New character teasers have been released for JTBC’s upcoming melodrama Human Disqualification starring Jeon Do-yeon (Beasts Clawing at Straws, The Good Wife) and Ryu Joon-yeol (The Battle: Roar to Victory, Lucky Romance).
The drama brings together two lost souls who are adrift in the world, and when they meet they develop a deep empathy with each other and begin to heal. Jeon Do-yeon plays a ghostwriter who’s facing middle age and feels she has nowhere to go but down. Ryu Joon-yeol is on the cusp of leaving his youth behind and is engulfed by fears that he will never amount to anything.
The first teaser introduces Jeon Do-yeon’s character, Bu-jung, with her voice bitterly telling someone: “Because of you…I lost my job. I lost my child. I lost myself.” In a quick succession of scenes, Bu-jung is slapped, involved in a fight at work, and takes a photo of suitcases. In another sequence of shots, she is spraying water with a shower head, starring at something as she stands against the city backdrop, and tearfully sitting on the floor in the dark.
She painfully reveals in a voiceover: “Father, right now I’m slowly falling apart like a run-down building.” The next scene shows her throwing a book in the garbage and quickly walking off as she remarks: “I enjoyed reading the book. You left everything exactly the same without changing a single word.” Captions appear on the screen: “A woman in her 40s who has lost her way, after having done nothing with her life.” The black screen turns to a scene of her tearfully confessing: “Father, I couldn’t become someone. I was born into this world but I’m nothing.” The video ends with a scene of her standing alone by the water at night asking: “Where is this place?”
The second teaser features Ryu Joon-yeol’s character, Kang-jae, looking numb and sprawled on the floor in a dark room. He narrates: “Lover, friend, wedding guest, funeral guest…I wasn’t any of these.” A sense of loneliness and desolation permeates the scene as he languidly sits up with a tired expression. He gazes into the distance with empty eyes while a single ray of light beams through the window, shining against his face. The light rotates around repeatedly — a constant cycle of him seeing the light, then being left in the darkness. The scene closes with his voiceover: “The story of ordinary people who suddenly realized they remained nobodies.”
Directed by Heo Jin-ho (Princess Deokhye, One Fine Spring Day) and written by Kim Ji-hye (Hope, Architecture 101), Human Disqualification is set to premiere in September.
