Agent Kim Reactivated's Cast Reunites as Series Ends at 23.1%

On Friday, July 25, a small group of people will sit down together for dinner and then watch television. That might sound unremarkable — except the show they will be watching is the finale of South Korea's biggest drama of 2026, and the people sharing the screen will be the cast and crew of "Agent Kim Reactivated" (SBS), watching alongside every other viewer in the country as the show airs its tenth and final episode for the very first time.

According to multiple Korean media reports confirmed on July 23, So Ji-sub, Choi Dae-hoon, Yoon Kyung-ho, and Seo Su-min — the four principal leads — have planned to gather with key production staff at an undisclosed location for a meal before sitting down to experience the finale together. It is the kind of closing ritual that only happens when a production becomes something larger than itself, and "Agent Kim Reactivated" has become exactly that over its four-week run.

The finale airs at 9:45 p.m. KST on July 25, five minutes earlier than the show's usual timeslot — a quiet scheduling adjustment that SBS made without fanfare, as if to make sure no viewer misses a single moment of it.

How a Webtoon Adaptation Rewrote the 2026 Drama Season

The story of "Agent Kim Reactivated" is, at its core, deceptively familiar: a retired secret agent, years removed from the life, discovers his quiet civilian existence cannot protect the one thing he loves most. When his daughter Min-ji is taken, Kim Bu-jang — formerly known only by the code name 66, once the most lethal operative in the North-South intelligence circuit — stops being a savings bank accountant and starts being himself again.

What made the adaptation of the beloved Korean webtoon so effective was less the premise than the casting and the emotional register it established from the very first scene. So Ji-sub, returning to television after four years and to SBS specifically after more than a decade away, played Kim Bu-jang not as an archetypal action hero but as a deeply tired man carrying something enormous. The show built its emotional stakes from that quietness — which made the action sequences, when they arrived, land harder than genre conventions would typically allow.

The audience response was immediate. Episode 1 debuted at 9.5 percent nationwide — the highest premiere rating for any miniseries in 2026. By Episode 2, the show had climbed to 15.7 percent, the fastest any Korean drama in five years had crossed that threshold within two broadcast weeks. The momentum continued: 18.8 percent by Episode 3, 21.6 percent by Episode 4. When Episode 8 aired on July 18, the national average reached 23.1 percent, with a metropolitan Seoul peak of 23.6 percent and an instant high of 26.2 percent — making it the second-highest-rated SBS Friday-Saturday drama in the network's history, behind only Penthouse 2's benchmark of 29.2 percent.

Among viewers in the 20-to-49 demographic, Episode 8 averaged 7.6 percent and peaked at 8.59 percent — numbers that confirmed the show was not only dominating the ratings but doing so with the audience segment that most shapes advertising value and industry perception. Across all Korean broadcasts in 2026, regardless of category, "Agent Kim Reactivated" now ranks first for the year.

Son Na-eun: Finally Living as Herself

For some members of the cast, "Agent Kim Reactivated" represented something more personal than a career milestone. Former Apink member Son Na-eun, who plays a pivotal role in the series, gave a candid interview this week reflecting on what the drama had meant for her sense of identity as a performer.

"I've always felt that people were evaluating me," she said on the YouTube channel YouTube Ha Ji-young. "Being a singer, that awareness of being judged became even more heightened. I used to restrict myself a lot — telling myself there were certain things I couldn't do, certain ways I couldn't be seen." She described a period in her mid-twenties when ordinary tasks — visiting a bank alone, walking outside by herself — were genuinely difficult to navigate.

"I didn't change overnight," she added. "But I've noticed that I've become a different person. Now I can talk comfortably with people I've just met. I feel like I'm finally living as myself." Asked about working alongside So Ji-sub for the first time, she recalled the script reading session: "I grew up watching his work. Just sitting in the same room as him — that alone was a 'wow' moment." Her performance in "Agent Kim Reactivated" has earned some of the most generous critical notices of her acting career, with reviewers noting a naturalism and spontaneity that her earlier dramatic roles had not always found space for.

The warmth on set extended beyond the principal cast. A photo shared this week by the mother of child actress Lee Na-yeon — who plays a young girl central to one of the drama's key emotional subplots — went quietly viral. The image showed Yoon Kyung-ho and his on-screen wife Kim Ji-young in matching Marine Corps–branded clothing, beaming alongside Lee Na-yeon between takes. "They treated her like she was truly part of the family," her mother wrote. "We are so grateful for memories like this."

After the Finale: Guam, a Theater, and Two Special Broadcasts

As the drama winds down, the team's next chapter is already taking shape. SBS confirmed this week that a group of cast members and key production staff are in discussions about a reward trip to Guam, tentatively planned for August. Exact dates and the full list of participants have not been finalized, and the network has been careful to describe the plans as still being organized — but the fact that the conversation is happening at all reflects the kind of collective pride and cohesion that the production generated over its run.

One cast member will be conspicuously absent. Lee Dong-ha, who played the cold-blooded villain Nam Sil-jang with an intensity that generated significant online discussion, has committed to the opening run of a theater production — a staging of The Seagull beginning August 9. His wife, actress So Jin of Girls' Day, has been among the most vocal supporters of his dramatic performance throughout the series. "He won't be at the beach," she noted warmly online, "but he'll be on stage."

Internationally, the drama spent three consecutive weeks atop Netflix's global non-English TV chart and then climbed further to top the platform's overall worldwide rankings — including English-language titles — with 9.1 million views in a single week. The series entered the Top 10 in 72 countries, posting strong numbers in markets including France, Germany, Canada, Colombia, Italy, and Sweden. So Ji-sub held the No. 1 spot in Korean drama actor buzz rankings for three consecutive weeks through mid-July.

For viewers not yet ready to let go, SBS has scheduled two special retrospective broadcasts on July 31 and August 1 — a curated look back through the drama's defining moments before the show officially closes its chapter in the 2026 cultural conversation.

The finale itself leaves Kim Bu-jang at his most exposed: surrounded by forces from his own agency, his daughter taken hostage, facing a final reckoning with the man he was ordered to protect. Whatever choice he makes in that last hour will be the answer to every question the show spent ten episodes asking about him. On Friday night, all of South Korea — and, going by Netflix's numbers, much of the world — will be watching to find out what that answer looks like.