Agent Kim Reactivated Episode 3 Recap

An old phone and a call from Min-ji's number

Five months earlier, at school, Kim Min-ji lends her phone to a classmate who swears she needs it only until fourth period. The girl mocks the handset as old and clunky, and another student shows off the newest model. At home, Min-ji cooks spicy stir-fried pork for her father, Manager Kim, waits for him to eat first and offers to do the dishes. Then she asks for a new phone, because she has used hers for over three years. Kim tells her to come back when it stops working, so she takes her dinner to her room and slams the door. Later she finds the phone she wanted waiting for her, and they trade "I love you"s, though alone she grumbles that the heart keychain he picked out is tacky.

In the present, at the police station, the phone the officers took from Kim rings with the caller ID "My daughter." Kim answers and asks if it is Min-ji, but the line goes dead, and every time he calls back the number is switched off. At the Special Missions Directorate (SMD), the South Korean intelligence unit Kim once worked for, officers cannot read the data on his phone and must trace it by signal alone. They also spot a background check on Codename 66, Kim's old code number, run by Hwasin Police Station. The officer in charge sends people there and moves the surveillance team onto tracking. By now Kim is on the move, urging a driver to go faster.

The North's new 66 comes calling

At the bank, Jung Sang-a leaves her desk to take a phone call and quietly agrees to something. At the Ju family home, Ju Gang-chan hears from his wife that Ju Hye-ri still will not leave her room and is skipping school again. He remembers Hye-ri asking what Min-ji's father does for a living, and he orders an aide to find out what happened. At Juhak Construction, his people open Hye-ri's phone records. In her messages she asks Sung Min-ho to bring others and teach Kim Min-ji a lesson, so Gang-chan's side turns to Min-ho's account next.

At Kim's flat above Dowon Laundry, the agent the North sent with Kim's old number, 66, runs into Park Jin-cheol instead of Kim. The agent draws a pistol, and the two wreck the flat in a long, brutal fight. In the end the agent escapes with a jump that Jin-cheol's knees cannot follow. Jin-cheol tries to warn Kim, then remembers the police kept his phone. Downstairs, the laundry owner grumbles about the violence and about the refrigerator door torn off its hinges.

At the SMD, officers conclude that Kim was arrested and that a North Korean operative is already after him, with Jin-cheol seen at the scene. Then they locate Kim's phone at Pure Taekwondo. Its owner, Sung Han-soo, is a former Olympic taekwondo gold medalist and three-time world champion. The government recruited him once he retired, and he went into the North with Kim and Jin-cheol.

Kim asks Han-soo for the bunker

At Pure Taekwondo, Han-soo sends his young students out for a run and sits down with Kim, who tells him he needs the bunker. Kim explains that he read a message saying Min-ji was dead, then got a call from her number that went dead. All he knows is that she was kidnapped, and he believes he is already being tracked. They agree to trace Min-ji's phone first, but SMD agents walk in, one of them holding a child. The agent tells Han-soo to stay out of it, since he is a South Korean citizen. Kim, born in the North, is another matter: he broke his contract by exposing himself to the North.

A standoff over a gun turns into a fight, and Kim and Han-soo get away as the agents, among them an Agent Jang, run after them. After the escape, they get old equipment running again, and the two agree they have not forgotten how to fight. Kim apologizes for putting the SMD on Han-soo's back. Han-soo answers that he would have gone straight to Kim too if it were Tae-hun in trouble, and they hurry off to find Min-ji.

As they work on locking onto Min-ji's phone, an unknown number calls. It is Jin-cheol, on a phone borrowed from a Marine veterans' office, warning Kim that a man from the North came to kill him and that Min-ji will be in danger too. Asked how he got out, Kim says he simply left lockup for some air, and Jin-cheol is stunned to hear Min-ji has been kidnapped. The trace lands on 8-3 Gongdan-gil in Seonmin-eup, Gyeonggi Province, the province around Seoul, and Jin-cheol agrees to meet them there. He thanks the veteran with a coffee candy and asks to borrow money for the fare.

Ju Gang-chan covers his tracks

Elsewhere, a man working for Gang-chan questions the injured Sung Min-ho, who says Min-ji's father did this to him and blames Hye-ri for his trouble. The man phones Gang-chan to report that Hye-ri is involved, and is told to get rid of any evidence first. Min-ho insists he has no way to reach whoever took Min-ji's body.

At Songin High School, Min-ji's school, bullies are shaking down a boy for money when a man asks which class Min-ji is in. A student tells him she has been suspended and that her best friend, Kang Hye-ryeong, can find her through a location-sharing app. A teacher confirms the suspension and flatly denies any school violence, even though Min-ji's father came in days earlier. The man then finds Hye-ryeong out of class, claiming a headache, and asks her about locating friends. At Dowon Laundry, the laundry owner turns out to be an undercover SMD agent, joking that he no longer knows whether he is an SMD agent or a dry cleaner. He and a fellow agent agree that wherever Kim's daughter is, they will find Kim.

Over abalone in a private room, an assemblyman tells Gang-chan that the coming high-level inter-Korean talks aim at a free-trade zone built through a South-North joint venture. Only a firm like Juhak Construction could deliver it, he says, but he needs a reason to win over the other assemblymen. Gang-chan promises all the funding required and asks for a list of anyone money cannot persuade. Afterward, his side learns that Min-ji is missing, her father is searching for her and the background check on him was denied.

The scam office and Min-ji's phone

At the Gongdan-gil address, Kim and Han-soo, still in his taekwondo uniform, push past guards to the third floor. Kim describes Min-ji to the room: Songin High, Grade 11, Class 7, a brown jacket, a yellow hoodie and a heart keychain on her phone. Inside, scammers run an investment con and tally 30 million won from one target. Kim floors a boxer and a man with a knife, and the rest clear out. Then Kim spots a phone in the boss's hand and asks where he got it, and the man claims it belonged to a girl he fooled around with last night. Kim beats him until Han-soo pulls him off, because they need answers.

The man, the office's boss, says he has never met Min-ji. The phone came from a homeless man in a trade, and he flipped through it with one of his men, Hyeong-min, looking for photos. The only contact in its call history was "Dad," and when Dad called, he answered by mistake and switched it off. Kim presses him on the call history, and he recalls one other name: Kang Hye-ryeong. Kim remembers asking Min-ji for a close friend's number and getting Hye-ryeong's.

Kim now sees Hye-ryeong as she was: borrowing money, Min-ji's phone and her gym clothes, which she lost, and asking Min-ji to buy her a birthday present. The boss remarks that the girl seemed to be using Min-ji. Kim remembers Min-ji shut in her room on weekends, and her outburst at school that girls kept harassing her, when he told her to be quiet. He breaks down over not noticing. Han-soo tells him there is no time for grief, and that he can apologize only after he finds her. The boss finally says he got the phone from a homeless man at Hwasin Station, and as they set off, someone faces them and says, "Fake 66."

Epilogue: a prisoner without a name

In an epilogue set years earlier, an interrogator asks a young North Korean prisoner for his name, age and family. The prisoner says none of it matters, and asks why he is being kept alive. The interrogator answers that killing him will not speed up reunification and that they may be useful to each other. He then brings in Park Jin-cheol to test the prisoner in a fight. The prisoner says he has no wish to live and is only keeping a promise to his one friend. Asked his name, he says 73, then corrects himself to 66, and the answer comes back, "Bring it on, 66."

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