The Spy Gone NorthMovies like The Spy Gone North
- Key Features:
- Spy, Undercover operation, Political intrigue, North Korea, South Korea, Espionage, International relations, Betrayal, Deception, Cold War, Geopolitics
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Political thriller fans, Espionage enthusiasts, Korean cinema aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Suspense → Revelation
The Spy Gone North

South Korea, 1993. An agent of the National Intelligence Service is sent to Beijing to infiltrate a group of North Korean officials with the ultimate goal of obtaining information about their nuclear program.
The Spy Gone North
Three elite North Korean sleeper agents live under cover for so long that they believe their cover stories are their real identities. They are shocked when they are ordered to kill one another or face death at the hands of an elite hit team.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

After a high-ranking North Korean official requests asylum, KCIA Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho and Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy, known as Donglim, who is deeply embedded within their agency. When the spy begins leaking top secret intel that could jeopardize national security, the two units are each assigned to investigate each other.

When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.

Two spies share a secret bond, despite their loyalties. A North Korean assassin is sent to Seoul to kill a dissident, but instead he teams up with a South Korean agent in search for revenge.

Betrayed and on the run, a former North Korean agent tries to seek revenge on the man who killed his wife, find his missing daughter, and uncover the secrets hidden inside the eyeglasses of a dead man.

The son of a North Korean spy decides to follow in his father's footsteps to protect his little sister.

North Korea's 8th Special Forces hijack a shipment of CTX, a potent new liquid explosive, and threatens South Korea as part of a plot to re-unify the two countries. Ryu and Lee, special agents of O.P., South Korea's secret intelligence service, attempt to track down the terrorists and find the CTX. Meanwhile Hee, the 8th's ultra-bad female sniper, resurfaces to wreak havoc and haunt Ryu.

Two North Korean soldiers are killed in the border area between North and South Korea, prompting an investigation by a neutral body. The sergeant is the shooter, but the lead investigator, a Swiss-Korean woman, receives differing accounts from the two sides.

A real-life undercover thriller about two ordinary men who embark on an outrageously dangerous ten-year mission to penetrate the world's most secretive and brutal dictatorship: North Korea.

After completing his required decade of military service and being honored as a hero, a North Korean sergeant makes a sudden shocking attempt to defect to the South, risking life and limb for the chance to finally determine his own destiny.

A son to a high-ranked official in North Korea commits a series of murders going across the countries around the world. The movie depicts the following events as South Korea, North Korea and Interpol start chasing down after him.

When a crime organization from North Korea crosses borders and enters South Korean soil, a South Korean detective must cooperate with a North Korean detective to investigate their whereabouts.

Follows Rim Chul-ryung heading back to South Korea in pursuit of a brutal and secret criminal organization. He teams up again with Kang Jin-tae, who volunteers to work with the North Korean in order to get back on the investigation team after a mistake landed him in the cyber crime department.

Amid a coup, a North Korean agent escapes south with the country's injured leader in an attempt to keep him alive and prevent a Korean war.

In 1933, when Korea was under Japanese occupation, five people in Gyeongseong are suspected to be "Phantom" spies of the anti-Japanese organization.

Chinese secret agent Da-hee receives intel that a large number of illegal firearms are being smuggled into Korea and is sent to investigate the case. She meets Su-han, who is supposed to help her with the case, but due to his lackluster skills they fight over trivial things. But as their witnesses are suddenly murdered, the two of them quickly become the prime suspects.

In Japanese-occupied Korea, three freedom fighters are assigned a mission to assassinate a genocidal military leader and his top collaborator. But the plan goes completely awry amidst double-crossings, counter-assassinations, and a shocking revelation about one of the assassins' past.

Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.

When the investigation of 'Koreagate' takes place, Park Yong-gak, a former KCIA director who knows everything about the government's operations, heads to the United States in exile.

Sonja Wigert, Scandinavia's most acclaimed female movie star, enlists as a spy for Swedish intelligence but ends up becoming entangled with the German Reichskommissar Terboven.

On the day of the U.S. presidential election in 2024, a team of elite mercenaries embark on a secret CIA mission to abduct North Korea's politician in an underground bunker below the Korean Demilitarized Zone. However, they get caught in the crossfire which causes tensions to escalate to the brink of World War III.

