Kang Tae-oh Leaves Extraordinary Attorney Woo Behind for a 100% Win-Rate Villain Role

Lee Bo-young is returning to television as a single mother who reinvents herself as a family court investigator, and her co-star is the very lawyer who torpedoed her divorce settlement. ENA confirmed on the 6th that the two actors will lead Hong Mal-geum, Divorce Investigator, a new Monday-Tuesday drama slated for the first half of 2027, also streaming on Genie TV.

The characters and the conflict

Lee Bo-young plays Hong Mal-geum, a psychology major whose degree had been sitting unused since an early marriage left her focused on raising three children. After going through a divorce, she qualifies as a trainee domestic affairs investigator at family court, the one credential that offers civil servant job security and a path to a stable home for her kids. The role is described as fearless to the point of recklessness, a woman running on a particular sense of justice sharpened by her own experience of family breakdown.

Kang Tae-oh plays Charles Kim, a defense attorney with a 100% courtroom win rate who makes no effort to hide his love of luxury goods, sports cars, and his own ability. He is the lawyer who, in the drama's backstory, represented Hong Mal-geum's ex-husband and managed to have her removed from the marriage settlement with nothing. The two now operate in overlapping territory inside the family court system.

It is worth noting what a domestic affairs investigator (gasa josaogwan) actually does in the Korean legal structure: a specialized civil servant attached solely to family courts, empowered to investigate cases ranging from divorce and adoption to child abuse and juvenile offenses. The role is relatively unfamiliar to general audiences, and the drama is positioning that unfamiliarity as part of its appeal.

The team behind it

Director Kim Dae-jin, whose JTBC drama Dr. Cha became a significant hit, is attached to helm the series. The script comes from Park Jeong-hee, a newer writer making her first major network credit. The production team described the central dynamic between Hong Mal-geum and Charles Kim as "unstoppable comic energy" generated by two people with strong, clashing personalities, with family case episodes that shift between broad humor and something more quietly affecting.

For Kang Tae-oh, the casting is a deliberate change of register. He gained wide recognition through ENA's Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which holds the channel's all-time ratings record. Charles Kim is almost a photographic negative of that show's warmly principled characters: an unashamed opportunist who wins cases that look unwinnable, and who is not above taking the morally indefensible side if the fee is right. Whether that contrast becomes a draw for viewers who followed him through Extraordinary Attorney Woo will be one of the more interesting things to watch when the show arrives next year.