JYJ’s Jaejoong (Spy) has decided on his first comeback project after his two years in military service. It’s a youth comedy called Manhole where the main character finds a random time portal to the past and manipulates events to prevent a wedding that’s happening a week in the future. Jaejoong will be playing an unemployed man named Bong-pil, who’s the leader in a group of five individuals whose stories will be told throughout the drama.
Bong-pil is the only child of a retired postal worker, in the third generation of only sons. He had to take the college entrance exam three times before passing and enrolling into university, and after graduation, he spent three years doing nothing, and now he’s on his third try “studying” for the civil servant exam. There was a brief stint where he started a cafe business, using the financial support of his father who had to go back to his post office job post-retirement in order to pay for the loan needed for his son’s startup capital.
However, within three months of opening, Bong-pil’s cafe went out of business. Now he lives a parasitic existence off the people around him, especially his parents who barely got him to agree to a humiliating promise to study for the civil servant exam. Known as the neighborhood bum, he’s set up a base camp at the local study hall, always going around in comfortable sweats.
PD Park Man-young (The Vineyard Man, Million Roses) is in charge of production, and Special Affairs Team TEN’s writer Lee Jae-gon is writing the script. It’s an interesting collaboration for sure: a rom-com director and a crime-thriller writer coming together for a sci-fi comedy.
Upcoming KBS Wednesday-Thursday drama Manhole will air after Seven Day Queen finishes in August.