On 31 January 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated South Korea in a failed mission to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. In revenge, the South Korean military assembled a team of 31 criminals on the island of Silmido to kill Kim Il-sung for a suicide mission to redeem their honor, but was cancelled, leaving them frustrated. It is loosely based on a military uprising in the 1970s.

An undercover cop has his loyalties tested when the boss of the corporate gang he's spent years infiltrating dies.

A failing webtoon artist finds he's drawn a target on his own back after publishing a story containing real secrets from his former life as a superspy.

A disgruntled henchman teams up with an ambitious prosecutor to bring down a leading presidential candidate and the news editor behind him who is truly pulling the strings.

In 2029, an elite police squad combats an anti-reunification terrorist group while another enemy lurks nearby.

A member of Coast Guard Platoon 23, Private Kang monitors a high-infiltration stretch of beach lined with barbed-wire fencing. Driven by the belief that killing a spy is the highest honor, he waits for a chance to prove his worth.

Navy SEALS, headed by Lt. Bobby James, are dispatched to North Korea on a covert mission, all in an effort to take out a missile site...

Ahn Soo-ji and Lee Jae-joon, who are oblivious to each other's real profession as secret agents, are in an ill-fated relationship. Three years later, they accidentally meet targeting the same enemy.

Ha Yoon-ju becomes the newest member of a unit within the Korean Police Forces Special Crime Department that specializes in surveillance activities on high-profile criminals. She teams up with Hwang Sang-jun, the veteran leader of the unit, and tries to track down James who is the cold-hearted leader of an armed criminal organization.

When a group of terrorists kidnap some Korean tourists, a diplomat is tasked with their rescue. He must team up with a special agent to ensure their safe return.

Ex intelligence agent Ki-heon is tasked with safely transporting Seo Bok, the first ever human clone, who holds the secret of eternal life. Several forces try to take control of Seo Bok to serve their own agendas.

Security commander Chun Doo-gwang and the officers following him organize a coup. Lee Tae-shin, a stubborn Capital Garrison Command commander who believes soldiers should not take political action, fights against Chun Doo-gwang.

For 15 days, a politician and his wife navigate a scandal after their daughter goes missing on the eve of the national elections.

In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.

After a series of assassinations in Nanking, a Japanese spy master gathers a group of suspects in a mansion, then a tense cat-and-mouse game erupts as the Chinese agent tries to keep his or her identity a secret.

Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight.

A delivery man has to flee for his life when he is framed for the assassination of a political candidate and the evidence against him begins to accumulate.

Convinced that his subtenant is a spy and an enemy of the state, Ilija Čvorović falls into deep paranoia which leads to an absurd and destructive chain of events.

When straight arrow FBI agent Roy Clayton heads up the investigation into a dangerous international conspiracy, all clues seem to lead back to former U.S. Special Operations officer Samir Horn.

A Korean man in China takes an assassination job in South Korea to make money and find his missing wife. But when the job is botched, he is forced to go on the run from the police and the gangsters who paid him.

A futuristic film about a crisis near the brink of war after three leaders are kidnapped by a North Korean nuclear submarine in a coup d’état during a summit between the two Koreas and the United States.

Diplomats from the North and South Korean embassies in Somalia attempt a daring joint escape from Mogadishu when the outbreak of civil war leaves them stranded.

While his girlfriend is away on a trip, retired assassin Bang Ui-kang is tasked with looking after her friend's 17-year-old daughter. After a street attack, Bang Ui-kang becomes embroiled in a murder investigation and dangerous trafficking gang.

An intricate thriller about an ordinary man thrust into the biggest theft of Soviet information of the Cold War. Right after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A French businessman based in Moscow, Pierre Froment, makes an unlikely connection with Grigoriev, a senior KGB officer disenchanted with what the Communist ideal has become under Brezhnev. Grigoriev begins passing Froment highly sensitive information about the Soviet spy network in the US.

A martial arts-infused spy thriller set in 1937 Beijing. A time when China was lurching between revolution, prosperity, and chaos.

A corrupt customs official joins forces with a vicious gangster to form the most powerful crime partnership in Busan.

Detective Woo is on the trail of the mysterious gangster Sungmin, a master of disguise who always manages to elude his pursuers. Eventually, the cop tracks down and confronts the master-criminal in the suburbs of a coal-mining town.

