Tempest: Episodes 6-7

A betrayal rocks our heroine’s world, shaking her faith in the one person she thought she could always trust. But while she may be adrift and uncertain of where to turn, she’s far from helpless — and she has never been alone.

In a desperate attempt to escape the chaos, Moon-joo and San-ho decide to pretend that they’re an ordinary couple on an ordinary night. They relocate to the bedroom and let passion take over. In the heat of it all, San-ho suggests they run away together, and Moon-joo agrees.

However, their plans are quickly derailed when North Korea shoots down a US bomber, and President Chae issues the all-clear for civilians to return to everyday activities. The big problem now is that Moon-joo has turned public opinion against President Chae, but NIS DIRECTOR YOO UN-HAK assures President Chae he already has plans to “take care of” Moon-joo.

Just like that, Moon-joo’s name is smeared with accusations of betraying her late husband and being a North Korean pawn. San-ho tears the cabin apart, looking in vain for the hidden bug, until Moon-joo stops him. She doesn’t regret last night, and if the nation no longer wants her, she’s ready to leave after all.

Only after San-ho goes to confront Valkyrie about planting extra bugs does Moon-joo realize the audio came from the bug she hid in his Saint Anthony necklace. That still doesn’t explain how it was leaked from her secure cloud backup, but it does explain why San-ho couldn’t find any other devices.

And it allows her to listen in while San-ho is ambushed and arrested by Director Yoo, who reveals that the anonymous client who hired San-ho to protect and surveil Moon-joo was none other than North Korea’s leader, KIM HAN-SANG (Uhm Tae-goo). Director Yoo then threatens harm to San-ho’s grandmother if he won’t help the NIS capture Moon-joo.

Moon-joo can’t see the rage on San-ho’s face, so it sounds to her as though San-ho has both admitted to seducing her and agreed to the deal. But when they’re in the elevator, San-ho neutralizes the NIS agents with their own guns and races back to the cabin.

By then, Moon-joo has fled into the forest. Just as she collapses, exhausted and directionless, a text message comes through on Joon-ik’s secret phone but addressed to her: the submarine does exist (wait, what?) and the sender wants to meet her at the port.

Fortunately, Moon-joo isn’t completely alone. She still has Mi-ji and Chang-hee, who secure a new safehouse and help her and Anderson piece together what went wrong with the submarine research.

There now appear to be two submarines, one harmless and one nuclear, and Anderson concludes that someone set him up to “prove” the nuclear one was fake. Chang-hee, by the way, is fully on Moon-joo’s team now.

Not only does he confess to hacking Moon-joo’s accounts under Ok-sun’s orders, but he also repeatedly urges Moon-joo to consider giving San-ho another chance. Moon-joo, however, has been hurt too badly to trust again so easily.

When she and San-ho come face-to-face at the port, she rapid-fires questions about his true identity and motives. But no matter how sincerely he says he only wanted to keep her safe, she can’t bring herself to forgive him.

In the end, she pulls out the gun he gave her and threatens to shoot him if he follows her. Joon-ik’s lawyer from Argentina reveals that Moon-joo’s inheritance includes a huge fortune in foreign real estate assets.

And guess who handled all those transactions on Joon-ik’s behalf? That’s right — Stella Young. By now, all clues to her identity point straight to Han-na.

But Moon-joo isn’t convinced that Han-na/Stella is only after her inheritance, massive though it may be. Some pieces of the puzzle are still missing.

Which brings us back to San-ho. After learning that it was Stella Young and not Kim Han-sang who hired him, San-ho pays Han-na a visit. She’s just come from publicizing her relationship with Joon-ik, and swears she didn’t kill the man she loved.

San-ho concedes… because while she has used the name Stella Young, she’s not THE Stella Young. They fight, and San-ho has to stop her from swallowing a poison pill and suck more poison out of his own hand when she slashes him with a poisoned knife.

Moon-joo catches up with Professor Im, newly released from police custody. She confirms that she’s leaving on a boat tonight… and then kidnaps him at gunpoint. Because she suspects he’s the real Stella Young.

Professor Im has a double life, working as an operative for the government while secretly authoring spy novels. His true motives are complex and full of nuance.

Moon-joo finds out about his double life in a devastating way, running her finger over the embossed author's name on the book’s cover. She is shocked by the revelation that he was working to expose Joon-ik as a spy all along.

The fact that Moon-joo can then function effectively despite being shaken by this new information shows her strength and resilience.