'Agent Kim Reactivated' airs K-drama's 1st fully AI scene

On a snowy night, a motorcycle pursues a black sedan into a mountain tunnel. A wire trap overturns the lead escort vehicle and a mysterious man wearing a mask and a North Korean military uniform approaches the sedan. A gunfight and hand-to-hand combat follow.

Overpowering the bodyguard, the man forces the terrified North Korean official into the passenger seat and speeds out of the tunnel. "You’re going to die here with me," the man says, before the sedan crashes through a bridge railing and plunges into the river below. This is the opening scene of the second episode of SBS weekend drama "Agent Kim Reactivated."

Presented as a flashback to 2008, the sequence shows the protagonist, Manager Kim (So Ji-sub) — a recruited agent — being sent to a solo covert mission into North Korea to eliminate a hardliner hostile to the South. The sequence packs in nearly every action movie staple, including car chases, a gunfight, hand-to-hand combat and an underwater escape. But So did not film a single frame.

The entire three-minute sequence was generated by artificial intelligence (AI), marking