Agent Kim Reactivated Episode 7 Recap

A discharge and a baby daughter

Years earlier, Manager Kim, then Sergeant Kim, fights the men holding him back while officers order him to lower his gun. He reminds them they promised him his freedom once this mission was done, and that they said the same the last two times. An officer called Captain Kang insists that a man like Kim can never be discharged: if the North learned he survived, it would cause a diplomatic crisis. Kang is told to sit down. Others suggest trading Kim to the North for something in return, or killing him, until a general overrules them all. Kim has given the South enough, he says, the promises have been broken too often and the North believes Kim is dead. That is not his only reason, the general adds: one day they will need 66 again. As the meeting breaks up, someone warns him he will regret it.

After the discharge, Sung Han-soo and Park Jin-cheol turn up to congratulate their junior. They call him a spy and squabble over whether six times six is 36 or 46. They hand him something to bite into for a fresh start, though one of them points out that Kim is not leaving prison. Kim answers that this place was no different from one. He promises to keep in touch and walks off, and the other two settle for a pork belly party for two. Later, beside a memorial card for the late Im Yu-jin, someone hands Kim his sleeping baby daughter, shows him how to hold her neck and asks whether he will manage alone.

Out of the SMD with a hostage

In the present, at the Zone C bunker of Special Missions Directorate (SMD) headquarters, Kim walks up to his daughter, Kim Min-ji, and tells her it is time to go home. Han-soo and Jin-cheol grumble that he has turned up after they did all the hard work. One of them hands back a sock. Kim holds the vice minister at gunpoint and starts counting to three. The hostage, Vice Minister of National Security Im Do-hyeon, orders everyone to drop their weapons. One voice objects and demands that someone shoot. The tactical team leader orders his men to lay down their guns. The friends then tell Kang Guk-cheol, the SMD director known as Mole Cricket, to drop his own.

The agents are herded into a square on the floor, and Min-ji runs into her father's arms as he apologizes for being late. Guk-cheol refuses to step into the square. Jin-cheol explains that his Claymore mine reacts to any sound or movement and calls it his masterpiece. He takes Guk-cheol's car key, the agents raise their hands against their ears, and the group races off with Jin-cheol at the wheel.

Inside the compound, agents block the car and open fire. Jung Sang-a, one of them, reminds Kim that he promised to surrender once he found his daughter. Kim says he will, once Min-ji's safety is guaranteed, and refuses to accept that the SMD is the safest place for her. He tells them to lower their guns and to bring the commander of the Cheonsan Unit, his old unit, to his house. At the gate, signed as the Cheonsan Group Research Center, a guard opens up on demand.

On the road, Kim fusses over Min-ji, but she is more worried about his wounds. When one of his friends starts to mention that he was shot, Kim stops him. Min-ji tells her father he really is her dad. They apologize to each other, and she says she is sorry for the things she said to him. When her stomach growls, the three men decide everyone needs to eat.

Ambushed on the road home

At the Geumbi Eel restaurant, the men praise eel as food for middle-aged men and tease Min-ji for matching them piece for piece. Elsewhere, Ju Gang-chan hears that the vice minister is not answering and that a man broke into the SMD half an hour ago and took the girl. From his build, it looks like her father. Gang-chan orders both brought to him and says he wants to see the end himself. Back at the restaurant, the group learns they have eaten every eel in the house.

Back on the road, a car cuts them off and others box them in. Kim notes that these men are not SMD but know their tactics. Jin-cheol, too full to move easily, squeezes out of the car to take charge, and gas starts pouring in. It turns out to be sleeping gas. Kim tells Min-ji not to fight it and promises to stay right beside her. Outside, Jin-cheol begs Han-soo to open the sunroof, but Han-soo will not risk it with Min-ji inside, and Jin-cheol drifts off. Chief Nam, who leads the attackers, orders his men to take the girl and her father and kill the others.

Jin-cheol forces himself awake, cursing the attackers. One of the friends admits he lasted about five minutes, and Kim covers Min-ji against the cold and tells her to keep sleeping. Then the three fight back. Jin-cheol takes on Nam, who pulls a karambit, a curved knife. Jin-cheol asks where he trained, guessing at Delta Force or the Green Berets, and soon Nam begs to be spared. Nam cannot believe Kim is the ordinary man who once knelt in front of them.

