Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Synopsis for Spy Myung Wol- Episode 2

EPISODE 2:

Myung-wol starts to stirs due to the commotion around her… She opens her eyes and senses a presence near her. She lifts the corner of her blanket to find Kang-woo under the covers.

Kang-woo covers her mouth before she could scream and she calms down once she realizes who he was. Once the coast is clear, he gets up from his hiding place and thanks her for saving his life earlier on. However, he continues on to say, “If you thought that I’d be so grateful for you saving my life that I’d answer your every wish… dream on.”

He tells her that he doesn’t like being beholden to people in that way and tells her that he’s paying for all her hospital bills and making sure that she has the best herbal medicine, so that she’ll leave the hospital in better shape than she's ever been. In other words, he is trying to explain to her that he is no longer indebted to her because he is already repaying her via hospital bills, etc.

He adds, “I’ll remember your face in my mind, and I’ll be grateful until I die. Don’t expect any more than that. That’s the best I can do.”

After Kang-woo leaves, Myung-wol is left alone in the room silently cursing him for being arrogant. She slowly rises from the bed as to not cause anymore injury to her shoulder. Just as she began to take a few steps towards the door, a sound behind her stops her in her path. She turns around and is shocked to see a middle-aged man outside her window.

After receiving word via the late night news on the radio about a North Korean spy named Han Myung-wol infiltrating South Korea, Hee-bok manages to track her down to a nearby hospital. He tries to gain access to her without being detected. Hence, explaining why he resorted to suspending himself from the roof of the hospital via the aid of a window cleaner's 'swing'.

When he realizes that she sees him, he just shushes her and continues to struggle with his glass cutter. When he finally cuts a circular shape in the glass, just barely enough for him to fit through, he mumbles to himself about being too old to still be doing this sort of thing, while squeezing through it. She watches him warily until he makes it inside and then greets her by name followed by the word “comrade.” (What? There's another North Korean agent in the South? Why? Doesn't this make you wonder what the North are up to?)

He tells her that he decoded a message from the North stating that she has gone rogue and is going after Kang-woo for reasons unknown to her superiors. He continues by asking her if she wanted him to deliver a report to the North explaining her actions. If not, he warns, death awaits. Thinking on her feet, she tells him that as a member of the Hallyu Crackdown squad, she has come to realize that the minds of youths everywhere are being poisoned due to the spread of the Hallyu Wave. So, she has decided to take matters into her own hands and is in the South to eliminate the source of it all… Kang-woo.

As soon as she says that, she realizes that she had gotten herself into more of a bind than before. She immediately regrets speaking before thinking and wonders what she’s going to do now. Meanwhile, Hee-bok is still trying to recover from the shock of discovering the reason behind Myung-wol's mission. (Or so he thought...) After that, he leaves through the front door after telling her that he would deliver her report.

She attempts to escape out the window through the hole that Hee-bok had made earlier. However, the guards whom Kang-woo’s agency hired to safeguard her hears some suspicious sounds coming from her room and decides to investigate. She is midway out of the hole in the window when the guards step into the room and stop her. Her unusual method of escaping made the agents wonder if she suffers from some sort of psychological damage and Kang-woo thinks it’d be weird if there wasn’t anything wrong with her after the trauma she had from saving him.

Hee-bok returns and sends Myung-wol's report disguised as a normal request to the radio station to be broadcasted… except the DJ makes a last-minute change to his monologue and changes a word as the DJ saw it as being inappropriate to air. Thus, decoded, “Eliminate” becomes “Photograph,”. So, Myung-wol’s superiors get the message that she has infiltrated the set to… take pictures of Kang-woo. On top of the fact that Myung-wol's picture and articles about her saving Kang-woo appearing all over the internet causes her superiors to be suspicious.

They decided to investigate her recent history (aka mission) to find out where it all went wrong and then discover that she went to Singapore on a secret mission. The only clue they could obtain from her trip to Singapore was that she attended a Kang-woo concert while there.

So, now there is “evidence” to prove her betrayal and she is thus ordered to be eliminated… by the general who sent her to Singapore in the first place. Ryu is the one ordered to kill her and he runs after the general to call him out on his hypocrisy.

