Actor Kim Young-kwang is showing back-to-back box office strength in 2025 through Walking On Thin Ice.
Kim Young-kwang plays Lee Kyung in the KBS 2TV weekend miniseries Walking On Thin Ice, portraying a special revenge narrative. In the drama, Lee Kyung is a dual character who works as an art instructor by day and a club MD and drug dealer by night. By chance, his identity is revealed to a parent, Eun-soo (played by Lee Young-ae), leading to an uncomfortable partnership.
#1 warm exterior and cold interior
Lee Kyung is an "everyone's ideal son" art instructor who teaches children, but he turns into a completely different person at night. Especially in front of Eun-soo, who learned his secret, he displayed a stark duality by erasing emotion and pursuing only profit with a cold demeanor. Added to this, Lee Kyung's past, gradually revealed, added depth to the character. The wounds of Lee Kyung, who became estranged from his family after being involved in an irreversible incident, were gradually exposed.
Attention is focused on what made Lee Kyung inevitably develop such a ruthless side within the tangled narrative and whether he will be able to find happiness going forward.
#2 ambivalent feelings toward Eun-soo
At first, Lee Kyung intended to use Eun-soo only as his shield and a means to make money. But seeing Eun-soo's reality, where she has no choice but to endure for her family, he gradually felt pity and empathy. Especially in the 5th episode, during a transaction of drugs, Lee Kyung handed shoes to Eun-soo, who lost hers in a chase with swindlers, and when Eun-soo said she would spend her earnings only for her family, he asked, "Does Kang Eun-soo have nothing she wants to do?", hinting that he began treating her sincerely.
Kim Young-kwang finely portrayed this emotional fracture with sharp eye work and variations in pacing, realistically depicting the character's internal change and once again proving his position as an actor strong in genre pieces.
#3 acting that enhanced the persuasiveness of a brutal revenge
As Lee Kyung's past is slowly revealed, he deliberately approached Hwi-rim (played by Do Sang-woo), whom he hates, and focused on revenge by gradually plunging him into the quagmire of drugs. In the 7th episode, Hwi-rim, trapped in Lee Kyung's snare, suffered severe addiction and hallucinations, eventually stabbing his own hand with a fountain pen.
Kim Young-kwang amplified the drama's vitality by portraying the process of bringing down Hwi-rim with cynical looks and emotional depiction. Rather than a common revenge story, he focused on the character's emotions and anger and fully realized that through dense acting, showing his true acting caliber. Attention is on what form the revenge he completes in the remaining episodes will take.
From this year's Netflix series Trigger to Walking On Thin Ice, Kim Young-kwang has been completing twist characters with duality suited to each role, running a nonstop streak of hits. Riding this momentum, he is expected to show another new face in the film First Ride, scheduled to be released on the 29th, drawing attention already.
Meanwhile, Walking On Thin Ice, in which Kim Young-kwang appears, airs every Saturday and Sunday at 9:20 p.m. on KBS 2TV.
[Photo] "Walking On Thin Ice"
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