FORBES
Longtime Hallyu Star Rain Shines In Fantasy Drama 'Welcome 2 Life'
Joan MacDonaldContributorAug 12, 2019, 11:32am
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| Lim Ji Yeon and Jung Ji Hoon aka Rain play alternating sides of the same characters in the Korean fantasy drama 'Welcome 2 Life'MBC |
A whole decade before BTS made Hallyu history on the U.S. charts, with their record-breaking k-pop releases, another Korean singer made waves in the U.S. by winning a coveted MTV award for acting. That singer-dancer-actor was Jung Ji Hoon aka Bi Rain, who snagged the award for his second Hollywood film Ninja Assassin.
Rain personifies the entertainment label of being a “triple threat,” having released six Korean albums and one Japanese album, plus 28 singles. He is so popular in China that his 2019 concert was the first major performance of a Korean star in China since political tensions over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAD) treaty between the U.S. and South Korea prompted the Chinese government to ban Korean performers in 2016. He’s toured the world several times, as well as appeared in several Korean films and Korean and Chinese television dramas, most recently his current k-drama, Welcome 2 Life.
In Welcome 2 Life, he plays a lawyer of dubious ethics, a lawyer who brilliantly twists the system to benefit his corrupt rich clients. A co-worker comments that for a lawyer he is truly lawless.
“Are lawyers meant to con and not defend people,” a fellow prosecutor asks him, after he defends an obviously guilty client by turning cruelly on a defendant.
The only clue viewers have that Lee Jae Sang has not completely sold his soul is his relationship with the overly zealous, honest police officer Ra Shi On, played by award-winning actress Lim Ji Yeon. She tries to remind him to act like a human being but gets so frustrated by his amoral court performances that she hits him with a gavel, pulls out his hair, and literally kicks him to the curb with her powerful sneakered feet.
It vicariously feels good when she punches him, because in that instance viewers can guess she is trying to revive his conscience. She hits him because she hasn’t given up on him, having known him for 12 years and having hoped that he would become a righteous lawyer who battles the powerful and corrupt.
It’s her concern that eventually leads him to confront the rotten state of the world he’s helped to create—case-by-case. He’s sickened by the evil he sees and is about to provide evidence against his corrupt clients when he becomes the victim of a hit job. Only he does not die.
Then the drama, which until now had been a crime and corruption story, does what Korean dramas are so adept at. It unexpectedly switches genre. Welcome 2 Life transforms into the ever-popular “if I had a chance to do my life over” fantasy genre in which characters get to examine the consequences of the choices they did and did not make.
Since Lee Jae Sang’s world is shades of gray with no black and white moral code, the first part of the drama is filmed in gray blues and greens. Then he wakes up in a world where he’s a righteous man and Ra Shi On admires him enough to be his wife. He’s suddenly living in a world with defined colors. Who is Rain’s character in this alternate world? That remains to be seen.
Although he’s one of the first true Hallyu stars, Rain is never one to be satisfied with past accomplishments. His Welcome 2 Life role only confirms how relevant an actor he can be.
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