Actress Kim Yoo-jung embraces her dark side in K-drama Dear X

Negative 100 per cent that is what South Korean actress Kim Yoo-jung said at CGV Yongsan in Seoul on Oct 30 when asked about her sync rate with her latest character Baek Ah-jin.

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“I got so swept up playing her that I barely checked the monitor. But that’s obviously not who I am.”

Kim, 26, had just spent the better part of the press conference explaining how she plays a top actress who, wearing a mask of perfection, crushes anyone standing in her way in the new K-drama Dear X. Based on a hit webtoon of the same title, the thriller series premieres on HBO Max on Nov 6.

The distance might be what sells it. For someone who has built a career playing upright, feelgood characters think Love In The Moonlight (2016) and Lovers Of The Red Sky (2021) since her days as a child actress two decades ago, taking on a ruthless sociopath is a different sport.

Ah-jin claws her way to stardom by leaving behind a trail of broken people the “Xs” of the title. She has two enablers in her orbit: childhood friend Jun-seo (Kim Young-dae), who is convinced he can pull her back from the edge, and Jae-oh (Kim Do-hoon), who follows her like a true believer.

Dear X adds original material to the webtoon’s four-part structure, but the core premise stays intact. It is the kind of character study that taps anxieties about the celebrity machine how much darkness can someone bury under the movie-star glamour?