You can only pick one, and boy the pressure is on. The DB team will answer a new prompt in each post, and you’re invited to do the same in the comments. Ready to play?
You can only pick one rookie actress
DaebakGrits: The first rookie actress that comes to mind is Roh Yoon-seo. I really enjoyed her performance in Crash Course in Romance and 20th Century Girl. Well, I found her character in 20th Century Girl a bit annoying — in a pitying awww-you’re-a-dramatic-teenager-with-a-crush-and-I’m-too-old-to-sympathize kind of way. I haven’t gotten around to watching either Our Blues or Black Knight, though, so I can’t say that I’ve seen the full range of her acting skills. But even so, I’m impressed with what I’ve seen. While she played a high school girl in both Crash Course in Romance and 20th Century Girl, she made both roles feel distinctive, and I honestly didn’t recognize her in Crash Course in Romance after first seeing her in 20th Century Girl.
solstices: Choi Sung-eun! Making a memorable television debut in the anthology piece SF8: Joan’s Galaxy, she then thoroughly impressed me with her nuanced performance in Beyond Evil. As the resident butcher shop owner in the tiny village of Manyang, she was many things at once — a voice of reason, a lonely girl searching for her mother, the glue keeping their slowly-fracturing community together. Her turn as an impoverished high school student in The Sound of Magic further showcased her versatility through a deft interweaving of downtrodden cynicism and earnest vulnerability, reaffirming her position as an up-and-coming rookie actress whom I have high hopes for.
Unit: Roh Yoon-seo for the win! (Even the Baeksang Art Awards agree with me, heh!) I’ve loved her since Our Blues — I was surprised that it was her debut drama — and I look forward to seeing her in more non-high school roles. Hopefully, she’ll keep picking good scripts.
Dramaddictally: With no shortage of new talent in dramaland, this might be the hardest choice yet. But after careful consideration, I’ve decided on Shin Eun-soo. I had seen her in various dramas since 2016 (The Legend of the Blue Sea, Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol), but she first stopped me in my tracks with her lead performance in the 2024 KBS Drama Special Like Otters, where she played a gritty but vulnerable high school student trying to escape an abusive home. This little one-act drama packed a lot of punch and was entirely carried by its two young leads. Later in 2024, I saw her again in Summer Strike (well, as many episodes as I could make myself stick around for), and her character had a similar brash attitude with a tender underbelly. The thing that caught my attention (besides her voice) is that even as she’s playing characters that we think we’ve seen before, something about her feels off-beat and authentic. And I really like that her leading roles don’t have her playing “nice girls,” but likable and identifiable ones.