Spy Myung Wol- may seem just like any other typical Korean drama involving a love triangle (between 2 guys and a naive girl) written into a spy-like plot but truth be told, it's not too bad. Sure the story line is somewhat predictable but there are some scenes that gives this drama a certain twist when one least expects it. It has some action scenes every now and then. On top of that, there are even hilarious scenes that just makes you laugh nonstop. Which in turn gives this drama a great balance of both comedy and action, thereby, making it entertaining. Besides that, the script is written in such a way that it does not really require a lot of thinking and piecing together to understand, hence, enabling the audience to sit back and relax while watching it. It starts out pretty slowly however it starts to picks up speed along the way, but that's only because they (the writers) wanted us (the audience) to get acquitted to the characters of the drama to enable us to understand the story as it progresses.
SONG FROM THIS EPISODE...
Bobby Kim – “사랑이 무서워” (Scared of love) from the Myung-wol the Spy OST
[Watch the episode at www.mysoju.com]
EPISODE 1:
The drama unfolds right at the beginning with both the main characters: Kang-woo (Eric Mun of Shinhwa) and Han Myung-Wol (Han Ye Seul) engaged in stand-offs and/or battles.
Kang-woo is on a rooftop having a standoff with a police officer (cameo by Kim Sung-oh), which is quickly revealed to be a glorious, tragic ending scene in one of his latest action movies. High-ranking military officials watch the movie from their Pyongyang, North Korea, headquarters, and the superior officer marvels at Kang-woo's star power, wondering why they don’t have an actor of that magnitude on their side.
Myung-wol’s scenario, on the other hand, is one with higher-stakes. She is seen dodging bullets and taking down her pursuers with an explosive. She disarms a soldier in time to see the object she was searching for, a bomb. She is drenched in sweat as she is seen nervously trying to disarm the bomb.
Something flies into her field of vision and Myung-wol is briefly distracted — it’s a butterfly — the brief distraction was long enough for the bomb to finish its countdown. Fortunately, it’s not a real bomb — this was a test — and seeing as she failed to disarm the bomb in time, she failed.
It has always been Myung-wol’s dream to work for the special forces unit, but due to today’s lapse, she failed the final round. She tells the special forces agent, CHOI RYU (Lee Jin-wook), that she will re-apply in three months, ignoring his suggestion that she stick to what she’s good at.
Ryu refers to the work she currently does, as she’s currently a member of the Hallyu crackdown squad. Her unit deals with illegal distribution and smuggling of media items such as South Korean dramas into the country and she gets back to work on one such case.
Acting on intel, her team locates one such source and arranges a hand-off. Myung-wol tracks him down and arrests him as he’s screening Kang-woo’s newest drama. (The girls salivate over his charisma and good looks and even the men admit he’s got appeal.)
General Kim — who happens to be father to a Kang-woo superfan — discusses a mission with Ryu, which he declares must be carried out with utmost secrecy. For it, he selects agent Han Myung-wol, who has stellar records and conveniently, no family or close friends.
Ryu warns, however, that despite her outstanding profile on paper, she has a fatal flaw: She acts before she thinks.
Nevertheless, Ryu accompanies Myung-wol to Singapore, where they act as guards to General Kim’s daughter, Eun-joo. They keep a close eye on the teenager while accompanying her to Kang-woo’s concert.
There is a part of this mission that isn’t revealed to Myung-wol, who’s told merely to stick to her direct orders. Ryu keeps a tight lid on the details, which suggests that there is a bigger goal than Myung-wol is aware of.
As for Kang-woo, it appears he’s quite the perfectionist. He puts on a flashy show, then, nitpicks every little flaw in the planning despite the successful performance. He’s got an ego, sure, but it’s far from Dokko Jin proportions (the latter of whom practically needed a separate planet to deal with the weight of his self-importance). Interesting trait, given that his image in front of the cameras is that of an easy-going, smiling top star.
Eun-joo tries to sneak out of their room — the same hotel where Kang-woo is staying — to find her star, only to be stopped by Myung-wol, who reminds her that she isn’t to show her face in public. Eun-joo pouts that all she wants is a single autograph, since she’d worked so hard to come in the first place (she’d gone on a hunger strike, which weakened Daddy General’s opposition).
Eun-joo tells Myung-wol to get the autograph instead, taunting her that surely an elite agent such as she would be able to manage it. So, Myung-wol tries to slip by security by pretending to be a reporter, to accost Kang-woo by the pool, only to be turned away. She turns to leave but Eun-joo’s words goad her on and she goes back for round two, literally throwing herself at the security guards, only to be turned away again.
Rationalizing that it’ll just take ten minutes of crazy to wrap up this task, Myung-wol dons a wig and follows him through the hotel. When she catches up to him, she thrusts a pen and pad at him and demands an autograph. She might want to work on her powers of persuasion.
