General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Confidential Assignment 2: International (공조 2: 인터내셔날)

Confidential Assignment 2: International (공조 2: 인터내셔날) is a 2022 South Korean action comedy directed by Lee Seok-hoon and the sequel to the 2017 hit Confidential Assignment. It reunites North Korean special agent Rim Cheol-ryeong (Hyun Bin) and South Korean detective Kang Jin-tae (Yoo Hae-jin), now joined by an FBI agent, Jack (Daniel Henney), for a three-way joint investigation into a global criminal organization.¹^•² Released on September 7, 2022, ahead of the Chuseok holiday, it sold 6,983,077 admissions in South Korea for a gross of $52,050,210.³

Key fact	Detail
Release	September 7, 2022, South Korea; rated 15; 128 minutes³
Director	Lee Seok-hoon, previously of The Pirates and The Himalayas¹
Main cast	Hyun Bin (Rim Cheol-ryeong), Yoo Hae-jin (Kang Jin-tae), Daniel Henney (Jack), Im Yoon-a (Park Min-young), Jin Seon-kyu (Jang Myeong-jun)⁴
Production	JK Film and CJ ENM; distributed by CJ ENM³^•⁴
Box office	6,983,077 admissions, $52,050,210 gross, 2,389 screens³
Holiday performance	First place with 2.83 million viewers over the four-day Chuseok holiday, September 9 to 12⁵
Awards	Best Supporting Actress for Im Yoon-a at the 58th Daejong Film Festival; Popular Star Awards for Im Yoon-a and Daniel Henney at the Blue Dragon Film Awards⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The film opens in New York, where Jang Myeong-jun (Jin Seon-kyu), the leader of a global drug organization, escapes FBI custody and flees to Seoul using a fake passport and a large sum of money.¹^•⁸ Pyongyang sends Rim Cheol-ryeong back to South Korea to catch him and retrieve the money, while the FBI dispatches agent Jack to bring the criminals to the United States on charges of killing FBI officials.⁸^•⁹ The three lawmen, each loyal to his own country and each withholding information from the others, form an uneasy triangular alliance.¹⁰

As in the first film, the partners cooperate while hiding their differing purposes. Kang Jin-tae, wounded in the line of duty, has been moved to a desk job in cybercrimes, and his household becomes the unlikely hub of the operation when all three agents converge on his living room.¹¹ Im Yoon-a plays Kang's sister-in-law Park Min-young, who in the first film had a crush on Rim; in the sequel her romantic attention shifts to Jack, driving much of the comedy.²

Cast and characters

Hyun Bin and Yoo Hae-jin reprise their roles from the 2017 film. Reviewers identified the pairing as the film's core: the stern North Korean agent and the bumbling family-man South Korean detective remain, in James Marsh's phrase, the film's most meaningful relationship.² Daniel Henney's Jack, who mostly speaks English and only sporadic Korean, adds a rivalry with Rim that plays out both in the investigation and in competing for attention.¹⁰ Jin Seon-kyu plays the villain Jang Myeong-jun, a drug lord once tasked by North Korea with producing and selling drugs abroad to supply the country with cash.¹⁰ The supporting cast includes Jang Yeong-nam as Kang's wife and Park Min-ha.¹¹

Production and direction

Kim Sung-hoon directed the 2017 original; Lee Seok-hoon took over for the sequel.¹ Lee described the tonal shift from the first film: where the original carried a dramatic thread of Rim avenging his wife's death, the sequel aims for the pleasures of a light genre film, adding action and procedural fun.¹² The subtitle "International" reflects both the New York-set opening and the addition of the American agent, expanding the inter-Korean pairing into a three-country dynamic that reviewers read as a playful mirror of South Korea, North Korea, and United States relations.¹⁰^•¹³

Box office

The film opened as the only new Korean release before Chuseok, Korea's autumn harvest holiday, a peak moviegoing period.¹⁴ Per the Korean Film Council's KOBIS system, it took first place with 2.83 million viewers over the four holiday days from September 9 to 12.⁵ It had drawn 4.73 million viewers by Sunday, September 18.¹⁵ Its final total of 6,983,077 admissions made it the fifth most-admitted film in South Korea for 2022, behind The Roundup, Top Gun: Maverick, Hansan: Rising Dragon, and others, and the third highest-grossing Korean film of the year.³^•¹⁶^•⁷ It was one of several 2022 sequels to outperform, in a year when nine of the top ten films at the Korean box office were sequels.¹⁷

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 83% Tomatometer score from three critics, with fewer than 50 audience ratings recorded.⁴ Critics praised the comedy while faulting the action as generic: James Marsh of the South China Morning Post gave three of five stars, writing that "despite its rather generic action beats, the humour is first rate and the laughs come thick and fast," and John Lui of The Straits Times gave four of five, calling it "a buddy cop comedy better than anything Hollywood has made in ages."⁴ The Kai-Fong review graded it B, crediting Im Yoon-a's comic performance as the engine of the second half, while noting the plot is deliberately overcooked.¹¹ At the industry awards, Im Yoon-a won Best Supporting Actress at the 58th Daejong Film Festival, and she and Daniel Henney received the Blue Dragon Film Awards' Popular Star Award.⁶^•⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released 2020s and later

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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