Lee Chae Min and Roh Yoon Seo Are Reuniting for a New tvN Drama — But Not Everyone’s Convinced

Lee Chae Min and Roh Yoon Seo hadn’t worked together in three years when tvN announced on July 29 that they were reuniting for a new drama. Within hours, the comments section had already decided how it was going to go — and not kindly.

The network confirmed both actors will lead “My Reason to Die” (working title), a time-loop youth romance adapted from a webtoon of the same name by writer YUJU, set to premiere in 2027. Lee plays Cha Gyeol, a man who dies and returns to the same stretch of time over and over trying to save the woman he loves; Roh plays Nam Ji-oh, a taekwondo hopeful chasing an Olympic medal who ends up fighting fate itself to keep him alive. It’s a premise built entirely around two people risking everything for each other — presumably why tvN wanted the same two actors who already know how to sell that chemistry.

That chemistry comes from “Crash Course in Romance”, the 2023 hit where Lee played Lee Seon-jae, the steady, quietly devoted friend orbiting Roh’s Nam Hae-i — a dynamic that spent an entire drama building toward romance instead of starting there. Three years and a handful of separate projects later, the two are stepping into a story that skips the slow burn and opens with the stakes already at their highest: love or death, no in-between.

Not everyone is convinced the reunion is a good idea. Screenshots compiled by Koreaboo from Korean comment sections showed a chunk of viewers unimpressed by the pairing itself. “Neither of them can act, so I think this is going to flop,” read one comment. Another framed it as an industry-wide problem: “It really shows that there aren’t many new breakout male and female actors these days.” A few went after Lee’s look directly, with one commenter writing that his styling “gives off a mainland Chinese actor vibe” and “feels a bit greasy.”

A smaller group pushed back, saying they were holding out hope for a lighter, romantic-comedy tone rather than another heavy melodrama. But the loudest thread — that neither lead has really proven themselves yet — is worth checking against what each of them has actually done since 2023, because in Lee’s case at least, this isn’t the first time people decided he was miscast before watching a single episode.

Lee was a replacement, not the original pick, for “Tyrant’s Chef” — brought in just ten days before filming after the actor first cast in the role dropped out. Early stills leaked before the premiere, and the reaction was rough; one contemporary headline described the images as making fans “uneasy” about his casting. He kept the part anyway, and the show went on to post a 17.1% rating for its finale, its own series high, and the top slot in its timeslot across every channel, broadcast included. It’s the project that turned him from a working actor into what Korean entertainment press now calls “daese” — trending, in-demand, hard to avoid. The doubts were real. They also turned out to be wrong.

Roh’s résumé argues against the “unproven” label just as directly, if less dramatically. She started as a beauty-brand model years before she ever acted, then walked into her drama debut, 2022’s “Our Blues,” as the only newcomer in a cast built around Lee Byung-hun and Shin Min-a — and held her own. “Crash Course in Romance” won her Best New Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards the following year; “Say I Love You” won her the film category’s equivalent two years after that, making her the first actor in 32 years to win both. She’s currently the female lead of Netflix’s “The East Palace,” which topped Korea’s own TV-OTT buzz rankings in its opening weeks.

The people building the show around them aren’t newcomers either. Co-director Choi Jung-kyu is coming straight off directing “The East Palace” — the same Netflix drama Roh is currently starring in, giving her a rare case of working with the same director on back-to-back projects. His co-director, Kim Hee-won, has “Vincenzo,” “Queen of Tears,” and “Little Women” behind him. Screenwriter Kim Sol-ji previously wrote “Pegasus Market” and “Love Is for Suckers.” None of that guarantees the finished drama will be good — pedigree behind the camera has failed before — but it does mean the skepticism is landing on a crew with a track record, not an unknown one.

Lee’s casting also arrives inside a bigger conversation Korean entertainment press has been having all year about who actually replaces the generation of male leads aging out of the “flower boy” bracket. In March, one outlet grouped him with Park Ji-hoon, Moon Sang-min, and Kim Do-hoon as a new “four heavenly kings” lineup — a label meant to signal the handoff is already happening, whether the comments section has accepted it yet or not. He made Forbes Korea’s 30 Under 30 list for entertainment this year on the strength of it.

“My Reason to Die” doesn’t premiere until 2027. Whatever verdict the finished drama earns is still more than a year away. The comments section, as usual, just got there first.

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