He’s the one who sent them to Singapore to accompany his Hallyu-crazed daughter but the general tells him that if Myung-wol dies, the secret dies with her. So, in order to cover up his mistake, Ryu is ordered to kill Myung-wol.

Hee-bok shows up at the hospital in order to warn Myung-wol and he brings his partner Dae-kang in to distract her guards by posing as a crazy person. Dae-kang does a convincing job by putting a flower in his head and prancing around but Hee-bok orders him to drool for good measures. Dae-kang walks up to the guards and snatches away one of the guards' belongings causing them to pursuit him.

With Dae-kang distracting the guards, Hee-bok signals to Myung-wol and leads her to the fire escape stairway. Once there, he informs her about the mixed-up message. He tells her that they’re sure to send someone to eliminate her. He hands her Kang-woo’s current location and runs off. It was then that the guards find her, so, in order to keep the paper Hee-bok gave her a secret, she puts it in her mouth for safekeeping.

Meanwhile Kang-woo meets with In-ah’s grandfather, Chairman Joo (Lee Deok-hwa) and it comes out that he has been Kang-woo’s financial backer for five years. (Oh! That was surprising..).

He asks Kang-woo about the book In-ah said he purchased at auction in Singapore and Kang-woo dismisses it as nothing of value. (Hmm.... What's with people and the book again??)

Myung-wol makes her escape from the hospital and watches one of Kang-woo’s movies in a dvd-bang as she re-bandages herself, like she’s studying her target, straight out of a serial killer movie. While doing that, she discovers a tracker in her old bandages, which she suspects had been placed by Hee-bok when he hugged her in the hospital. (So, is he on her side or not?)

She decides that all she has to do is steal that book from Kang-woo and return home. She breaks into his house while he’s out and searches high and low but there was no sign of the ancient book.

The problem is, he comes home when she is searching his bedroom. So, she's trapped. She sneaks out to his balcony, only to find that he does that too. Once outside, he hears a sound coming from the edge of the balcony. (No! It can't be...)

And turns around to discover a pair of hands hanging on for dear life on the edge of the building. (Oh man! I can't believe she did that...)He peers over and there’s Myung-wol, dangling from his balcony. Suddenly, one of her hands loses grip on the ledge and she is left hanging from one hand- the one with the shoulder that she had just injuired. She clings on desperately to the side until the pain gets to her. He catches her just before she falls and pulls her up after she faints (The pain must have caused her to pass out...).

She wakes up in his bed and quickly recalls what happened. Oh man, now she really seems like a crazy fan girl—there’s no backing out of it now. No arguing or backpedaling is going to make him believe otherwise.

He launches straight into how he knows that she loves him and all that but does she really think he’d choose a common high school student over the other women in world who wants him too? But then he does pause… “Are you perhaps a chaebol?” (Seriously? Sometimes, he can be so obnoxious...)

Then, he rambles on and asks her if she by any chance, comes from a wealthy family. He says he doubts it but just asks her anyway. (So, money might change your mind, huh?) But she says no, so, he determines that since, she has no money and her face…he turns to look at her… “is not my style.” What makes her think that he would choose her? Meanwhile, she wonders to herself if she ought to kill him (*sigh.. He should really, really not be that vain).

Then, he tells her to stop worrying her parents and to go home. She was still in a daze and sitting on his bed when he walked in and asked her if he should call her parents. (And seeing as she doesn't have any...) She needed a cover, so she decides to go with: CRAZY (Yes, seriously!).

(This part is really hilarious). She begins with a bout of fake amnesia which doesn't really work because he didn't seem to believe her. As he begins to walk away, she grips her head and flungs herself on the bed, moaning about her head hurting. When he approaches her, she sits up suddenly causing him to move a little further from her on the bed. She looks at him still holding her head and says, 'Doctor, my head hurts'. He turns her face to his and she messes up her hair a little more than it already was with her hands then looks at him and says, 'You're not a doctor'. After that, she flungs herself back on the bed and continues to pretend that her head actually hurt, making him worry. Then, he wonders if she really is crazy. He wonders if she jumped to save him because she’s crazy, or if saving him made her crazy. There’s just enough doubt to make him feel responsible.

He calls up his manager, whom he given the night off to ask him the whereabouts of the painkillers. But while he’s got his back turned, she disappears.

