Agent Kim Reactivated: Episodes 1-2
by mistyisles
A former black ops agent leaps back into action when his daughter goes missing. Agent Kim Reactivated’s opening week is jam-packed with action, intrigue, father-daughter relationships, bickering ajusshis — and the promise of a whole lot more where all of that came from.
EPISODES 1-2
I think it’s almost impossible to go into Agent Kim Reactivated not already knowing the twist about our hero. But when we meet MANAGER KIM (So Ji-sub), he is — by all appearances — nothing more than a mild-mannered salaryman and doting single father. For nearly the entire first episode, his world is consumed with trying and often failing to connect with his teenage daughter, KIM MIN-JI (Seo Soo-min). There’s plenty of bickering and nagging on both sides of the relationship, but it’s also abundantly clear that they love each other dearly.
The other thing we quickly learn about Manager Kim is that he avoids conflict at all costs. He’s quick to apologize, even if he wasn’t in the wrong, and if that means taking an extra punch or two because a gangster is looking for a fight, so be it. Anything to keep from causing a scene or being noticed. Unfortunately, the same rule applies when teenage bully JOO HYE-RI (Yoo Ji-ahn) accuses Min-ji of assaulting her when, in actuality, it was the other way around. Kim doesn’t hesitate to drop to his knees and promise to transfer Min-ji away (and not for the first time, it’s hinted).
Needless to say, Min-ji feels betrayed. She decides to spend the night with a friend and threatens to run away if her father attempts to contact her overnight. Kim stays up all night preparing a special birthday breakfast for her anyway, but by the next morning he starts to sense that something’s wrong. And he’s right — Min-ji never made it to her friend’s house.
At Min-ji’s school Kim finds the only person who knows what happened and is willing to talk about it: Min-ji’s crush KIM NAM-HOON (Chael). Tentative sparks had only just begun to fly between the two, stoking Hye-ri’s jealousy, so the bullies and their gangster friends waylaid Nam-hoon after school and used his phone to lure Min-ji into a trap. By the time Kim arrives at the place where Hye-ri and Min-ji fought, all that’s left is a worryingly large pool of blood — and even that is quickly washing away in the rain.
Kim waits for someone to return to the scene of the crime, and what do you know — Hye-ri does exactly that, accompanied by her gangster oppa who acted as the ringleader in last night’s ambush. He flexes his tattoos in hopes of scaring off this soft-spoken, bespectacled ajusshi… but it turns out Kim’s confrontation-avoidance has its limits after all. Underneath his crisp white shirt, Kim is covered with scars gained from a violent as a black ops agent — first for North Korea, and then for South Korea — and one little bottom-tier gangster is absolutely no match for him. In no time at all, Kim has the guy bloodied up and begging for his life.
The story — or as much of it as Gangster Oppa can tell — is as awful as the pool of blood suggested. When Min-ji fought back, Hye-ri got fed up and hit her over the head with a brick. Min-ji fell and hit her head again on even more bricks, hence all the blood, and the whole group freaked out thinking they’d killed her. Gangster Oppa called the next guy up the food chain for help disposing of the body. Loan shark OH MIN-CHUL (Yoo Hee-je) is quite literally about to steal organs from a different teenager in payment for her father’s debt when Kim finds him. Kim takes all the gangsters down, quick and brutal, and tortures Min-chul for the next name up the ladder. The problem is, Min-chul has no intel to give. He refused to help clean up Hye-ri’s mess, and someone else stepped in.
That someone else is known simply as GOLD TEETH (Jo Bok-rae). He has an old score to settle with Hye-ri’s father (we’ll come back to him), so Gold Teeth was happy to do Hye-ri this favor “for free.” But — though he doesn’t realize it just yet — Min-ji isn’t actually dead. Nevertheless, Gold Teeth’s assistants inform Min-chul that the corpse has been cleared away, and the message rolls through right in front of Kim’s eyes. The police arrive just in time to stop Kim from making good on his threat to kill Min-chul and everyone he cares about.
As if that weren’t enough problems for one ex-special agent to deal with, Kim’s carefully kept cover is finally blown. Once a year, Kim meets up with his friends and fellow ex-agents SUNG HAN-SOO (Choi Dae-hoon) and PARK JIN-CHUL (Yoon Kyung-ho). This year, however, Jin-chul gets goaded into a fight with a gangster who doesn’t realize until it’s too late that he’s poked the wrong bear. Bystanders spread the video all over the internet, and even though Kim immediately slips away, his face is caught on camera.
The video is instantly flagged by North Korean surveillance workers, and soon both North and South are scrambling to get their hands on the legendary agent once known by the code name 66. While most of the North Korean Intelligence Bureau cautiously plan to negotiate for the return of their traitor, Director General RI EUNG-RYEONG (Lee Jae-yong) secretly commissions the new AGENT 66 (Kim Sung-gyu) — younger brother of Kim’s direct replacement, who Kim allegedly killed — to find and assassinate Kim.
With help from a spy, Agent 66 locates the police station where Jin-chul and Han-soo are still being held after last night’s fight. He steals a guard’s uniform to get close to Jin-chul and demand Kim’s whereabouts at gunpoint. Jin-chul deflects at first. But rather than risk civilian lives, he gives Agent 66 Kim’s address with a venomous glare and a “Your funeral.” As soon as Agent 66 leaves, Jin-chul creates a diversion and escapes to go help his friend…
…who, as we know, isn’t at home because he’s busy following Min-ji’s trail and leaving his own trail of beaten-up gangsters that ultimately gets him arrested. The unsuspecting officers are irritated by Kim’s silence under interrogation and baffled when their attempt to run his fingerprints requires a top-level access code. But nothing prepares them for how quickly he overpowers everyone when his phone lights up with a call from Min-ji.
And with that, the major pieces of our story are set in motion. Our hero now has one missing daughter, one elite assassin (plus two governments) on his trail, and potentially a whole criminal empire about to take notice of him. Because Hye-ri’s dad? He’s the infamous Chairman JOO KANG-CHAN (Joo Sang-wook), final boss of the gangster web Kim has only just begun bludgeoning his way into.
And we now have a sketchy outline of our hero’s past. Ater defecting to South Korea, he was dragged through an endless loop of “one last mission…” before pulling a gun on his superiors and threatening mass casualties if they didn’t discharge him for good (they did). His wife died shortly after giving birth, and he’s spent every day since honoring her final request that he live solely as Min-ji’s Dad. I look forward to seeing how that identity will shift — and, with it, his relationship with Min-ji — as the show goes on. And I can’t wait to see our bickering ex-agent trio get back together and on the same page.
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