I’ve got to say the obsession with making political K-dramas convoluted really makes no sense to me. Tempest could’ve been a show that was easy to understand despite its twisty storyline, but instead, an already complicated story is made extra twisted just to make us feel like there’s something shocking happening at the end of the show. I think this takes away from the shocking nature of the big reveals, making for a less interesting end product. At least, unlike Disney’s other K-drama disasters, there are some entertaining elements to this show, and the high production value definitely plays to the show’s advantage. Still, just because the cast is so magnificent doesn’t mean the show had to be made in an incomprehensible manner, only to give us a twist that we clearly saw coming from before. But enough of me ranting; let’s get straight into episodes 4-7.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens to Chang-Hee?
In episode 4, we learn that Paik Sanho might possibly be a North Korean supersoldier, and now he’s working for the Americans as a contractor, one of whom paid him to be Munju’s bodyguard, but he doesn’t know why just yet. In the present timeline, he sets up a house for Munju, where he upsets her other staff because he’s constantly overstepping, going as far as to say he’ll stay in the room that opens into hers. He even cooks her meals for her and follows her everywhere, which is quite uncomfortable for the others, considering she’s a bereaved widow. At one point, he tries to stop her from placing a photo of Junik and her by the bed, because it would be easy to hide a recording device in it. She doesn’t care to listen, though. Meanwhile, Lim Ok-Seon, Junik’s mother, asks Chang-Hee, Munju’s assistant, to keep an eye on her because she doesn’t trust the new bodyguard. She even gives him a Rolex to charm him into doing her bidding, which is something that seems quite surprising to him.
At the same time, it’s revealed by the professor to Munju that China, Russia, and Idisha, a country in the Middle East, might be working together to orchestrate this big war that’s going to make South Korea a wasteland. On the way back from a rally, Munju and her convoy get attacked by a group of men led by a man with a ponytail, whom Sanho had noticed earlier. But because Chang-Hee ignored his fears about the man, they end up being nearly crushed by a truck. Additionally, Chang-Hee is the one driving, and if it weren’t for Sanho, Munju would be long dead, along with all the rest of them.
The gang split up because Sanho took Munju down the metro, walking straight onto the tracks. Nobody can reach her because he even makes her switch her phone off, but she wonders how he could’ve known they were going to be attacked. He reveals that he noticed a man with a specific tattoo, which is the insignia of the Nepali Gurkhas, and it set off his instincts. After all of this, when they’re back to safety, Sanho immediately calls the American guy who set him up with this job to find out who tried to kill Munju, because only they could’ve known where she was going to be. Sanho says he’s done with them for good now and breaks the radio he uses to communicate with them.
Back at the house, Munju has a nightmare, and Sanho takes her out on a run. She then returns the necklace he gave her because he’s the one protecting her, but this is just her way of spying on the man, because she doesn’t trust him yet. On the other hand, Ok-Seon learns that her own son, Junsang, bugged her house. At the same time, Chang-Hee finds Junik’s secret phone and is shocked by what he sees after unlocking it, but before he can tell anybody what he saw, he’s attacked as well. Munju and Miji show up to rush him to the hospital, and despite his injuries, he tells Munju that Junik was really a spy. At the same time, Munju essentially gets an invite from an unknown number to a house with an image of the green cross necklace Junik made her wear on the day he died. When she and Sanho get there, she’s shocked to see a family picture of Junik with a different wife and son. Finally, the boy and his mum step out in front of Munju before the episode ends.
Who Is The Other Woman?
In Tempest episode 5, Munju stands face-to-face with “the other woman,” i.e., Hanna, Junik’s other wife and the mother of his heir. Eunseong is 9 years old, and Sanho quickly takes him inside to play games while the adults can have a discussion. Immediately, it seems like the thing Hanna is after is the inheritance, but she also says that Junik’s family has her back. She also hopes to see Munju cry because while she was grieving and couldn’t even look at her husband’s clothes, Munju was using his story to position herself as a presidential candidate. While this completely shakes Munju up, she still has to control the situation, so she does damage control by blackmailing Ok-Seon to not reveal Hanna’s existence to the public.
On the other hand, the professor gets attacked for encouraging protests against war on the Korean peninsula. After his attack, Munju shows up at the hospital to figure out what happened to him. He reveals that the president’s meeting in China went badly. This episode reveals why Anderson Miller is so against the US attacking the Korean peninsula over something that hasn’t been proven. Turns out there were 3 defectors who revealed details about the submarine, but soon after, one of them killed the other two and then committed suicide. Which means, even if the US wants proof, their only evidence is dead. It is then revealed that a woman named Stella Young from North Korea is involved in building this submarine, but she’s been living in South Korea for the past 10 years.
With no other choice, after learning from multiple people that war is inevitable, Munju decides to go public with the information she has. She even gets Anderson to speak out against the war live, but it’s cut short because the whole thing is deemed illegal. Before Munju can get attacked, though, Sanho is back to the rescue. While he manages to save her (in a very dramatic way), she still gets hit in the arm, and he later stitches her up. He’s also been wounded in the battle, though. Finally, the episode ends with what everyone was expecting to happen so far, with Munju and Sanho by themselves in a safe house in the middle of nowhere, where they end up kissing. However, Frank Sinatra’s “Have Yourself A Merry Christmas” begins to play on the radio. This means everyone is in danger, and a war is about to begin.