In Pyongyang, the general ignores Ryu’s concerns over executing a comrade to cover up his own mistake and he threatens Ryu with the same fate if he doesn’t carry out his orders. That is, until Hee-bok succeeds in getting the correct message out over the airwaves, that her intention is to kill Kang-woo.

Back to the war room, where the other generals asks him for the real story about Myung-wol’s rogue mission, worrying that this could rattle the entire Hallyu Crackdown Division if he lost control of his own assets, he changes his story on the spot, pretending that he assigned her the mission of infiltrating the South to bring Hallyu star, Kang-woo over to the North voluntarily.

They ask what the message was about killing him and the general clarifies that it was a mistake and that it’s been determined that an actor of Kang-woo’s caliber is sorely lacking in the North, so, he devised a plan to turn him (This may seem strange seeing as the generals are all talking about getting Kang-woo to the North in a war room). The other generals still doubted him, so he explained Myung-wol’s mission to them. He started with Phase one and said that it was for Myung-wol to get close to Kang-woo. Hence, seeing as she rescued him, has already been completed. The other generals were still unconvince and asks him to continue his explanation. They ask him what phase two is. He starts in on the doublespeak about adding Ryu to the plan to accomplish the objective. They ask what the objective is. He darts back and forth… Then, gets an idea. “It’s top secret.” he says.

Kang-woo wonders about why the strange worrisome crazy girl keeps disappearing on him.

At the same time, Hee-bok tracks his tracker…only it’s not so much attached to Myung-wol anymore. He really doesn’t want to report that he’s lost her, scared that he’ll be next on the chopping block.

Meanwhile Ryu flies to Singapore first, to witness the sale of one of the ancient books. Chairman Joo is interested in buying a book from the black market and had brought along a briefcase full of cash in exchange for it. However, he lacked the skills to tell apart the fake and the genuine one. So, he could only judge it from its outer appearance which appeared authentic to him.

Ryu steps out from the seller’s side and Chairman Joo recognizes him as the helpful man who stopped him from purchasing a so-called antique vase in Singapore some time ago. Chairman Joo asks him about what he thought about the book, as Ryu picks it up and carefully examines it. He sets it down slowly after examining it and tells Chairman Joo that it was a fake and that he had been tricked. Then, in a blink of an eye, the seller’s henchmen raise their guns at Chairman Joo and Ryu. Ryu swiftly disarms one of his assailant and holds the gun to the seller’s head. By doing so, he not only left Chairman Joo impressed but manages to convince the Chairman that he was willing to give up his life for him, thereby, making him a worthy ally.

Myung-wol walks through the city and finds that Kang-woo’s face follows her wherever she goes. His face is plastered on the bus stop, the bus, two highrises above her and even the nightclub business card on the ground at her feet. (Apparently, South Korea is only obsessed with him…)

Hee-bok comes back to his office to find Ryu waiting for him. He tries to turn him away thinking he’s a regular patron but Ryu utters the secret password. Hee-bok stands at attention immediately.

Kang-woo has his manager call the police to report the missing high school student, and when asked how long she’s been missing, he answers “Nine hours, eighteen minutes, twenty-two seconds.” (Looks like he cares after all…. Aww…)

They find out that nine hours does not qualify to be in the ‘missing’ category. Hence, he is unable to launch a police search. So, he orders his manager to search all the hospitals in Seoul to find her and to report to him if anyone fitting her description showed up. His manager smiles widely to witness Kang-woo’s first instance of caring about another human being. Kang-woo insists that it’s for the greater social good since she’s a crazy girl but his manager tells him that even caring for the greater good is uncharacteristic of him. Kang-woo doesn’t answer, instead he changes the topic by staring at his manager and asking him what he was waiting for.

Kang-woo’s manager manages to track her down. She was about to walk into a fan-signing by Kang-woo when she realizes that she is being followed. She readies a stick to stab the person only to have it knocked away as he whirls her around. She immediately realizes that it is Kang-woo and before she could react he began to shoot questions at her. First, he asks her what she expected to do with the stick, followed by asking her why she disappeared without telling him. When he notices her curious look, he insists that he wasn’t looking for her because he was worried in any way, oh no, but because it’s his duty to society at large.

She just stares at him, thinking in her head as he rambles on, 'Why does he talk so much? Why wouldn't he stop? He tells her that from now on, she is to report to him about all things.

