Red Velvet’s Joy and actor Kim Hyun Jin have been unveiled in the first stills from One of a Kind Romance, a Korean drama adapted from a webtoon. The series pairs a job seeker with a secret writing past and a famous actor who finds comfort in her unfinished novel, and it premieres on 9 November at 6pm KST.
Joy plays Gong Yu Il, who pays her way with part-time jobs while she prepares for a career. She has no particularly impressive qualifications, but she writes well enough that her cover letters are routinely marked highly. Years earlier she wrote a novel called Star and Half-Moon. She then announced that she would give up writing and has kept her identity as its author hidden ever since.
Kim Hyun Jin plays Tak Mu I, a leading star now in his 19th year in the business after starting out as a child actor, and a familiar face to the public for almost his entire life. Behind the success, he suffers from anxiety and insomnia caused by a stalker who has continued to threaten him. To calm himself, he keeps rereading Star and Half-Moon, even though the story was never finished. That habit is what draws him to Gong Yu Il, who holds the sequel that was never published.
The pair are brought together by chance, and Gong Yu Il ends up working as Tak Mu I’s manager. According to the production’s description, the drama follows two people carrying their own emotional injuries who come to lean on each other. The premise mixes the familiar celebrity-and-ordinary-person setup with a mystery about authorship, as the actor’s favourite book turns out to belong to the woman now managing his schedule. The secret gives the story a built-in tension, since Gong Yu Il has spent years hiding the very identity that connects her to the man she now works for.
The project marks another lead television role for Joy, whose recent work includes The One and Only, while Kim Hyun Jin’s earlier credits include IDOL I. The newly released images give viewers a first look at the two leads before the November launch. Further trailers and character material are expected as the premiere date approaches, with the drama set to join a busy schedule of Korean romance series this winter.
