the Agent Kim Reactivated episode guide.