Undercover Miss Hong: Episodes 3-4
by quirkycase
Our heroine always seems to find herself in the thick of things, which isn’t exactly conducive to an undercover mission. An intervention gone awry puts her in the crosshairs of the Hanmin executives, and she has no choice but to accomplish a near impossible task if she wants to keep her job. Luckily, she’s made a few friends along the way who are willing to go on a misadventure or two when needed.
EPISODES 3-4
So, the big question after last week’s cliffhanger: did Jung-woo catch Geum-bo in her subterfuge? Not quite yet. Jung-woo spotted her from his car window as she ran down the street and ran over to her. Geum-bo pretends to think he’s trying to make a move on her and declares she will not give him her beeper number (lol). Not exactly a long-term solution, but it allows her to escape for now.
She can’t, however, escape from Bok-hee who is just as stubborn as she is. The women can’t go two minutes without butting heads, threatening to undo their newfound alliance and almost friendship. It’s up to their poor roommates No-ra and Mi-sook to try to keep the peace.
What truly does the trick is when Bok-hee learns that Geum-bo got in trouble for defending her when misogynistic manager CHA JUNG-IL (Im Chul-soo) implied Bok-hee must’ve slept with Jung-woo to retain her job. Bok-hee and Geum-bo may not always like each other, but they’ve got each other’s backs (no matter how reluctantly).
Meanwhile, Geum-bo and the Risk Management team are stuck executing her idea of digitizing everything. No one expects the team of slackers to get anything done, but Geum-bo manages to wrangle her team into efficiency. Or, at least, wrangle the one useful teammate LEE YONG-GI (Jang Do-ha). She keeps him fed on praise and burgers, which she handfeeds him at his desk, while he creates an intranet network on a 3-day deadline.
To Albert’s credit, he gives all the credit for the team’s success to Yong-gi and Geum-bo which seems both born of genuine integrity and a desire to not seem overly competent and get stuck with more work. But then he’s praised for being such a humble leader, so that might’ve backfired. When Jung-woo tells Albert he’s been tasked by Chairman Kang with preparing Albert as his successor, Albert encourages him to “play both sides” and meet No-ra, too.
Geum-bo manages to get a lead on who “Yehppee,” the handle of the second informant, might be thanks to Yong-gi’s massive crush on her. He’s thrilled to tell her everything he knows about the workings of Hanmin, including that Yehppee is the name of SO GYUNG-DONG’s (Seo Hyun-chul) dog. Gyung-dong is one of the late Myung-hwi’s most trusted advisers, a trading expert known for his loyalty and hard work.
Armed with her special master keys from Jae-beom, Geum-bo snoops around Gyung-dong’s desk on the trading floor where No-ra works. And while she’s there, she just happens to see one of the traders illegally dump stock in an obvious collusion with another company. Geum-bo causes a scene and manages to get most of the trading order cancelled.
Now she’s earned even more attention as the female high school grad who heroically saved Hanmin from a catastrophic mistake. Thanks to an online forum called the Yeouido Pirates that every trader is on, the story spreads throughout the whole industry.
The FSS gets wind of the trading fiasco and goes to Hanmin to investigate. To stop Geum-bo from being called in to Jung-woo’s office for questioning, Jae-beom fakes having a medical emergency complete with chewable antacids to make him foam at the mouth, lol. But it might not matter much in the end because Hanmin wants to make Geum-bo a scapegoat and fire her.
Jung-woo has no issue throwing a low-level employee under the bus, arguing it’s the easiest and least risky option. His willingness to do the wrong thing for success is what broke his and Geum-bo’s relationship. Nine years ago, Geum-bo refused to be bribed into silence (by Hanmin, nonetheless) like the rest of her accounting team, including Jung-woo, and she lost her job for it.
Now, Geum-bo is hauled before a bunch of men in a disciplinary hearing for the crime of … stopping a crime and making them look bad. And this is where Jung-woo and Geum-bo come face-to-face for the first time at work. Jung-woo freezes for a second but then carries on with the proceedings. He agrees she can keep her job if she manages the impossible: get them back the three billion won they lost to an American company in the trading fiasco.
The roommate crew immediately get to work to save Geum-bo through spreading all kinds of rumors via Yeouido Pirates about the fiasco, hoping to flush the unreachable CEO out. Albert seizes his moment to be the hero by giving Geum-bo his one invite to the Yeouido Pirates group because he also has a crush on her. The plan works, and the girls overhear a secret phone call between the concerned CEO and Gyung-dong who colluded with him from the start on Chairman Kang’s orders for some backdoor slush fund payments. Geum-bo manages to track down the shell company CEO and threatens him with a baton (provided by Albert) into signing the order cancelation agreement.
Jung-woo may not be honest, but he does seem to be true to his word. Since Geum-bo secured the refund, he won’t fire her. Whether that’s due to a smidge of integrity or the fact that he’s pretty sure at this point she’s truly Geum-bo is hard to say. He may have chosen his career over her in the past, but it’s clear he has some lingering guilt (and perhaps feelings). Whatever the case, he’s staying quiet about his suspicions about her identity for now.
The roommates celebrate saving Geum-bo’s job with a girls’ night out. They’re having so much fun they miss curfew, and have to climb over the wall to sneak back into the dorm. They return to find their room trashed and see something moving inside the cloth wardrobe. Geum-bo bravely approaches, unzips the wardrobe, and stares in shock. And once again, we end on a cliffhanger; it looks like we’ll have to wait until next week to see what or who is hiding in their room.
Geum-bo assumes it’s someone after her, but it really could be any of them. Bok-hee has stolen the ledger and likely has enemies from her past embezzlement scheme. No-ra is a secret chaebol who could be a target due to Chairman Kang. And Mi-kyung seems to be hiding something – she’s sweet but something about her feels shifty, like she has a past.
I feel like we’ve really settled in during week two, and I’m getting more invested in the characters and mystery angle. Having a large cast of characters is always more fun for a mystery where secrets abound and any number of people could be the informant Geum-bo is looking for.
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