Watch Secretly Greatly

Secretly Greatly is a 2013 South Korean action-comedy film directed by Jang Cheol-soo. The movie is based on the webtoon series 'Covertness' by Hun and follows a group of North Korean spies who are sent to South Korea to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the South Korean government. The film introduces us to three North Korean sleeper agents, Won Ryu-hwan (played by Kim Soo-hyun), who takes on the identity of a village idiot; Lee Hae-rang (played by Gi-woong Park), who poses as a rockstar; and Ri Hae-jin (played by Hyun-Woo Lee), who pretends to be a high school student. The three agents are sent to South Korea to blend in with the local population and wait for further instructions.

Won Ryu-hwan, who has the main personality trait of being able to memorize anything he hears or sees, had managed to infiltrate a small village in South Korea, where he pretends to be a dim-witted young man doing odd jobs for the villagers to make ends meet. Lee Hae-rang, a former North Korean Army soldier and a talented singer, pretends to be a rockstar and performs on stages around the country, which helps him gather valuable intelligence about South Korea's pop culture. Lastly, Ri Hae-jin, a top-performing North Korean spy, poses as a high school student and works to keep her cover while gathering valuable intelligence.

Despite their best efforts to blend in with the South Korean population, the three spies end up getting involved with the locals, made connections with them and starting to care about their wellbeing. Ryu-hwan befriends a group of local kids, and even becomes a maternal figure to a young girl with an abusive mother. Hae-rang falls in love with his manager who is a struggling actress, and Hae-jin starts developing feelings for the class president of the school she goes to.

Things start to take a turn when their leader suddenly goes missing, Ryu-hwan and the other two spies start to attract the attention of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea, and they all become hunted fugitives. The North Korean spies team up to escape the NIS, completing their final mission to find the “Absolute Patriot”, which is when their mission finally gets complicated. They realize that their ultimate mission is an elaborate political scheme created by their own agency and Kim Jong-un, who is constantly watching their every move.

Their loyalty to their motherland is tested as the three North Korean spies weigh the consequences of their continuing their mission and betraying the people they've come to know or to defect and leave their homeland forever.

Overall, Secretly Greatly is an action-comedy with strong themes of friendship, politics, and loyalty that captivates its audience from start to finish. It portrays the cruelty and idealism of North Korea but at the same time, humanizes the North Korean spies, blurring the lines between good and evil. Through its engaging storyline, and the character development, the film serves as a poignant commentary on the realities of life in North Korea, deceit, and the power of friendships.

Secretly Greatly is a 2014 action movie with a runtime of 2 hours and 4 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.8.