Actor Kim Ji-hun has transformed into a domestic problematic man.
Kim Ji-hun meets viewers as Jae-hong, the younger husband of popular interior influencer Gyeong-hee (Kim Hye-soo) and an actor, in the Coupang Play series The Affair Was Just The Beginning (written by Jung Eun-kyeong and Park Su-rin, directed by Lee Chang-hee), which was released on the 31st of last month.
Jae-hong, played by Kim Ji-hun, appears outwardly affectionate and relaxed but is a problematic figure who continues a relationship with the neighbor woman Su-jeong (Cho Yeojeong) behind his wife's back; on paper he is a character easily open to criticism, but Kim Ji-hun did not treat Jae-hong as a simple villain or a device in a melodrama. By mixing his handsome looks and charm, the carefree bravado and the quick thinking to escape situations, he made the character one viewers find hard to define in a single word.
In particular, Jae-hong's true role is not limited to causing an affair. He became the pivot that links the relationships of Gyeong-hee and Su-jeong's two families and shifts the show's genre from romance to black comedy and then to crime and suspense.
The first released episodes 1 and 2 show Gyeong-hee's process of investigating suspicions of her husband's affair and Su-jeong's process of falling for Jae-hong from different points of view. After the relationship between the two is revealed, a mysterious corpse, brawls and a hit-and-run occur in succession, and, true to the title, a problem far bigger than an affair begins.
In this process Kim Ji-hun rapidly changed the tone of the drama. In front of his wife he is a playful younger husband, but with Su-jeong he reveals a dangerous charm. When crisis hits he panics yet instinctively looks for a way to survive. Jae-hong's tendency to produce an odd laugh even in serious situations keeps the work from becoming solely a heavy crime drama.
Especially in the marital chemistry with Kim Hye-soo, the familiarity that comes from a long marriage and the husband's inferiority hidden by a successful wife are revealed at the same time. Kim Ji-hun places Jae-hong between two faces — neither a husband who is wholly dominated nor a ruthless man who betrayed his wife.
In his relationship with Cho Yeojeong he shows another texture. Jae-hong is both someone who fills Su-jeong's void and an unstable factor who could cause a bigger problem at any time. More noteworthy than the shocking scenes the two actors create is Jae-hong's change, in which desire, anxiety and the fear of being discovered all surface at once.
As a result, The Affair Was Just The Beginning set an opening record on Coupang Play with a 4.6 rating as soon as it was unmasked, instantly rising as the most talked-about work of the second half of the year.
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