Gong Hyo-jin Is Back on MBC After 15 Years: Playing a Married Assassin

Gong Hyo-jin's real husband calls her "my treasure." Turns out that helped her play a woman who shoots people for a living.

At the July 30 press conference for MBC's new Friday-Saturday drama Married Killer, held at MBC Golden Mouse Hall in Sangam-dong, Seoul, Gong credited her ongoing honeymoon with singer Kevin Oh, whom she married in 2022, as an unexpected acting resource. "Because I'm actually in the middle of a sweet newlywed life, it was much easier to understand and express the married-woman side of the character," she said, laughing. Her on-screen husband is written as an almost impossibly devoted romantic; her actual husband, apparently, is not far off.

She also had thoughts on the mother-in-law dynamic. "Before I got married, I couldn't really imagine what a mother-in-law meant. Now I know for certain," she said. The show's fictional mother-in-law apparently gives her character a hard time, but Gong noted her real one gets along with her better than her husband does.

The role itself is Yu Bo-na, callsign "Kingfisher", a legendary sniper who spent three years on parental leave and is now returning to active duty as a professional killer. At home she's a regular wife and mom to a four-year-old daughter. The show is adapted from a popular webtoon of the same name, and Gong was blunt about how hard the dual identity was to pull off. "She's taciturn and cold-blooded, and I had to move between killer mode and mother mode in the same scene," she said. "Bridging that gap was harder than I imagined." She said she worked within the space the source material created rather than trying to replace what fans had already pictured.

This marks Gong Hyo-jin's return to MBC drama for the first time since Greatest Love in 2011, which pulled a peak rating of 21.0 percent (Nielsen Korea, national). That gap, 15 years, visibly surprised her when it was mentioned. "Time really flew," she said. She looked back at her run of MBC work with some nostalgia: Snowman, where she landed a lead role before anyone expected it; Pasta, which gave her the "Gong Bly" nickname; and Greatest Love, which she rewatched briefly before this press event. "I was cute back then," she said. She joked that she was once called "MBC's daughter" and has now come back as "MBC's daughter-in-law."

Playing her on-screen husband, journalist Kwon Tae-seong, is Jung Jun-won. He said he deliberately waited until late in production to read the source webtoon, not wanting the original version of the character to box him in. "The drama's Tae-seong and the webtoon's Tae-seong feel different," he said. "I wanted to start fresh with the drama version." Still unmarried in real life, he admitted that playing a besotted husband required help from the director and from Gong herself.

Lee Sang-i plays detective Lee Dong-jin, a homicide investigator with a personal score to settle who is hunting Kingfisher. The cast also includes Sung Dong-il as Yu Bo-na's supportive boss, Moon Jin-seong as a genius hacker, Choi Woo-seong as a rookie detective, and Lee Eun-saem as the journalist's younger sister. Lee Sang-i told the crowd that if the show tops a 13 percent rating, the entire cast will do a dance challenge, so the bar has been set.

Directing is Yoon Jong-ho, whose last project was the widely loved Lovely Runner. He acknowledged the weight that comes with that. "The previous show received so much love that I was genuinely nervous going into this one," he said. He framed Married Killer as a deliberate genre shift, pointing out that Korean crime thrillers have historically centered on men. Here, a woman is both the deadliest person in the room and the one managing bedtime routines. "I focused on that ordinary-yet-extraordinary daily life," he said.

Gong, for her part, noted that revenge-driven shows like Chief Kim have been setting the tone lately and expressed confidence that Married Killer is arriving at the right moment. Married Killer premieres July 31 on MBC.