Kim Yoo-jung Began 100 Days of Lies With a Bow of Silence for Independence Fighters

Before a single line of the script was read aloud, the cast and crew of 100 Days of Lies paused together in silence. "We began our first table read by honoring the independence fighters with a moment of reflection," Kim Yoo-jung said at the drama's press conference on the 29th, held at CGV Yongsan iPark Mall in Seoul. "My heart felt heavy, but that weight helped me carry gratitude through every day on set."

The gesture sets the tone for what tvN is positioning as its most significant drama of the year. 100 Days of Lies is a 16-episode spy romance set in 1932 Gyeongseong (colonial Seoul) and marks the channel's 20th anniversary as a specially commissioned production. It premieres on October 10.

The story and who plays whom

Kim Yoo-jung plays Lee Ga-gyeong, Gyeongseong's most skilled pickpocket. Hoping to save enough money to leave for the United States, she strikes a deal with Gukgukdan, an armed anti-Japanese resistance group, and goes undercover at the Japanese Government-General as a trainee interpreter. Opposite her, Park Jin-young plays Sato Hideо (Korean name Kim Tae-woong), the adopted son of the Government-General's chief administrator and a trilingual elite interpreter who is quietly grappling with his own fractured sense of identity.

Kim Yoo-jung described what drew her to the role: "When I first read the script, I thought that being part of this project alone would be a tremendous honor as an actor. I was curious about how a young person in their early twenties, still adrift and unsure of their own dreams, would grow and change in such a turbulent era."

She framed the drama's central argument in terms that reach beyond its historical setting. "This is a story about how individuals become 'us,'" she said. "The reality that it's hard to exist as a person before there is a 'we' is a message that touches every era."

The other players in a layered ensemble

Kim Hyun-joo plays Yoo So-ran, a resistance sniper who lost her daughter to Japanese colonial forces and has sworn revenge. It is So-ran who offers Ga-gyeong the dangerous deal that sets the plot in motion; she is also secretly planning an assassination alongside fellow Gukgukdan members. Kim Hyun-joo noted that the character's motivation begins as a personal one before expanding into something larger: "She starts with her own grief, but ends up fighting for the independence of her country."

Lee Moo-saeng plays Yoo Philip, a Korean-American correspondent for an American news outlet and a Gukgukdan operative who poses as So-ran's husband as cover for the assassination mission. He said he paid close attention to the specific physical mannerisms of American English speakers and to the way an American would pronounce Japanese differently from a native speaker.

Jin Seon-kyu plays Sato Shin-ichi, the Government-General's chief administrator and Hideо's adoptive father, the man Gukgukdan is trying to kill. Born in Korea but Japanese, Shin-ichi is consumed by the need to be recognized and will do whatever it takes to transcend the limitations of his background. Jin Seon-kyu was candid about his objective going in: "My goal when I started this project was to do something that would begin to erase the image of Wi Seong-rak from The Roundup that people attach to me." He added that he refused to soften the character. "He is a man who cannot be forgiven, so I made no effort to make him sympathetic. I tried to show the desperation of a human being who becomes more and more corrupted by the need for recognition."

Three languages and two months in Japan

The colonial setting demanded considerable linguistic work from the cast. Park Jin-young said he drilled foreign language lines until they came out automatically rather than consciously recalled, the difference, he described, between the mouth remembering and the brain remembering. Jin Seon-kyu went further: he spent two months living in Japan from January, memorizing his script there and taking language lessons, in order to deliver his Japanese dialogue with the fluency his character required. Lee Moo-saeng, meanwhile, worked on capturing a Korean-American's particular cadence in Japanese rather than simply learning standard Japanese pronunciation.

Director Yoo In-sik, who helmed the production, said the question that drove the entire project was a simple one: "How could people throw themselves away like that?" The practical challenge of answering it on screen was considerable. Very few of the original locations and buildings from 1932 Gyeongseong survive, so the production team reconstructed the period largely from historical records. "The burden of period accuracy and production design was significant," he said, "but we tried to faithfully recreate that era for those who remember it, and I believe the effort was worth it."

Jin Seon-kyu offered a glimpse of the emotional atmosphere on set during the final shoot. "Watching so many actors pour themselves into the pursuit of that larger cause, I cried a great deal," he said. "Because we made this with everything we had, I believe a warmth will reach the hearts of viewers too."

100 Days of Lies premieres on tvN on October 10.