The Scarecrow director Park Jun-woo and writer Lee Ji-hyun expressed their thoughts on finishing the work.
On the morning of the 27th, at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Jongno District, Seoul, a joint interview was held with Park Jun-woo, director of the ENA Monday-Tuesday drama The Scarecrow, and writer Lee Ji-hyun.
The Scarecrow is a crime investigation thriller about a detective who was investigating the real perpetrator of a series of murders and unexpectedly forms a cooperative relationship with a man he despised, and it is a work inspired by the Lee Chun-jae serial murders. The Scarecrow, which concluded the previous day, ended on a high note, setting a personal best with nationwide ratings of 8.1% and 8.3% in the Seoul metropolitan area.
On her feelings about the program ending, writer Lee Ji-hyun shyly opened by saying, "I started with the hope that it would finish well, but I don't know if it did."
When told the show ended with its highest ratings and that viewers' reactions were good, director Park Jun-woo said, "I didn't know it would do this well. When we first prepared it, the plan was from five years ago; we tried to get a slot but because of the subject matter it was heavy and dark, so it was often turned down. The writer and I thought about how we could get it scheduled, so we tried to add a lot of thriller elements to the early part."
Asked whether there were many cautious aspects given the subject matter, Director Park said, "Five years ago I worked with the writer on Taxi Driver. Filming finished in May 2020, and I made a small documentary related to the episodes. The people I met then were Mr. Yoon Seong-yeo and the late Mr. Kim Yong-bok."
Director Park said, "After meeting those two, Mr. Yoon Seong-yeo and Ms. Kim Hyun-jung, who is the daughter of Mr. Kim Yong-bok, became the motifs for Seok-man and Hye-jin. In passing they asked, 'Can this kind of thing be made into a drama?' At first I thought it would be difficult, but for personal reasons I decided to try it once. Even before that, I wanted to show that era through crime cases. So I nagged writer Lee Ji-hyun for six months."
Writer Lee Ji-hyun said the reason for her refusal was, "After Taxi Driver ended, he contacted me and asked if I would try writing on this subject, and I refused on the spot. Dealing with true events was burdensome, and because they said they wanted to cover the police questioning about where the child was buried, I couldn't organize how to handle that in my head at the time, so I think I refused for about six months."
She added, "I refused, but two months later he came again, gave me 'this book, read it once' and left, and he proposed as if he had forgotten that I had refused. After the drama was all over, I'm grateful that he didn't give up on me and allowed me to participate as a writer on The Scarecrow."
Did actual victims watch The Scarecrow? Director Park said, "Mr. Yoon Seong-yeo said 12 episodes was too short and asked why we didn't make it longer, and in the drama Hye-jin appears as a younger sister, but Ms. Hyun-jung has an older brother. The brother, because it's a family-bound tragedy, hasn't been able to watch the broadcast yet. He said he would prepare himself emotionally before watching."
Director Park said, "The start of this drama began because of those two, so after it ended I said we must visit them with the actors. I want to praise writer Lee Ji-hyun because the latter part of the drama is based on true events, and as a writer it must have been very difficult when asked to do the drama." He added, "What we decided early on was that we wanted it to look like a memoir of a wrong investigation, so the beginning and end had to be in the present. I requested that and insisted that the Seok-man case and the Hye-jin case must be included. The perpetrator was actually the neighborhood brother, so it had to be the neighborhood brother. That couldn't be compromised, so I asked that be preserved. I think the writer took only the skeleton and completely made this drama."
[photo] Studio Anjailen, KT Studio Genie
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