After his mission is exposed, an undercover CIA operative stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan must fight his way out, alongside his Afghan translator, to an extraction point in Kandahar, all whilst avoiding elite enemy forces and foreign spies tasked with hunting them down.

An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.

North Korea. The last communist country in the world. Unknown, hermetic and fascinating. Formerly known as “The Hermit Kingdom” for its attempts to remain isolated, North Korea is one of the largest sources of instability as regards world peace. It also has the most militarized border in the world, and the flow of impartial information, both going in and out, is practically non-existent. As the recent Sony-leaks has shown, it is the perfect setting for a propaganda war.

927 AD. The Killer-Blade Army has toppled the ruling dynasty, plunging the kingdom into chaos. The only remaining heir, Prince Jung-Hyun is living in exile, unaware of his family's dark fate. Still loyal to the dynasty, the beautiful and deadly warrior Soha sets out to find Jung-Hyun and guide him to become the great leader he was born to be. But with the Army's greatest assassins and the criminal underworld hunting them, Soha and Jung-Hyun are swept into an explosive, non-stop battle of swords, wits and bloodshed as they fight to reclaim the fallen throne.

Russian and British submarines with nuclear missiles on board both vanish from sight without a trace. England and Russia both blame each other as James Bond tries to solve the riddle of the disappearing ships. But the KGB also has an agent on the case.

Cold War spy Greville Wynne and his Russian source try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Shabana Khan, a special agent, is entrusted with the task of assassinating a deadly arms dealer by the Indian Intelligence Agency.

From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, he finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire.

Carl Hamilton manages to infiltrate an international gang that has stolen advanced Swedish GPS-guided missiles. But the league is subjected to a sudden deadly attack by a well drilled group of mercenaries of unknown clients. Hamilton escapes the massacre, but the rockets have disappeared without a trace.

Sly and dry intelligence agent Harry Palmer is tasked with investigating British Intelligence security, and is soon enmeshed in a world of double-dealing, kidnap and murder when he finds a traitor operating at the heart of the secret service.

Follows the story of underground workers who risked their lives to send intelligence and defend the motherland, set after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor when the Wang Jingwei regime declared war on Britain and the U.S.

Jang Tae-Young is a popular trouble shooter in the criminal world. He is cold and ambitious. He dreams of building a casino hotel one day. A reporter then goes to Jang Tae-Young.

An exceptionally talented face reader becomes entangled in a bloody power struggle between a child king and his uncle who plans to usurp the throne.

Sung-soo has everything a man could want: a beautiful wife and children, a comfortable home and luxury car, and plenty of money in the bank. When he learns that his estranged brother, Sung-chul, has gone missing, haunting memories of their troubled past urge him to visit his brother’s apartment in search of answers.

In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there.

Eric O'Neill, a low-level surveillance expert with the FBI, believes he is accomplishing his dream of becoming a full-fledged agent, with his unexpected promotion and assignment to clerk for Robert Hanssen, a renowned senior agent with 25 years in the FBI. However, he soon learns the reason for his promotion is to gain Hanssen's trust and find proof that he is a traitor to the country. Determined to draw the suspected double-agent out of deep cover, O'Neill finds himself in a lethal game of spy vs. spy, where nothing is as it seems.

Ariel, a young French Jew, decides to leave his family to go to Israel and secretly become an agent of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. After years of training, his first mission is in Paris to steal secrets from Remy Prieur, a French atomic scientist.

While working undercover as a bodyguard to arms dealer Harry, former-soldier-turned-secret-service-agent Ewan survives a bloody shootout with a member of an Islamic terrorist cell who steals Harry's briefcase full of Semtex explosives and escapes. Ewan's spymasters task Ewan with hunting down the cell members and retrieving the briefcase.

A suspected criminal mastermind escapes from police custody, throwing the city into turmoil. With the police department now divided, rival police chiefs are forced to take their fight to the streets of Hong Kong with deadly consequences.

A spy navigates the precarious terrain of love and survival during an undercover mission in Syria.

Arctic cold and paranoia take their toll as Korean explorers are beset by the same strange occurrences that preceded the disappearance of a British team in 1922.

A young operative is sent on a mission to follow an older agent who's behavior has come into question.

A special agent has for 8 years been deep undercover in Asia's lucrative organized crime trade as he plays protégé to one of the key players, Banker. Now, Nick has but he has started to feel loyalty to his new environment and to the money.

