Hey, @WEnchanteur.

I’m opening this thread for you because I think you’ll want to post a wall of text. 🙂 Be my guest. I’ll post my comments later. It’s a gorgeous fall day here where I am.

pm3

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Update, 11/9/2026.

I’ll limit myself to two comments for now because I’ll have separate write-ups for each episode.

1. Lack of planning

SoRan’s plan for the bomb attack made it look like the operation would be easy to orchestrate. Notice the background music as she started explaining the plot to the Gugukdam members? It sounded like SoRan was conducting a symphony wherein the music was perfectly executable, the instrumentalists knew exactly when to enter, and the ending had a grand flourish.

Lol. I thought the composer of the background music is going for Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” — you know, the one with the literal cannons firing in the finale. Listen to the Boston Pops’ performance. It starts at 0:31.

Seriously now….

It was clear to me that her plan has a fatal flaw: she has but one, and only one, plan. In a critical operation like this, she needs four plans in total. I believe the US military has an acronym for it, P.A.C.E.

a. her primary plan, which she’s explaining to her peeps,
b. an alternate plan, or Plan B,
c. a contingency plan, or Plan C,
d. an emergency plan, or the Last Resort.

Even if she’s not military-trained, the very least she should have is a “Plan B.”

As it turns out, all her three other plans, i.e., alternate, contingency, and emergency boil down to one single plan: GaGyeong. Let GaGyeong execute everything that needed to be done.

Or in short, G.E.E. (GaGyeong executes everything).

2. The uncovered/covered faces = designated group in society

Remember what I said about the covered/uncovered faces of the characters when they were first introduced to the audience in Episode 1? I understand more about the director/screenwriter’s intention now.

The uncovered faces:

Philip Yoo, the Korean-American reporter from Hawaii, and
Fukuda, the Chief of Police

I interpreted this to mean that these two men’s motivations and “real characters” are plain to see. Philip Yoo is obviously in love with SoRan and Fukuda is the stock or archetypal villain of the kdrama.

I also see now that these two characters don’t have to mask or hide themselves because they represent the two kinds of people in colonized Korea who are free to show their true “loyalties”

Philip Yoo = American, or Korean-American, to be precise
Fukuda = Japanese, pure-blood

The other five characters have hidden faces because they represent people living in colonized Korea who have mixed – or ambiguous – loyalties.

The mixed loyalties: 

1. Lee GaGyeon

She’s believed to have mixed parentage: a Korean mother who worked as a gisaeng and an unknown Japanese father. She was born in Joseon but she has no intention of participating in the independence movement. She considers herself indifferent to the cause.

How do I know that her mother worked as a gisaeng? Because of Sato’s visceral reaction to the two gisaengs in the restaurant (Episode 9). “Once bitten, twice shy.” He didn’t trust the two women because of his first wife’s betrayal.

While rumors of her mixed parentage might be groundless, her half-sister, the “princess” is for sure, mixed. It’s interesting that the child is depicted as crippled. I think that’s a symbolism that a union between Japanese and Korean would start off with a handicap and face many obstacles – at least, during that period in time.

2. Soran

She’s a Korean expat. She moved to Shanghai after her family and village were destroyed. She’s the mastermind of the independence movement, Gugukdan, but as I noted from the beginning, her real “cause” isn’t liberation, but vengeance for her daughter’s execution (and I guess, her ex-husband’s death).

That’s why she chases Sato with a steak knife in Episode 10. She isn’t thinking like the true leader of the Gugukdan. If she was, she wouldn’t have panicked. She would have retreated right away. After the planned bombing fell though, her priorities should have been protection, namely:

a. protecting their personnel and
b. protecting their espionage operation.

Before she can protect her people, she needs to survive. She needs to retreat in order to regroup the Gugukdan later and plan another attack in the future. However, she goes kamikaze or on a self-destruct mode instead.

To me, she acts recklessly out of frustration and fear. It’s the fight-or-flight instinct. She fears she will never have another chance to kill Sato and avenge her daughter’s death, so she forces a face-off between the two of them. She forgets about the movement.

Thank goodness, GG is there to pick up the slack.

3. Sato

He’s Japanese but born and raised in Korea. Remember SoRan’s brief description of him—

SR: The inspector general comes from a fallen samurai family that came to Joseon in his father’s time. To overcome being a colonial resident, he attended the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and returned to Joseon as a soldier. He adopted a Joseon orphan to show how faithfully he supported Japan’s policies.

It’s ironic that he perpetrates discrimination in the Korean peninsula while he himself has experienced discrimination in his homeland because he isn’t “from the mainland.” That’s why he insists on TaeUng to comport himself like a “Japanese man” (e.g., the way the child Hideo sat on the matted floor or the way the grown-up Hideo didn’t react to the slap). He’s protecting his adoptive son from being discriminated in mainland Japan because he’s experienced discrimination himself.

I say his loyalties are divided, too, because he knows he isn’t fully accepted by the Japanese mainlanders. He knows he’s viewed as and treated like a lower-class citizen.

4. Suzuki, the translator

I’m not sure because I still need to know more about his character. Right now, I think he’s what the Japanese call a “zainichi.” He’s of Korean descent but he – and his family, too?? – has lived in Japan for so long that they’re culturally Japanese.

I say his loyalties are divided. Instead of being loyal to his adoptive country, i.e., Japan, he’s loyal to Joseon.

5. Sato Hideo or Kim TaeUng

In the kdrama, he’s the one with the most demonstrable loyalty issues.

He’s Korean but raised in Japan. Fukuda constantly calls him “josenjing” – or person of Joseon. We know now that the term is an ethnic slur.

More coming soon.