Any theories on who Stella Young could be?

Of course, the obvious answer is the assistant, Miji. I don’t know though, i’m not convinced. I thought it might be the mistress, Hanna, but from photos, it looks like she’s left the country in the last ten years, so she’s out. My dark horse pick is Junik’s mother. She has the political savvy to start a war. She also has the means to build a submarine, good enough to fool the American military. Junik caught his mother embezzling funds, maybe she used that money to pay for the submarine. That would imply that Junik’s own mother had him assassinated, but if she‘s a loyal spy, maybe she thought her son was a noble sacrifice. Does anyone else have other guesses?

Ooo perfect timing! I jst finished ep 4 and 5 last night and couldn’t stop thinking abt it.

I'm curious why you say Miji is the obvious pick? Is it bc she appears innocent/slightly naive, or bc she’s the only other person who knew abt Junik’s secret phone besides Sang Ho, Munju, Chang Hui?

If anyone is Stella Young, I think it has to be Hanna. Her kid told Sang Ho they travel a lot, and his drawings of Sweden and Poland line up with Stella's trips for the submarine parts. It's a bit weird that her travel record shows her entering SK in 2014 with no record of leaving, and then the next entry is her entering SK again in 2015. Although I guess that could be a production slip, esp because most logs list city names while Korea is marked as Republic of Korea instead of Seoul. lol. But either way, she could have created a new identity in 2015 and started traveling under the name Kang Hanna, which is why there's no record of her leaving SK since then. Since her kid is 9, that also lines up with her possibly meeting Junik after coming into the country in 2015.

And I agree, I think Junik's mom/MIL is the stronger mastermind. Besides the tax evasion you mentioned, she has the political clout and the reach from the family's company. I just went back to ep 1 and it said that Aseom Shipping is "the nation's biggest shipping company with hundreds of vessels and a global logistics network". I even think she could also stand to gain financially if a war broke out. I think she is more likely using Stella as her front. Also, another thing that bugged me at the end of ep 5 was why they zoomed in on the envelopes that MIL was packing along with the kid’s clothes? Could that be the original contracts that Anderson Miller has the copies of? Also, where is Hanna? Why was only the MIL there packing?

Another thing: the convo that Chang Hui found on Junik’s phone might look bad without context, that makes him look like a spy, but I think it's possible that he was actually investigating his mom's ties to NK. Maybe that was when he realized the truth and changed his will to leave everything to Munju. If so, MIL is prob the person who ordered the accident to get rid of Chang Hui once he unlocked that phone, or maybe bc she was afraid Chang Hui would find something incriminating from the bugs in the house.

@T0P

Okay, so lining them up like suspects on a board…

Miji – now she’s on my radar as a mole bc of what you said lol. In ep 4 the only ppl who knew abt the planned route were Munju’s campaign team + the client (Ethan/Valkyrie). If the gas explosion came from a leak, that puts her in the suspect pool (tho would she really risk her own life being on site?). What nags me more is the phone records: if Miji could pull Junik’s text logs, then why didn’t she see what Chang Hui found? His reaction screamed *serious evidence*, not just spammy links. Unless the real msgs were hidden in an app like Telegram, outside the carrier's reach?

Hanna – still my prime Stella candidate. She is emotional, but that scene w/ Munju abt grief read like foreshadowing, like she’s performing at least some of her sorrow (tho maybe I'm overanalyzing). And that Malta photo of her, Junik, and the kid looks too much like photoshop. Could just be sloppy production (same thing as the weird “Republic of Korea” log entry in Stella's travel record), or maybe it's hinting her relationship w/ Junik wasn't what it seemed?

MIL – still the mastermind tier. Another afterthought: the “most popular design in the last 2000 yrs” line felt like something overheard thru her bugs and reused for the confrontation w/ Munju(?) But what I keep circling back to: if she rly is the mastermind, why expose/even fabricate the mistress angle? That risks Munju clawing her assets back, which did happen. Was it just to throw Munju into an emotional state so she would give up investigating Junik's death, or is there a deeper reason?

And random funny thought: what if Stella Young actually turns out to be Kim Go Eun’s character? She’s Kim Han Sang’s translator, so she’d be perfectly placed to bridge MIL and NK for the submarine deal. Arggghhh, so many questions! Hopefully today’s eps will  give us some answers!

It is said that there is not a single Stella Young, but two: Kang Han Na, who travels with his son to the different destinations linked to the materials for the submarine construction, and Im Ok Seon, who even sign as Stella Young when doing business at the US