Detective Nam-soon goes undercover with her partner Detective Ahn to investigate the counterfeit money. She discovers that one loyal henchman, Sad Eyes, a beautiful swordsman with a pale, blank face, is related to the truth. Nam-soon and Sad Eyes confront each other in a series of duels and become confused between love and obligation to duty.

Nicknamed after a human-devouring spirit, the ruthless leader of an overseas black ops team takes up a dangerous mission in a city riddled with spies.

A journalist gets caught up in a terrorist plot in Moscow while investigating the Russian secret service.

As Israel is rocked by a series of terrorist bombings, a US senator's daughter is killed in one bloody explosion. Now, ex-Mossad agent Etan must lead an elite, covert team of agents and mercenaries to find the man responsible—the elusive “Engineer.” Can they find and destroy the madman before more innocent lives are lost?

A high-school teacher in 1983 and a detective in 2015 join forces through their dreams to change the perilous fate of the woman they both love—30 years apart.

In London, an airport baggage handler is forced by French and British intelligence agents to seduce the wife of a businessman with ties to Syrian terrorists.

Jack Ryan, as a young covert CIA analyst, uncovers a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy with a terrorist attack.

In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet mole within his former colleagues at the heart of MI6.

A gang of South Korean thieves team up with a Hong Kong crew to steal a diamond necklace from a heavily-guarded casino safe in Macau. As the cops close in, old betrayals — and misunderstandings — resurface.

Carter, who awakens two months into a deadly pandemic originating from the DMZ that has already devastated US and North Korea. He who has no recollections of his past finds a mysterious device in his head, and a lethal bomb in his mouth. A voice in his ears gives him orders to avoid getting killed and he's thrown into a mysterious operation while the CIA and North Korean coup chase him close.

A young Western woman is recruited by the Mossad to go undercover in Tehran where she becomes entangled in a complex triangle with her handler and her subject.

Wanted criminal "Helios" and his assistant stole a quantity of uranium and plan to produce weapons of mass destruction. They are planning to trade with a terrorist organization in Hong Kong. Chief Inspector Lee Yinming and Inspector Fan Kaming lead the Counter Terrorism Response Unit of the Hong Kong Police Force. Along with a Chinese senior official, a physics professor, and two South Korean weapon experts, they hope to defuse a crisis sufficient to destroy the world.

A young Korean man surpasses his difficult childhood by becoming a powerful prosecutor, but soon learns that real power comes at a price.

A career-long undercover Hong Kong cop is sent to Mainland China when his former protégé becomes the primary suspect in a murder.

Agent Vinod sets out on a secret mission to find the reason behind the death of Rajan, his colleague. Terror strikes when he unfolds an even bigger conspiracy.

Though it places his own life in danger, a look-alike commoner secretly takes the place of a poisoned king to save his country from falling into chaos.

On the day of his retirement, a veteran CIA agent learns that his former protégé has been arrested in China, is sentenced to die the next morning in Beijing, and that the CIA is considering letting that happen to avoid an international scandal.

To nab a sales manager who's at large after murdering his family, a detective investigates the man's colleagues, who seem to be hiding something.

When police is about to apprehend a famous gang of bank robbers, an elite sniper opens fire from a roof, thus facilitating the flee of his accomplices. However, one of them is seriously injured, which compromises the plans of the thieves.

Tragedy, betrayal and a mysterious discovery fuel a woman's vengeance for the loss of her tribe and family.

Korea’s biggest network marketing scam reveals a far greater network of corruption and conspiracy lurking underneath.

Mantis, an ace assassin, returns to the contract killer industry after a hiatus, encountering his trainee friend Jae-yi and a retired legendary killer Dok-go, who now runs the organization.

An ex-CIA operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.

Alex Thomas was the man in charge of protecting the president but, when the time came to fulfill his duties, everything just went wrong. His conscience haunted by a bullet, and his devotion to his country stronger than ever, Alex teams with a seasoned reporter to navigate a treacherous web of lies, unlocking a dangerous conspiracy, and enter a deadly world in which skilled assassins and highly-trained ex-special ops lurk in every shadow.

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

Hong Gil-dong is an infallible private detective with an exceptional memory and quirky personality. While chasing the only target he failed to find, he gets entangled in a much bigger conspiracy than he bargained for.