Does Munju Go To Mongolia?
In Tempest episode 6, Munju and Sanho end up going to bed together in the middle of a crisis. He says he’d like to escape with her, and she says she’d happily go with him before removing the necklace with the bug in it and putting it in water, presumably to show us that she trusts him now. Meanwhile, North Korea does end up launching a submarine, but it’s nowhere near the size of the submarine the US has been looking for, which makes the earlier war cry look very unrealistic in hindsight. It’s already a bit late for President Chae to set things straight in the country, and though she tells everyone to calm down, they’re siding with Munju, who was open about the truth, meaning Chae is out of public favor.
Finally, Chang-Hee is awake and shows Munju a video of Junik in North Korea over video call. This is what he saw that night before his attack. But it turns out, he tried to contact the person who sent this video to Junik’s secret phone, which is why he ended up in the hospital. Also, it turns out that Junik wasn’t Ok-Seon’s biological son, and Hanna always knew about it. But in the middle of all this information dumping, a recording of Munju and Sanho’s intimate situation from the previous night is revealed on the news, and it’s Hanna’s doing, but how did she get the recording in the first place? Well, from the necklace. Sanho doesn’t know about this bug, though, so he just tells Munju that they should leave for Mongolia without wasting any more time, but he gets a storm warning on his phone about Mongolia, which makes him suspicious. He then leaves Munju to go see Ethan, the guy who hired him. He ends up face-to-face with Yoo Unhak. Yoo claims that Sanho is a North Korean spy sent to protect Munju, which would make her a spy too. Munju can hear all of this because he’s still got the necklace on. Anyway, she overhears Yoo tell Sanho to get her on the boat to Mongolia, or his grandmother won’t be safe. This makes her realize she needs to run away to keep them both safe, and she does. When Sanho returns to find her, she’s nowhere to be seen, but he finds a bird with a broken wing, which could be a symbol for Munju, who has one of her arms wounded. He just wants to help her, but she won’t let him anymore because she’s at fault. However, while she’s crying over everything that’s happened, she gets a text message with a video of the actual submarine, meaning it exists.
Who Is Stella Young?
Episode 7 focuses on both the submarine and what might’ve happened to Junik. It’s revealed that the submarine actually exists, but that Anderson was ethnically Korean and could’ve been used to obstruct American policy in Korea , i.e., to claim that the submarine does not exist. On the other hand, Munju meets with Sanho by accident, but she doesn’t care to listen to him because she doesn’t trust him anymore. But he leaves a phone in her pocket, which she finds later while she’s sick at the edge of the sea. After this, she meets with a man from Argentina, a lawyer who was buying real estate for a man named Jang Junik in Argentina. When he heard news of his death, this man realized he needed to meet with someone related to him immediately. He tells Munju that he’s bought land worth two trillion won on behalf of Junik. But it turns out that he’s already been in touch with someone named Stella Young and that there are shell companies he set up for Junik too.
Elsewhere, Hanna goes to the police and admits to releasing the recording of Sanho and Munju. She then claims she’s Junik’s wife and the mother of his son, and that Sanho and Munju conspired to kill her husband. You know, a typical forbidden love situation. But she’s shocked to find Sanho waiting for her back home. He reveals that he’s aware she’s Stella Young, and he knows this because Eunsong showed him drawings of the many countries he’d been to with his mother. She was the daughter of a North Korean ambassador to Russia, and then became a CIA agent. But it seems the only thing she’s after right now is the inheritance. However, there’s something that’s not adding up. Sanho claims that Hanna was in South Korea when she was meant to be elsewhere, which means there have to be at least two Stellas.
On the other hand, Munju gets to meet the professor after he’s had a really long day (on account of being arrested). She’s not very shocked to learn that he’s an NIS agent because she figured it out through a number embossed on the card she found in Junik’s possession. But more importantly, he claims that he’s going to get Munju arrested for being the daughter of a spy for North Korea because he was the one who turned in her dad, too. Before he can attack her, though, Sanho shows up and saves the day yet again.
At the end of Tempest episode 7, Munju comes face-to-face with the two Stella Youngs. One is Hanna, and the other is Ok-Seon. Munju can’t believe she would kill her own son, but Ok-Seon tells her that he was, in fact, born out of an affair that her husband had. Now it seems Hanna is against Ok-Seon too, because she didn’t know that she was the one who killed Junik before. She turns on her “boss,” but before anything can happen, Yoo shows up with his agents, and the lights go off. Sanho manages to escape with Munju out of a window, straight into the ocean. Munju has way too many questions in her mind about why her mother had to suffer by herself and why she’s still drawn to Sanho despite everything. She gets stuck in a net underwater, but Sanho saves her and then rushes her to the surface. There’s blood coming out of his back, which means he’s been shot, but they share a passionate kiss.
