(♂, 27 years old, born Li Tae-san) North Korean Special Operative
Amongst the Sillim-dong student lodgers he’s known as a graduate student from the University of Berlin’s Department of Economics preparing a master’s thesis on Park Chung-hee’s economic development policy, but in truth he’s a North Korean operative.
When his father, a musician who possessed genius-level talent, was labeled a reactionary and sent to the Musan coal mines in North Hamgyung Province, his mother–born of the Baekdusan lineage and daughter to of one of the core leaders of the Central Communist Party–chose divorce, abandoning him, his younger sister, and their father.
Later, he answered his homeland’s call to become a ‘revolutionary’ and graduated from Geumseong Political and Military College, which trains operatives. From top-notch martial arts skills that allow him to kill a person with his bare hands, to marksmanship, escape and evasion, etc., he endured training harsher than hell and was reborn as an operative with an iron constitution. Before being sent on assignment abroad and leaving for East Germany, his younger sister, Soo-hee, placed a necklace with a dove pendant around his neck, telling him that he had to be sure to return safely. She is the one and only thing he loves more than his homeland.
With the fierce desire to return home at all costs, he operated all across Europe until receiving orders to suborn Hankuk University professor Han Yi-seop — the ‘economic brain’ of the opposing party’s presidential candidate — and bring him to North Korea, infiltrating Seoul in April of 1987. While building a rapport with Oh Gwang-tae, Han Yi-seop’s TA, he ends up going on the first group date of his life at Gwang-tae’s behest where he meets a woman...
A few notes on the above:
- Soo-ho’s last name is ‘Im’ (임). Though commonly written as ‘Lim’ in English, it doesn’t actually have an ‘L’ in it. We chose to write it as ‘Im’ for two main reasons. First, because we’re pedants, and second, (and more importantly) to distinguish it from ‘Lim/Rim’ (림), which is found much more commonly north of the 38th parallel. In South Korea, Soo-ho’s last name (林) – pronounced as ‘Im’ (임) – is ranked the 10th most common in the country. The same last name (林) – pronounced ‘Lim/Rim’ (림) – ranks 265th, with only 47 people using this reading as of the last census (yes, we looked it up). Which characters favour one pronunciation or the other, and when, is significant.
- JTBC also have his original surname name as Lim (림) instead of Li (리), but it’s confirmed in-drama and by other sources (including Jung Hae-in’s Instagram) to be the latter. It’s possible this was an attempt to avoid spoilers, but it might just be a typo.
- For those who like hanja and/or name meanings, the hanja for Soo-ho (守護) mean ‘protection’ or ‘guarding.’ His last name (林) is written with the character for ‘grove,’ but Young-ro interprets it as the ‘Im’ in ‘imja’ – an antiquated way of referring to one’s love. You may have heard it before if you watch a lot of sageuks. This is how she comes to interpret his name as ‘protects [his] love.’
- Lim Soo-hyuk is another alias of his. This is the name he goes by in the training flashback sequences, as well as the name his adoptive father, Lim Ji-rok, calls him by.
- What we’ve rendered here as ‘North Korean Special Operative’ (남파공작원・nampa gongjak-won) literally translates to ‘operative dispatched to the south,’ where ‘nampa’ (南派) literally means ‘south-dispatch’ and ‘gonjak-won’ means ‘operative.’ The term is used exclusively in reference to North Korean operatives, who are also sometimes referred to as ‘Bukhan’ (北韓・‘North Korean’) Operatives, hence our choice of translation. They’re dispatched to carry out assassinations, terror attacks, kidnappings, or assess the chances of victory in a war, and are accustomed to surviving in extreme conditions on little food or sleep. This makes sense story-wise since Soo-ho’s mission is essentially a kidnapping.
- Though not given in his profile, Soo-ho’s code name is ‘Daedong-gang 1’ (Taedong River 1 in the Disney+ subs). The Daedong-gang, or Taedong River (大同江), is the second largest river in North Korea and runs through the heart of Pyongyang. The river is iconic: its name features in the titles of several old trot songs that express longing for places in the North. In Korean, it’s 대동강 1호 (Daedong-gang Il-ho), which just sounds so badass I had to keep it. His number during training was 328.
- Sillim-dong is a district in Seoul and the location of the student boarding house Soo-ho is staying at when the drama begins in April of 1987.
- Park Chung-hee was a South Korean politician and army general who served as de facto military dictator of South Korea from 1961 to 1963, then as the country’s de jure third president from 1963 to 1979, when he was assassinated. Park began a series of economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth and industrialisation so marked it’s now known as the ‘Miracle on the Han River.’ As a result, South Korea possessed one of the fastest growing national economies during the 1960s and 1970s, exhibiting one of the fastest and largest reductions in poverty in human history.
- North Hamgyeong Province is located in the far north of North Korea, making it a suitably inhospitable place to exile political dissenters to.
- There’s a saying in Korean that if you’re to live well in the North you have to be born of the right lineage. There are three: Baekdusan (the lineage Soo-ho’s mother hails from), Hallasan, and Hujisan. Baekdusan is essentially synonymous with political power, so it’s not entirely surprising his mother made the choice she did.
- The military college Soo-ho graduated from is fictional, but almost certainly modeled after Geumseong Political University, located in the mountains and said to have been established chiefly for the purpose of training and educating operatives. ‘Geumseong,’ written with the hanja for ‘gold-star’ (金星), is a reference to Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung.
- Likewise, there is no Hankuk University in Korea. The drama takes care to avoid using the names of any real-life institutions, but it’s meant to be a ‘myeongmun-dae,’ (名門大) meaning an elite university (think Ivy League).
- The ‘opposing party’s presidential candidate’ refers to the non-incumbent party candidate in the 1987 South Korean Presidential election. This election was historic, marking the establishment of South Korea as a democracy in truth, rather than a democracy de jure (i.e. a democracy in name only). Up until that point, it was essentially an authoritarian state. Thus, Soo-ho is given orders that would undermine the candidate seeking to end the current South Korean regime, ensuring the ruling party keep their choke-hold on power. Why North Korea would give their operative such orders is revealed over the course of the drama.
- Writer Yoo Hyun-mi revealed in an interview that Soo-ho’s birthday is 28 March 1961...the same day as Young-ro’s.
You can find the original Korean on JTBC’s official website here.
All source materials belong to the parties to which they are licensed. All translations are our own.