I love this kid. Jang Dong-yoon has had a pretty busy and successful year since his 2016 debut, and he’s already lining up projects to follow School 2017, which ends its run tomorrow (sob). The rookie actor will be making his big screen debut as Lee Na-young’s (Runaway Plan B) son in her comeback project, indie film Beautiful Days.
The role sounds like a challenging one, so I look forward to seeing Jang Dong-yoon take it on: His character is Korean-Chinese and was abandoned by his North Korean refugee mother 16 years ago when she fled to South Korea alone. They will somehow reunite after all those years, and through their reunion, mother and son will consider and come to understand the meaning of family.
I’m always a sucker for stories that focus on relationships between parents and their children, but I’m really interested to see how the whole North Korean refugee aspect will affect the dynamic between the mother and son in Beautiful Days, which is bound to be fraught with a whole spectrum of emotions, from betrayal and anger to longing and relief. Having worked with North Korean refugees, I know these types of separations are heartbreakingly common because their journey to a safe country is a dangerous one—if caught, Chinese authorities will repatriate refugees where they face imprisonment and sometimes execution—so I look forward to a dramatization of one part of this experience, as harrowing as it is.
On a lighter note, I’m really happy to see Jang Dong-yoon building up a pretty solid list of credits. He debuted in 2016 with Female Employees at a Game Company, and followed that up with lead roles in high school dramas Solomon’s Perjury and, of course, School 2017. Not too shabby. Personally, I think he’s still a little green in the acting department, but he definitely has a charming, likable screen presence, and I can see him as a strong drama lead someday.
Jang Dong-yoon will go straight into filming for Beautiful Days once School 2017 wraps up tomorrow, which means we can probably expect the indie film to release sometime next year.