The period spy drama “100 Days of Deception” will premiere on tvN on Oct. 10 and stream worldwide through Netflix the same day, the broadcaster said at a press conference in Seoul. The 16-episode series unfolds in 1932 Gyeongseong, the colonial-era name for the city now called Seoul, during Japan’s 1910 to 1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula. It arrives as one of the marquee titles in tvN’s lineup for the channel’s 20th anniversary, and the cast and creative team gathered at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall on Sept. 29 to introduce the project.
At the center of the story is Lee Ga-kyung, a gifted pickpocket who is pulled into the orbit of the Japanese Government-General of Korea and ends up working there as an undercover translator. Kim You-jung plays the role, moving between street-level survival and the corridors of colonial power. Her path crosses that of Sato Hideo, an elite interpreter and the adopted son of the colonial government’s director-general of political affairs, played by Park Jin-young. Their guarded encounters drive a plot that folds wartime romance into espionage.
The supporting ensemble fills out the world around them. Kim Hyun-joo appears as Yoo So-ran, a sniper aligned with the resistance, while Lee Mu-saeng plays Philip Yoo, a Korean American correspondent moving through the same fraught city. Jin Sun-kyu takes the role of Sato Shinichi, the colonial director-general who sits at the top of the power structure. Behind the camera is director Yoo In-sik, whose credits include “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” and “Dr. Romantic,” working from a screenplay by Rhyu Bo-ri, known for “Do You Like Brahms?”
The production has leaned into the weight of its setting. At the initial script reading, the cast and crew observed a moment of silence for the independence fighters of the colonial period, a gesture the actors returned to when they spoke about the responsibility of the material. “Reading the script made me feel that just being part of this project would be a privilege in my acting career,” Kim You-jung said at the Seoul press conference.
The launch signals how tvN is using its anniversary year to court audiences well beyond South Korea. Netflix will carry the series in its territories on the same date as the domestic broadcast, giving the colonial-era thriller a simultaneous global release. Korean period dramas have found steady followings abroad in recent years, and platforms have increasingly commissioned or acquired them for worldwide distribution. Distributors will watch the reception of “100 Days of Deception” as a measure of appetite for historical Korean storytelling heading into the crowded fall and winter television season.
