'100 Days Of Deception' Episodes 7, 8 Recap: What Is Hideo’s Secret?

Episodes 7 and 8 of 100 Days Of Deception show us a new side of Hideo, a rather tender one, and expands on the romance between Hideo and Ga-Kyung. The show does seem to be trying to make the romance shine through despite all the crazy stuff that’s happening outside of it. There’s a wedding being fixed, Ga-Kyung is getting drunk, Philip and So-Ran are growing closer, but at the same time, Sato is getting closer to finding out about Ga-Kyung too, because what do you mean she’s being so careless while doing the most difficult job. So-Ran may have been well-intentioned while getting her on board, but Ga-Kyung is clearly not cut out for this job, which makes me wonder when she will be found out by Hideo and when everything will go downhill. I do hope it doesn’t go that way, but with that said let’s jump into episodes 7 and 8.

Spoiler Alert

What Does Ga-Kyung Do With The Photograph?

100 Days Of Deception episode 7 of the show sees Ga-Kyung return home and tell So-Ran that her husband is dead, not with so many words, but just with some expressions. So-Ran understands what has happened, and tells Ga-Kyung that the castella cake is something that the man had promised her many years ago. So he did regret everything that went down back then, and this is proof of it. Ga-Kyung is too shaken up by the whole situation, and So-Ran may be pretending to be strong in front of her and Philip, but she also cries in bed. But there are other tasks at hand, and the people must go on for the sake of independence.

Ga-Kyung goes to work the next day to an apology from Hideo for his harsh words the previous day. He didn’t want to be so harsh on her, but he tells her about his mother being a woman from Joseon and then “showing him” how to feel abandoned, because his mother left him behind for another family. Maybe his young sibling is around somewhere now and we don’t even know it. Later, Ga-Kyung gets entangled in the post section of the office and finds a confidential folder about So-Ran’s family. She’s quick to realize how crucial it is for her to get it opened and steal whatever image is inside it of the family. She knows it’s there because she makes a call to the post office it came from, asking about all the details, claiming it came to the wrong place and she opened it by accident, not knowing it was confidential.

She then manages to make it seem like Yamada is the one who opened it by distracting her with words about Hideo. Yamada falls for her tricks as she gives Ga-Kyung some chocolate to enjoy too. Ga-Kyung manages to steal the photo and also get caught hiding something behind her back by Hideo. But she makes it look like she was hiding a piece of chocolate in her hand and escapes the mess. Finally, she puts the photo in the fireplace and watches it burn. But Sato notices a lick of blood on the images he received in the file from Yamada. Clearly someone has tampered with this stuff, but Yamada told him that she never touched the contents. He tells the chief to look into Seo-Hee then, feeling suspicious about the whole situation. But at the same time, he notices some blood on Hideo’s finger after telling him that he’s going to marry Myung-Nam of Jail Textile. Hideo makes it clear he’s not happy about this situation. But we’re not sure if Sato is suspicious that his son is helping the Gugukdan or if it’s just a coincidence that there’s blood on his finger. 

What Happens After Suzuki Wakes Up?

Suzuki is a character we haven’t heard of in a long time, but he finally wakes up in the hospital wondering why they haven’t become independent yet, and why his name is still Suzuki when he was in bed for so long. It’s a joke of course, but he seems to be fine. The important thing we learn in these two episodes is that Ga-Kyung still doesn’t know that he works with Gugukudan, and they want to keep it that way. Also that Suzuki is not okay with Myung-Nam and Hideo getting married. 

How Does Myung-Nam Try To Get Out Of Marrying Hideo?

Kim Myung-Nam, the daughter of the owner of Jail Textile, is engaged to Hideo, but as an active member of Gugukdan, she’s obviously not happy about it. However, when the topic of her engagement comes up during a Gugukdan meeting, So-Ran tells her that the only way she can get out of marrying this member of the enemy is if his father, Inspector General Sato, is killed. That way, Hideo would become a nobody, and Myung-Nam would call off the wedding. An opportunity presents itself when Ga-Kyung learns that there is going to be a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of the pneumatic tube system that is going to connect Keijo Post Office to the Government-General, the Governor-General’s residence, and the Inspector General’s residence. Hideo even lets her translate what the foreigner, Mr. Laurel, says about pre-operational tests to the in-house Japanese technician (hilariously, she convinces him that Mr. Laurent was calling him darling, when the guy was just trying to flirt with Ga-Kyung).

However, their plans are disrupted after a suspected Gugukdan bombing in Shanghai on the occasion of the joint celebration of the emperor’s birthday and Victory Day. The Inspector General catches a lot of the flack for this, and initially the Governor-General wants to cancel the pneumatic tube celebration. They even bring up something called the Kyeam-ri riot of 1919, and how news of it leaking to the foreign press was disastrous for Japan, but more on that later. Sato says the Governor-General’s decision to cancel the event, which foreign press have already been invited to, would make them look weak. In contrast, he wants the event to now become grander; a proper banquet instead of just a small internal gathering for the benefit of the Government-General. This is meant to show that Joseon is peaceful under Japanese occupation, and the Shanghai incident was a fluke.

