Jung Hae-in

Jung debuted in Bride of the Century in 2014 and spent three years in the parts Korean television hands to handsome newcomers: a small role in Reply 1988, the vampire medical series Blood, a musketeer, a couple of period films. Nothing about that stretch predicted the run that followed.

2017 did it. Han Woo-tak in While You Were Sleeping and Captain Yoo in Prison Playbook were both supporting roles and both landed, and Something in the Rain gave him his first lead the following year. What he is good at is gentleness that never reads as weakness. Something in the Rain and One Spring Night are slow, adult romances built almost entirely on his ability to remain quietly decent while everyone around him is behaving badly, and they only work because he never plays the decency as virtue.

D.P. broke the pattern. As An Jun-ho, the conscript assigned to hunt down army deserters, he is hollowed out steadily by the institution he is serving, and the show's register is bleak in a way none of the romances are. It is the performance that made the rest of his range credible.

Since then he has kept both lanes open: the 1980s campus melodrama Snowdrop, the science-fiction thriller Connect, the coup drama 12.12: The Day, the crime film I, the Executioner in 2024, and straight back to romantic comedy with Love Next Door. He also carries a substantial variety and hosting career on the side, which is its own form of Korean stardom.