No surprise that Kang-woo declines, even when she gets pushier and keeps indicating that he should sign. She refrains from speaking in Korean, probably to keep her own cover, so most of this is communicated via gestures and somewhat broken English. She continues to insists that he signed her notepad even after he explained to her in English that he did not give out signatures on the streets. Finally, he gives in and scrawls something on the notepad while making sure to keep the back of the notepad facing her at all times. He flips the notebook closed with the pen to mark the exact page and hands it back to her before hurrying away from her. She watches as he walks away and suddenly remembered her purpose and flips the notebook to the page only to find a taunting smiley face. Myung-wol grows more incensed at his ungracious attitude and decides to pursue him until she succeeds in obtaining his signature.
That takes them through the streets of Singapore as Myung-wol stalks him through the marketplace, muttering all the while about the arrogant bastard who can’t be bothered to fulfill her one wish.
Determined to succeed, she doesn’t see Ryu out in the courtyard. He meets with a fellow agent and confirms their mission rendezvous point the next day.
He spots Myung-wol moving through the crowd and was about to follow her when a snatch theft nearby caught his attention. The victim is JOO IN-AH, movie actress and hotel heiress who’s here for two reasons: (1) To “coincidentally” run into Kang-woo — her co-star and, if she had it her way, future boyfriend (2) Oh all right, she only cares about Reason #1, but her hotelier grandpa tries to get her to show interest in their hotel (as she is bound to inherit it one day) while she’s here trying to snag her man.
Ryu sees the thief snatching In-ah's handbag and running off in the opposite direction. He reacts immediately, jumping in to efficiently dispatch the twosome. After that, he returns her the purse and In-ah puffs up when she realized that he’s Korean. She was expecting him to recognize her any second now but he doesn’t. Instead he turns away with cool disinterest to her annoyance and dismay.
Kang-woo is wise to his stalker and remains elusive as he keeps a step ahead of Myung-wol. He finally shows himself to her, assuming she’s gone through all this trouble to drool over her hero and warns her to back off or be forever banned from his concerts. He also threaten to call the police. Myung-wol finally speaks, and in Korean, no less, advising him to sign the damn autograph in 5 seconds or have it taken by force.
Kang-woo concedes, agreeing to give her the signature but looks down at her loosen shoelace and gets an idea. He acts naturally as if he was about to tie them for her calling it an act of fanservice. After all, she’s the crazed fan who went to such lengths to see him — and what exactly has her so enraptured? he wonders. “My handsome face? My voice? My manners?”
He stands up and starts to walk away and she tries to follow suit. It’s only now that Myung-wol notices that he’s tied her shoelaces to each other, and as she fumbles with the knot, he swoops in and kisses her on the cheek.
That startles her, and he explains that the kiss is worth much more than an autograph — so she can take this memory, cherish it, and quit following him.
Myung-wol happens to see Kang-woo as he’s leaving the hotel that night, on his way to a formal event. She follows him there, then gains entrée by pretending to be a valet worker and offering her valet services to one of the partygoer…and availing the woman of her gown and mask.
At the masked party, she spots Kang-woo and follows him to the auction, where he is (unhappily) joined by In-ah, who pesters him to leave this boring event so they can go party. Once again, In-ah has surprised him by showing up unannounced, even as he tells her he’s not interested. But spoiled princesses, heiress daughters, and movie starlets are nothing if not used to getting their way, and In-ah’s all three in one. She sticks around, undaunted.
Kang-woo displays a marked interest in the auction. One in particular, an ancient book up for bidding.
One thing’s for sure: It has special meaning for Ryu as well, who watches the bidding from a separate room and prepares to move out.
Just as the bidding escalates to $1.5 million, Myung-wol receives orders (via her earpiece) and hurries to leave, which attracts the attention of the room. She fumbles along and makes a bid to cover, although she’s saved from having to make good on the $1.8 million by Kang-woo’s bid of $2 million, which wins the book.
On her way out, she’s distracted by the sight of Kang-woo being given the book and pauses with the intention of trying one more time for the autograph. But before she can act, Kang-woo is set upon by masked intruders and Myung-wol acts instinctively to fight them off.
The leader entangles her with his whip and goes after the book in Kang-woo’s hand but Myung-wol — not registering that it is Ryu — throws a pen at him. It enters his hand and he takes a leave after a quick glance at the injury he sustained and at the person who had inflicted it. She then makes her own escape as the owner of the dress and mask had sought out the help of security in search of the lady who had robbed her of her belongings.
Back in Pyongyang, she’s reprimanded by Ryu for ignoring orders and put on probation. Worse yet, he bars her from applying to his special forces squad which shakes her.
A flashback reveals the source of her desire to be a part of that unit, because her doting father — now dead — had been one of their agents. With his memory weighing on her mind, Myung-wol appeals to Ryu again, asking for one more chance. It appears they’re better acquainted than they’d seemed at first glance, although they are strictly professional in all their interactions, because Ryu understands her private reason for being a special forces agent. He is, however, unmoved by her plea, being highly principled.