After Kang-woo leaves, Hee-bok finds her there and tells her that they have a visitor from far away and she freezes at the sight of Ryu. She bows her head as he chastises her for disobeying orders and she offers up her life in penance.

However, he states that there is no need for that because (he relays her new orders:) she is to get close to Kang-woo, marry him and have him voluntarily return to North Korea with her.

Her reaction is perfect— she opens up her eyes widely, shock written all over her face at her orders. She begs him to let her kill Kang-woo instead.

She tries to talk Ryu out of it but he is as rigid as he is humorless. Hence, she has to carry out her orders and marry him. She sighs to herself, “How am I supposed to seduce him?” (It's funny how she is really skilled in the field but knows nothing whatsoever about relationships...)

Introducing another spy from the North, Ok-soon (Yoo Jee-in), who goes from bar owner to chic society lady the instant she hears the coded radio announcement. Hee-bok shows up in the park for a meet, as Ryu and Myung-wol look on.

She’s a legendary agent, who will be Myung-wol’s new handler and her purpose is to train her in everything that she knows. She’ll also be part of Myung-wol’s new cover… and she is to marry Hee-bok so they can pose as her parents.

Hee-bok swoons thinking about the marital bliss ahead (Awww) but she balks at crossing the line with him. He pretends to be equally offended.

Ok-soon worries that Myung-wol lacks the proper feminine wiles for a seduction mission and Myung-wol answers truthfully that she’s never had any experience with men and doesn’t have the confidence to carry out this sort of mission. But Ryu asks if she really wants to be in the special forces like her father and that changes her attitude.

Ok-soon begins her training, starting with makeup and facial expressions. She tells her to look like an angel or in other words angelic (She really doesn't pull it off well... xD)

She is hilariously bad and it’s equally amusing to watch Ok-soon being a drill sergeant of girliness as it is to watch Myung-wol be so bad at it. She takes to studying it like a school subject, taking notes as she goes along trying to figure things out.

When Ok-soon gets her to watch a medley of kissing scenes from Hollywood movies, Myung-wol plops herself in front of the tv with a notebook and pen writing down everything she sees. Ok-soon walks in on Myung-wol doing that and tells her to try and feel her way through it instead of taking notes. So, Myung-wol tries to follow Ok-soon's instruction and watches the scenes carefully and in detailed but fails to see what Ok-soon was referring to.

Later, she reports to Ryu that Myung-wol’s success on this mission seems highly unlikely, since “she doesn’t know what it means for her heart to skip a beat. How is someone like that supposed to fall in love?”

The scene moves on to one with Kang-woo sitting a chair in a dressing room as he goes over the script. His phone starts to ring and he checks it to find that In-ah was calling him. He sets the phone down on the table instead of answering her call. In-ah storms in with her phone in hand. She notices that Kang-woo was not picking up her call even though it was just within reach. She yells at the remaining staff in the room to get out and approaches him. She questions him about not answering her call but her question was only repaid by silence.

To fill the silence, she goes on by talking about how they're meant to be and stuff. Suddenly, she suggests that they get married justifying her request by saying that, 'Isn't it better to be married to an heiress than to date one?' Her question causes him to rise from his seat. He turns to her and asks, 'Are you a gangster like your grandfather? Do you just order people to marry you?'

She is persistent and continues by offering him the chance to marry her for her money, knowing that it’s the only reason he’d be interested. He dismisses her and is about to walk away when she backhugs him and says that he should hold onto her while he can saying that, “You’ll never find anyone who’s as crazy about you as I am.”

Upon hearing that statement, he remembers Myung-wol and smirks while replying, “Is that so?” and walks away.

Someone grabs his arm as he walks out and he turns around to see Myung-wol standing there. She pleads with him that she wants nothing more than to be by his side and tells him that she missed him like crazy.

He laughs incredulously and then she blurts, “I love you!” He thinks that’s just par for the course and is about to chastise her again, until he spots In-ah staring at them from down the hall…

He smells an opportunity and has no qualms about using one crazy girl to get rid of another and asks her, “You're crazy for me that you'll do anything for me, right?” And with that, he pulls her in for a kiss before she gets a chance to reply, all the while giving In-ah the evil eye.