New posters and a video teaser have been released for JTBC’s upcoming melodrama Human Disqualification, featuring lead actors Jeon Do-yeon (Beasts Clawing at Straws, The Good Wife) and Ryu Joon-yeol (The Battle: Roar to Victory, Lucky Romance).
In a story about people who are special because they’re ordinary, the drama explores the very real and human struggle of determining our own self-worth. Despite working hard towards our dreams, it’s easy to spiral downwards into the feeling that you haven’t accomplished anything in life, or that you haven’t made yourself into someone worthwhile.
In Human Disqualification, we find Jeon Do-yeon as someone at her breaking point. Having only worked as a ghostwriter, she has yet to see her own name in print; she’s reached a point where she feels like all her years of hard work were for nothing. Throughout her career, she internalized even trivial grievances and she’s now overwhelmed by conflicting emotions of grief, failure, anxiety, emptiness, and loneliness. As a defense mechanism, she finds herself shutting down, and doesn’t know how to move forward in life.
Enter Ryu Joon-yeol who meets Jeon Do-yeon by chance when both are experiencing dark moments in their lives. Age-wise, he’s reaching the end of his young adult years, and is scared that he hasn’t yet made a name for himself in a significant way. His dream had simply been to be rich, and he now runs a service company. However, he took on many risks to try to reach greater success, and he’s still not anywhere near his goals. Although no longer young, he’s not quite old; though he can be cynical about people, he also desires to be someone who’s needed by others.
In supportive roles, Park Byung-eun (Kingdom: Ashin of the North) plays Jeon Do-yeon’s husband, a man whose heart is being swayed back to his first love Kim Hyo-jin (Private Lives).
Secretive actress Park Ji-young (You Have Driven Off Course) has a complicated relationship with Jeon Do-yeon, while nurse Yang Dong-geun (365: Repeat the Year) is one of Jeon’s old friends.
In the newly released teaser, we get a nice parallel through the switch between Jeon Do-yeon and Ryu Joon-yeol, and we see how their struggles are similar despite coming from different places.
The teaser starts with the camera following Jeon Do-yeon as she confesses in voice-over, “Dad, I’ve lived more than 40 years and I haven’t become anything in life.” Cut to Ryu Joon-yeol who we see burying his father and he narrates, “I miss you, Dad. Although we’re all born into the world the same way, I don’t think I’ll ever become somebody.” We see both of them crying alone, and Jeon asks, “What is it that I’m afraid of?” The appearing text screen explains, “A story about ordinary people who ‘haven’t yet become anything.’”
Returning to the two leads, we see Jeon Do-yeon with Ryu Joon-yeol on a rooftop as they share a quiet moment. Ryu asks her in a serious tone, “If we happen to meet again somewhere… do you want to die together?” Cut to the next chance encounter that Ryu Joon-yeol had hypothesized, and they look at each other in surprise.
The text screen introduces the director, Heo Jin-ho, creator of Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day. As we see footage of the two leads again, the captions introduce their names: Jeon Do-yeon and Ryu Joon-yeol. The video comes to a close with the two actors together, sleeping separately but on the same bed.
As introduced in the teaser, the production for Human Disqualification will be led by film director Heo Jin-ho (Princess Deokhye, One Fine Spring Day) with writer Kim Ji-hye (Hope, Architecture 101) penning the scripts.
JTBC’s new melodrama is currently set to premiere this September and will also be available on South Korean streaming platform TVING.
