If Park Shin Hye always plays a poor bullied girl, Lee Min Ho always plays an arrogant rich guy, then Ji Chang Wook is the designated poor and unlucky guy of K-dramas.
If you take a look at all of Ji Chang Wook’s roles, then you’d notice a pattern: the actor is always playing poor characters, and has tried various jobs, from stevedores to vegetable selling. Despite his outstanding appearance, it seems that Ji Chang Wook’s acting is suitable to portray suffering, and below are 5 prime examples of such roles:
Smile Again
Born in 1987, Ji Chang Wook nailed his first leading role in the 2010 K-drama “Smile Again”, which eventually won him a Best New Actor award in the following year.
In the drama, Ji Chang Wook assumed the role of Dong Hae, whose mother is sick and whose father abandoned them, resulting in a miserable life. Even worse, Dong Hae, who dreamed of becoming an athlete, later suffered from a life-altering injury, and his girlfriend dumped him on the same day,
It was perhaps after the success of “Smile Again” that Ji Chang Wook started to be type-casted for poor and struggling characters.
Bachelor’s Vegetable Store
From the name of this series alone, it’s pretty obvious that Ji Chang Wook in “Bachelor’s Vegetable Store” didn’t enjoy a cushy life. The series is actually based on a true story, which is about a businessman who transformed a vegetable store into a franchise with 33 locations.
Ji Chang Wook played the main character in this K-drama, who, despite earning successes later on, still doesn’t have one single love and dedicated his whole life to vegetables and gardening.
Healer
In the famous K-drama “Healer”, Ji Chang Wook took on the role of male lead Seo Jung Hoo, who had a tragic background and thus has grown cold and silent in his adulthood. To earn money, he works for the underworld under the alias “Healer”, and would often injure himself and put his life in danger.
While Ji Chang Wook is not too poor in “Healer”, he’s obviously not too happy either. He has only one person by his side, and has to constantly be on the radar to protect her.
Fabricated City
In the movie “Fabricated City”, Ji Chang Wook transformed into an unemployed gamer who spends all his time playing games and eating instant ramen at an Internet cafe. He is not only broke and jobless, Ji Chang Wook’s character also gets in huge trouble when he is wrongly accused of murder. Not long after, his mother also passed away.
Backstreet Rookie
In “Backstreet Rookie”, Ji Chang Wook finally gets to play a boss who no longer struggles with finance. But instead of taking on a role as a CEO or a chaebol son, he was only “promoted” to become the owner of a convenience store. Because of this, fans joke that Ji Chang Wook and rich characters are simply not meant to be.
Source: Dienanh
