🔥park jinyoung as a three-language interpreter in 1940s gyeongseong

100 days of deception (100일의 거짓말) started tonight on tvN and i've been going back and forth on the casting. the setup: kim you jung is lee ga kyeong, the best pickpocket in gyeongseong, who becomes an undercover spy for the independence movement and gets into the japanese government-general. park jinyoung plays kim tae woong, who also goes by sato hideo, adopted son of the inspector-general (jin sun kyu), back in korea after about 10 years and working as an interpreter in japanese, english and korean.

on paper that role is a lot. a guy with two names, raised by the second most powerful man in the colonial administration, translating for them. the character only works if you can't tell what he's thinking, and park jinyoung's whole thing is a kind of warm, slightly sad face. in a lot of his dramas you know where his heart is from minute one. that's my worry. the case for him: he's been doing period stuff and quieter roles for years, he's not the idol actor people still talk about, and director yoo in shik (extraordinary attorney woo, dr. romantic) doesn't usually cast for name value. jinyoung also said reading the script made him feel how important it is to know our past, which tells me he took the era seriously.

kim you jung as a pickpocket i have zero doubts about. she's done period pieces since she was a kid. so it comes down to whether jinyoung can play cold. if he can, this is the role that changes how people see him. if he can't, sato hideo turns into a nice guy in a suit and the whole spy tension goes flat. i'm leaning toward giving him the benefit of the doubt for the first four episodes