Lee Yi-kyung Drops the Comedy Act in New Korea-Vietnam Film, and Critics Noticed, But Audiences Didn't Show Up

Lee Yi-kyung got a standing ovation when he knelt on the floor of a Ho Chi Minh City theater and bowed his head in gratitude to the audience, but that moment of connection hasn't translated into ticket sales for Mẹ Ơi, Về Nhà, the Korea-Vietnam co-production that opened in Vietnam on the 10th of last month.

At the film's public preview event on the 6th, Yi-kyung stepped down from the stage, took fans by the hand, posed for photos, and, in a gesture that quickly spread across Vietnamese entertainment media, knelt before the crowd at the close of the evening. The applause, by multiple local accounts, went on for a long time.

The film, directed by Yoon Byung-gi, translates roughly as Mom, Come Home and stars Lee Yi-kyung alongside Vietnamese actress Hoàng Yến Chibi, Choi Daniel, and Min Ha. Yi-kyung plays Huy Hoàng, a man abandoned in Korea as a child and raised by a Vietnamese adoptive mother named Diễm Hằng. When she passes away, he carries her ashes back to her hometown in Vietnam to fulfill her final wish. Along the way he meets Diễm My, a Vietnamese singer working in Korea, played by Hoàng Yến Chibi. Choi Daniel rounds out the central trio as Park Ha, a friend who seems constitutionally incapable of staying out of trouble.

For Yi-kyung, the role represents a genuine departure. Fans in Vietnam came to know him through the military comedy 6/45 and the fantasy drama Marry My Husband, both of which leaned on his gift for deadpan physical humor. Huy Hoàng strips all of that away: this is a quiet, grief-weighted character, and Yi-kyung plays the loss and loneliness without reaching for laughs. Local critics largely gave him credit for it, noting that he makes the transition convincing enough that the film's comedic image problem feels less like a casting issue and more like a writing one.

That writing is where reviewers have placed the blame for the film's underperformance. Mẹ Ơi, Về Nhà has slid out of the daily top 10 at Vietnamese theaters, competing against a run of foreign titles that have dominated local screens in recent weeks. Yi-kyung's name recognition wasn't the issue, it was the story's execution that failed to hold audiences, according to the local critical consensus.

The actor has also been navigating some off-screen turbulence. Last year, his agency moved to file criminal complaints against a woman who made personal allegations about him, calling the claims fabricated and malicious. More recently, in May, it was reported that the National Tax Service had conducted an unscheduled audit of his single-person corporation and issued a tax assessment notice. His management stated that the matter stemmed from a difference in interpretation of tax law around expense classification, and denied any intentional income omission or improper evasion.

None of that appears to have significantly colored how Vietnamese audiences or critics received his performance in the film. The reviews that singled out his work were warm. Whether the film finds a second life on streaming or through word of mouth is a question worth watching, given that Yi-kyung's fanbase in Vietnam has shown it can travel, just not, this time, all the way to the box office.