When he leaves the room after ignoring her plea once again, Myung-wol notices his bandaged hand and realized that it was the exact spot where she had hurt the assailants from the auction in Singapore the night before. She was uncertained as to whether it was really Ryu until she saw the pen she had used to stab her assailant yesterday stabbed in an upright position on his desk. Realizing now that Ryu’s secret mission-within-a-mission had been to steal that book from Kang-woo, Myung-wol feels the responsibility for thwarting that mission. Deciding that she’ll take care to right her own wrongs, she vows to settle this matter.
She takes a leave of absence from work and sails in to Incheon Harbor in the South to begin her own private mission.
Tracking down Kang-woo’s fairly easy — he holds a press conference to promote his upcoming drama series, Assassin, which is the same series that got those North Korean fans arrested.
Getting access is slightly trickier, but not impossible. Myung-wol manages by temporarily kidnapping a high school girl who happened to be one of Kang-woo's fan, to steal her uniform and ticket to attend the press conference.
Myung-wol bides her time through the preview screening and the shoot, with the attendees allowed to watch the open set as Kang-woo and In-ah film a chase/explosion scene.
Kang-woo’s professionalism rears its ugly head which drags down the mood of the shoot as he objects to pictures being taken during the shoot. His agency president tries to reason with him, saying that the press only wanted to release some news about the movie, however, he gave her an impossible choice when he said it's either them or me. The director abides by Kang-woo's terms and tells the press to hold the photograph session.
When the director starts shooting again, In-ah stops the shoot suddenly and said that she isn't able to get into character anymore. The crew calls for a ten-minute break and Kang-woo's manager ushers away the fans off the set asking them to give Kang-woo some privacy to rest momentarily. Myung-wol hangs back as the manager ushers everyone around her out of the set. She watches Kang-woo from a distance when her eyes widening in shock to see the dangerous conditions of the set — gas lines, pipes, sparks — are about to set it ablaze, literally.
With barely a second to spare, she throws herself at Kang-woo (rawr!) and knocks him clear of his chair- saving him from the blast. The blast causes a metal structure to fall and hit her shoulders injuring her in the process. The noise brings everyone racing to the set, but Myung-wol dashes off set before witnesses get a good look at her, leaving Kang-woo wondering about her identity.
Kang-woo asks his team to find her but she seemed to have disappeared. Kind of. As they drive away from the filming location, the driver screeches to avoid hitting someone — Myung-wol, woozy from the explosion, who collapses.
The news is abuzz with reports of the mysterious high school student who saved Kang-woo’s life, all wondering who she could be and why she disappeared.
The news even travels as far as the Pyongyang officials, who see the hazy shots of the accident site and the barely-discernible schoolgirl as she runs away. They have their suspicions that this is Myung-wol, since the facts fit, and the general orders Ryu to confirm her identity asap.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Seoul in a run-down investigative agency, two men watch the news reports of the explosion and puzzle over the girl’s identity. Well, it’s really DAE-KANG (Lee Kyun) who’s interested, while the elder man, HEE-BOK, is less so.
Dae-kang is riveted at the idea that finding the schoolgirl heroine would net them a huge cash reward, since Kang-woo will surely shower his savior richly, right?
Hee-bok, on the other hand, dismisses him with a grunt and settles down to his nightly activity: listening to a midnight radio show. The DJ relates a story sent in by a caller about a missing grandmother, and immediately Hee-bok recognizes something odd about the message — it’s coded.
Reaching for his decoding kit, he gets to work unraveling the hidden message in the story. And when he’s done, simple words like Grandma, dementia, and dinner become Secret Agent Target Star Infiltration Report, capped off with the name Han Myung-wol. Ooh, an undercover spy?
After being picked up by Kang-woo’s entourage, Myung-wol is taken to the hospital and undergoes surgery. When she’s in recovery, Kang-woo hovers over her bed and calls for a nurse — only to find that the hallway is filled with reporters, who spot him down the corridor and hurry towards him.
Kang-woo hurries back into the room and calls his team for backup, leaving his agency president trying to block the persistent paparazzi from entering the room. They forced their way into the room anyway — but turned away in disappointment when they find it empty. The reporters then start questioning the agency president about the patient and is informed that she is actually a trainee who collapsed due to exhaustion.
It’s the commotion that stirs Myung-wol out of her sleep and as she opens her eyes, she slowly takes in her unfamiliar surroundings…registering the hospital bed…and sensing a troubling presence nearby.
Hesitantly, she lifts up the bedsheet, and finds Kang-woo looking up at her, motioning for her to remain quiet.
Myung-wol opens her eyes in alarm, just as he claps a hand over her mouth.
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