| Overview: | The film--titled "Ijung Kanchop" (Double Agent) in Korean--marks the return of Han Suk-kyu, the star of "Shiri" who, at the height of his popularity, decided to take a three-year hiatus from films. At first glance, Han might seem to be searching to recapture the commercial success of the 1999 spy thriller, but his new role is light years apart from the South Korean agent in the previous film.
In "Comrade," Han plays Lim Byong-ho, a ranking North Korean agent working at the embassy in East Germany, who defects by narrowly escaping and making his way through the Berlin Wall's Checkpoint Charlie in 1980. Chased by North Korean officials and snipers, Lim is met on the other side of the wall by South Korean officials, who carry him away to safety.
Or so it seems, until they arrive in South Korea and Lim is taken to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Seoul's Namsan Mountain, a place known for brutal "interrogations" during the 1970s and '80s. Despite Lim's repeated pleas that he defected to "find freedom," the Korean CIA put him through a horrifying series of torture methods involving live electric wires and water.
Finally convinced that Lim is actually telling the truth, the agency decides to put him to work for the CIA, at first training operatives on North Korean tactics, and later, becoming entering the heart of the agency as a special information analyst.
But black and white quickly returns to gray. Lim turns out to be a North Korean spy after all, waiting to receive his orders from another agent, Yun Su-mi (Go So-young) a disc jockey at a classical radio station. Arranging an accidental meeting in a church, Yun and Lim get romantically involved as a cover for their espionage, but in their isolation this leads to actual feelings for each other.
Courtesy of Joon Soh, Korea Times, a Friend Of HKFlix
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