Yum Jung-ah Harvested 30kg of Wild Seaweed and Still Landed tvN's Top Ratings Spot

tvN's 'Eonni-ne Sanji Jiksong 3' posted a 3.3% average nationwide rating for its second episode, peaking at 4.2% and holding the No. 1 spot in its timeslot among cable and general programming channels for two weeks in a row, according to Nielsen Korea (paid platform figures).

The show also topped its timeslot in the Seoul metropolitan area and led all channels, including terrestrial broadcasters, in the key 2049 demographic that tvN uses as its primary target. For a variety program that swapped out much of its original cast heading into Season 3, back-to-back wins at this scale is a meaningful early signal.

Episode 2 followed the four on-screen siblings, Yum Jung-ah, Kim Sun-young, Kang You-seok, and Noh Yoon-seo, on their second day in Tongyeong, a coastal city in South Gyeongsang Province known for its seafood. The morning opened with the cast preparing chungmu gimbap, a Tongyeong specialty: Yum, the group's self-appointed commander, coordinated the whole meal while Noh attempted the dish for the first time. Kim Sun-young, playing to the camera with cheerful deadpan energy, kept calling out "this is for the viewers" in a way that landed closer to a morning talk-show parody than an actual cooking segment.

The meal had barely settled before Kang and Noh revealed they had hidden wasabi-filled gimbap rolls in the spread. Yum drew the short straw, bit into one, and the combination of genuine betrayal and uncontrollable laughter became one of the episode's most-clipped moments.

The main work segment sent the cast out to harvest wild rock seaweed (dol-miyeok) from the Gyeonnaeryang strait, a protected water zone where harvesting is permitted for only 15 days a year. The tool for the job was a teuritdae, a long pole measuring 6.3 meters, and once the seaweed was attached the total load could reach 30 to 40 kilograms per haul. Yum and Kim, hauling the weight together, managed to make jokes about the sheer physical effort while keeping the work moving. The boat captains, watching the cast push through exhaustion, reportedly told them they were finally "earning their keep" and had "the constitution of real workers."

Noh Yoon-seo, the youngest of the group and cast partly for her energetic, driven personality, stood out during the harvest. She and Kang You-seok both received half-joking job offers from the crew on the spot.

The episode's biggest surprise was actor Park Hae-jun, who arrived in disguise with a hidden-camera setup prepared specifically to fool the cast. Park has worked with Yum Jung-ah and Kim Sun-young on the drama First Love and with Kang You-seok on the recent hit Melo Movie. He wore full work clothes and reportedly ran through rehearsals to make the disguise convincing. When Kang stepped off the boat, Park delivered a line from their drama's father-son dynamic, and Kang immediately fell into character, responding with a formal bow that brought the sequence to a comedic peak. Yum and Kim, realizing who he was a beat later, dropped any pretense of composure.

After the day's work, the cast shifted into the more relaxed half of the episode. Kang, who had won a luge pass by beating the production team at omok (a traditional board game), got to cross the activity off his personal list. The group also visited a Tongyeong dachi, a local-style seafood restaurant where whole spreads of fresh shellfish and raw fish are served together, and the spread was filmed in enough close detail to qualify as a minor food-television moment on its own. Park Hae-jun capped the evening by calling back the earlier father-son joke when Kang invited him onto a small motorboat, telling him again not to get on the water, before adding that he would do anything with him.

'Eonni-ne Sanji Jiksong' has always leaned on the rhythm of seasonal produce and honest physical labor as its core appeal, and Season 3 seems to be finding that groove quickly. The Tongyeong setting, all summer heat, clean water, and fishing-village texture, gives the new cast room to build chemistry through shared work rather than staged games. Two episodes in, the ratings suggest the audience is already on board.