Now obviously, this brings with it an increase in security. The Inspector General even uses it as an excuse to round up any known anti-Japanese individuals and disrupt the lives of regular Joseon people. Gugukdan decide to use Myung-Nam to smuggle in bomb parts by pretending to bring herbal medicine for Hideo, since she can enter the Government-General without being searched, being the Inspector General’s future daughter-in-law. The problem is, with security enhanced, there’s now sniffer dogs, and one of them starts barking at the herbal medicine bundle, clearly having detected the explosives. In her rush to get away from the dog, Myung-Nam ends up dropping it, and some of the detonators become visible, so Ga-Kyung ends up tossing Myung-Nam’s ring onto the floor to distract everyone while she hides the detonator, eventually even slipping it into Hideo’s pocket to keep the dog from barking at her. Once she’s retrieved the detonator, she gathers all the bomb-making equipment and stashes it in a vent in the roof of the lady’s washroom, before sitting down satisfied with a job well done (right there on the floor of the ladies’ washroom).

How Does Ga-Kyung Discover Hideo’s Secret?

While Hideo is taking Ga-Kyung out for some team bonding, they spot Kkot-Nim’s brother, No-Ma, being beaten up on the street. Though Hideo wants to intervene and protect him, Ga-Kyung knows she’ll be recognized and her cover will fall apart, so she stops him by telling him all about how worthless Joseon people are, and how he should know better than to dirty himself by associating with one. This leaves him so upset that he storms off, so she rushes after him and apologizes desperately, until she finally talks him into letting her buy her a drink (though he insists he be the one to buy, and he teaches her to say “please”). When they get to the bar, Ga-Kyung’s amazed by how golden the beer is, and ends up chugging down her first pint in about 10 seconds flat, leaving Hideo floored.

The beers keep flowing, and Hideo and she start opening up to each other. When she starts asking Hideo for his Korean name, he gets all existential about his identity, being neither truly Joseon nor Japanese. In response, speaking about feeling lost, Ga-Kyung tells him that where her feet stand is more important than where she is in her mind, essentially telling Hideo to ground himself. She tells him about her own period of uncertainty, and we see her at her lowest point, as a comfort woman on the brink of suicide, before she was given a new lease on life after seeing a newspaper article about the tallest building in the world, in the US, the Empire State Building, standing at 102 storeys tall. She resolved to make it her goal to earn enough money to travel to America and go to the top of this building. When Hideo asks what she plans to do next, she says simply that she’ll find out when she gets there. Touched, Hideo tells her that his Korean name is Kim Tae-Ung, and Ga-Kyung promptly passes out, and we see that she’s downed a half a dozen pints.

When Hideo shows up at So-Ran’s house carrying Ga-Kyung in a princess carry, he insists on carrying her in himself instead of letting Philip do it, clearly possessive. So-Ran and Philip start discussing whether Hideo suspects anything, and Philip decides to get Hideo drunk to find out. This eventually leads to a big fistfight between them, as Hideo accuses Philip of mistreating Ga-Kyung, since he’s still under the impression they’re having an affair. The next morning, it seems Ga-Kyung doesn’t remember everything, or at least is pretending not to, which annoys Hideo, but she says that if she does end up remembering, he’ll have to grant her a wish of her choosing, and he agrees. Oh, also, he lets her have the pawn ticket, which we now learn is his only connection to his mother, who he’s still trying to find. He calls Ga-Kyung his vault. We come to find out just how much he cares about her later when she pretends she used the ointment he gave her on some (nonexistent) bruises, which he assumes are a result of Philip abusing her. Also, we find out the reason she was in a princess carry that night was because she drunkenly said she wanted to be treated like a princess even if she was having an affair with a married man.

Anyways, it’s not a love triangle or a love quadrangle, it’s a love pentagon, as besides Hideo, Ga-Kyung, Philip, and Myung-Nam, there is also Yamada, who works at the Government-General and has the biggest crush on Hideo. She drags Ga-Kyung out drinking to lament the fact that her beloved will end up marrying a Joseon person, when he clearly deserves a proper Japanese lady (like herself, perhaps). In the process of complaining about her day, she mentions that a rat fell on her in the ladies’ washroom, which is why they’re going to be setting rat traps in the vents next morning. Realizing this means the bomb-making materials will be found, Ga-Kyung rushes off to the Government-General, but it’s late at night and the guards refuse to let her in. When she comes up with a flimsy excuse, the Chief of Police tries to force her to crawl between his legs to get in, taking advantage of the opportunity to humiliate a Joseon person. This is when Mr. Laurent shows up and saves the day, saying he needs her for something. When she asks later what he wanted, he says he just wanted to get her out of that situation, but asks her to pay him back by going on a date with him, and she accepts.

In the ending of episode 8, Hideo is in the Government-General archives looking for resources regarding the Kyeam-ri riots after Moon-Mak, from Gyodang-ri Village, mentioned the incident as a reason why the locals might not take kindly to the sight of a Japanese official poking around. What Hideo finds horrifies him, not only because the Japanese burned and beheaded dozens of Koreans, but because the officer involved was one Lieutenant Ishikawa, i.e. his own father. He immediately rushes to confront him, but the Inspector General calls him a hypocrite for caring about the dead Koreans. He brings up how Hideo didn’t complain when Sato shot an innocent Korean child, calling him a pickpocket, when Hideo was the real pickpocket. We see that this was the moment in which Hideo was asked to become Sato’s son, and in doing so, become Japanese. This grand revelation is overheard by Ga-Kyung, who was hiding in the office because she was concealing the bomb-making materials in there when she got surprised by the entry of the father and son. Hideo simply tells her to get out, but she uses this moment to tell him that she now remembers everything, including the princess treatment story, and uses her one wish to tell him not to cry, which clearly has an impact on him. How is this love story going to evolve in future episodes? I think it depends entirely on how this next assassination attempt on the Inspector General’s life goes; if more of the Gugukdan members get discovered, it’s going to change the course this story takes. For now, we’ll just have to wait and watch.

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