The remaining attackers give up. The friends work out that the men came from Juhak Construction, Gang-chan's company, and that Kim is not going home yet. Elsewhere, Gang-chan is told that someone appears to have taken down Chief Nam.

Kim faces Ju Gang-chan

At Gang-chan's house, Kim asks his friends to watch Min-ji while the parents settle something. Han-soo and Jin-cheol bicker over who should turn the car around and settle it with rock, paper, scissors. Inside, Gang-chan says he assumed a trick took Nam down, but now he sees real skill, and he asks whether Kim was in the special forces. Kim points to a cover-up and a kidnapping and asks whether he is ashamed as a father. Gang-chan says he did what a father must, and that Kim also used violence and likely killed while searching for Min-ji. He offers Kim a job at 100 million won a month and argues that a parent who cannot provide is committing a crime. One phone call, he says, can make everything go away, or keep Kim from ever seeing his daughter again.

Kim answers that he has decided what to do about him. "I'm going to end you," he says, and the fight that follows leaves Gang-chan beaten. As Han-soo and Jin-cheol look on, Min-ji arrives and begs her father to stop. Kim tells Gang-chan that if he wants to live, he must beg Min-ji's forgiveness. Gang-chan apologizes to her on behalf of his daughter, Ju Hye-ri. He speaks as one parent of a daughter to another, in words that echo Kim's own plea when he knelt before him. Min-ji tells him to turn himself in along with Hye-ri. Even a parent's small sin, Gang-chan is reminded, becomes a mountain for the child to carry. Then Kim takes Min-ji home.

A birthday dinner and a goodbye

Four hours later, soldiers wait outside Kim's flat above Dowon Laundry, and someone remarks that, whatever happens, Agent Kim will not see Min-ji again after today. Inside, under a Happy Birthday sign, Kim explains that the cake went bad. Min-ji knows the soldiers are there because he rescued her, and she asks him to run. Kim tells her he came from North Korea and lived a dangerous life until he met her mother, who was warm, strong and beautiful, like Min-ji. On the day Min-ji was born, he promised to leave his past behind and live as her dad. Now, he says, they must say goodbye, and he does not know when they will meet again, if ever.

Min-ji tells him to come back and promises to wait. "You're my dad," she says. She admits she felt alone, with no mother and no friends after so many transfers. In the cold storage, remembering that her father would be worried gave her courage. Kim gives her a belated birthday present and tells her he loves her, and she says she loves him too. She gives him a keepsake of her own, the kind kids give their parents these days, and he cries. Asked about the broken fridge, he says Jin-cheol used its door to catch a thief, and she tells him to eat slowly so he can stay longer.

Outside, Kim asks the Cheonsan Unit commander, a four-star general, whether he has received the terms of his surrender and whether Min-ji's safety is guaranteed. The general gives his word. Han-soo and Jin-cheol, asleep in the car, are then arrested, and one of them hands over the receipts for the eel. Later, a birthday message from her father tells Min-ji to take good care of his expensive gift.

After the surrender

At the Gyudam Law Firm, its managing partner, Lee Si-young, assures a client, Gang-chan, that the matter will stay confidential. He advises getting the client's daughter out of the country first and promises to handle the police. At the SMD, a personnel notice demotes agent Jung Sang-a by one rank, to Grade 6, and she apologizes to her superior. A sign at Dowon Laundry now offers the dry cleaner's for sale. In custody, Han-soo wonders what has happened to Kim, while Jin-cheol falls asleep.

At the Geoseong Korean Medicine Clinic, a news report says the high-level inter-Korean talks planned for next month have been abruptly postponed, with no official reason given. Officials discuss Kim. One asks about quietly dealing with him on their own, but the North has already discovered him, and they cannot explain having hidden him for years. They expect the general who granted his discharge to act decisively this time.

Blindfolded in a holding cell, Kim is told there are orders to transfer him and that protocol will be followed. He wakes in a room beneath the slogan Better Death Than Enemy Capture. A man asks whether he is awake, says he has many questions, and greets him: "Welcome home… Number 66."

Up next: Agent Kim Reactivated Episode 8 Recap. See every episode in the Agent Kim Reactivated episode guide.