Idol-actress Seolhyun is falling behind in the acting realm with all of her projects seeing little successes.
After achieving popularity with girl group AOA and establishing a career of her own, Kim Seolhyun left FNC Entertainment, her agency for the past 10 years. Now, she is pursuing an acting career, and showing huge ambitions in the realm. Her first project after leaving FNC is the ENA series “Summer Strike”, but unfortunately, it is not doing well.
In particular, when it first aired on November 21st, “Summer Strike” recorded a viewership of 0.633%. So far, the series’ rating peaked at 0.697% in the third episode, which aired on November 28th. Then, in episode 5, which is the latest, this number plummeted to 0.338% – which is only a half of the pilot rating.
While “Summer Strike” aired on the cable channel ENA, it is difficult to blame low ratings on the channel completely. In particular, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”, which ended last August, was also aired on ENA, and yet achieved a phenomenal peak of 17.5% in viewership. Additionally, “Good Job”, which aired on the same channel in September, recorded a highest rating of 3.2% and maintained an average viewership of 2% throughout its broadcast. Finally, “Love is for Suckers”, which started with a viewership of 0.8%, eventually rose to 1.9% through word of mouth – so airing on ENA isn’t equivalent to 0% ratings.
On the other hand, the topicality of “Summer Strike” is also unsatisfactory, ranking 10th in the Drama category of the TV topic rankings compiled by Good Data Corporation. Meanwhile, the 2nd season of “Alchemy of Soul”, which had not even aired, is already in 6th place, and the daily drama “Vengeance of the Bride”, which has neither the promotion or big names, also surpassed “Summer Strike” and landed at 9th.
Even in the K-drama actress category, Kim Seolhyun’s name is completely missing for the Top 10.
Responses for “Summer Strike” on YouTube has been lukewarm as well, with the drama trailer being the most popular with 380,000 views. Other than that, there is no content that exceeds 150,000 views. Short-form videos, in which Kim Seol-hyun reads the script, only record about 800 views (per day).
Since she is an idol-actress that comes from the popular group AOA, Seolhyun received various love calls due to their high topicality. Her acting received controversial feedback, but Seolhyun’s popularity alone ensured her stream of works.
However, the idol-actress has so far starred in no representative projects, and is still more known as “AOA Seolhyun”, a female idol, than Kim Seolhyun, an actress.
All in all, it seems that Seolhyun will be in a big crisis if her acting projects continue to receive lukewarm responses. In fact, she may lose her place to junior actresses, or rising female idols, especially in this era when many new faces are assuming leading roles in TV or OTT works.
A drama production official even said, “It is difficult to say that Kim Seolhyun has more competitive power than rising rookie actresses or acting idols.”
Source: Nate
