Lee Ju-myeong of “New Employee Chairman Kang,” the New Face of Power

As JTBC’s Saturday-Sunday drama “New Employee Chairman Kang” records an explosive rise to 12 percent in viewership and settles firmly onto a hit trajectory, the figure at the center of that momentum is Kang Bang-geul, the character shaped by actor Lee Ju-myeong.

The setup of the youngest daughter in a chaebol family is a familiar grammar of Korean drama. Kang Bang-geul, however, does not follow the usual route of a second-generation conglomerate heir. She is not portrayed as someone who simply enjoys privilege. Instead, she is a person who must bear the responsibility and loneliness hidden behind the name of privilege. Lee Ju-myeong gives that complicated interior life a delicate form, adding a new human texture to the familiar frame of the “youngest chaebol daughter.”

Kang Bang-geul’s appearance signals a crack in the succession structure of Choeseong Group. The moment it is revealed that she is the hidden youngest daughter of Chairman Kang Yong-ho, played by Son Hyeon-ju, she emerges not merely as another family member but as a variable capable of changing the entire map of power. Yet Kang Bang-geul is not an heir consumed by ambition. Rather, she is a character who looks directly at the violence power can carry and at the reality of the people sacrificed within it.

For a long time, second-generation chaebol characters in Korean dramas have largely been consumed through two images. One is the arrogant privileged class that has everything. The other is the tragic successor who wanders because of love and emotional wounds. Kang Bang-geul does not fully belong to either side.

She appears as the head of the strategic planning team and proves her place through competence. She does not move only on the background of being “the chairman’s daughter.” Inside the organization, she judges, persuades and creates the reason for her own presence.

The process in which she uses Smile Investment to confront Kang Jae-gyeong, played by Jeon Hye-jin, especially shows that she is a person who competes through strategy rather than emotion. The scene in which she brings her older brother Kang Jae-seong, played by Jin Gu, who is in a detention center, onto her side is also not simply a reconciliation between family members. It is a political choice to redesign human relationships inside the cold world of power.

At this point, Kang Bang-geul looks less like a simple drama character and more like a symbol of the new leadership demanded by modern corporate society.

Kang Bang-geul’s greatest distinction is her way of looking at people. Her consideration of employees’ positions during the restructuring of Choeseong Mulsan shows how different she is from existing chaebol power holders. She does not look at a company only through numbers and efficiency. She recognizes the lives of the people living inside it. This is also different from a merely kind chaebol character.

In modern capitalist society, a company is an organization that pursues profit, but it is also a social space connected to the lives of many people. Kang Bang-geul is a person who understands precisely that point. German sociologist Max Weber saw power not simply as domination but as influence that arises within social relationships. From that perspective, Kang Bang-geul is not someone merely trying to seize power. She is someone who thinks about how power should be used.

Her growth therefore expands into a question larger than “who will sit on the throne.” It becomes a question of “what kind of person should sit on the throne.”

Lee Ju-myeong’s acting plays a major role in making Kang Bang-geul persuasive as a character. Rather than expressing emotion through large eruptions, she reveals the character’s inner world through small shifts. A wavering gaze, a speaking rhythm that briefly stops, and minute changes in expression while looking at another person show both Kang Bang-geul’s calculations and her human concerns at the same time.

As an heir to a chaebol family, Kang Bang-geul must be cold. At the same time, she must embrace the wounds of her family. Lee Ju-myeong expresses the collision between those two emotions without exaggeration. Kang Bang-geul is a strong female character, but the drama does not consume only her “strength.” Her strength is not the force of pressing others down. It is the ability not to lose balance even within a complicated reality.

Lee Ju-myeong previously became familiar to viewers through her role as the former girlfriend of the character played by Jung Kyung-ho in “Hospital Playlist.” Although her appearance at the time was brief, she left a strong impression, and the actors who worked with her also rated her potential highly.

In “New Employee Chairman Kang,” however, Lee Ju-myeong is no longer a peripheral figure around someone else. She has grown into a central axis that moves the work’s power structure. This is also an important change for the actor herself, because it marks the process of moving from a face remembered by the public to an actor who leads the narrative.

Ultimately, Kang Bang-geul is interesting because she exists inside a chaebol story while refusing to simply repeat chaebol logic. She is someone who has had power from birth, but she knows that power does not guarantee her legitimacy. That is why she continually tries to prove herself. Should those who have more continue to take more, or should those who have more take on greater responsibility?

“New Employee Chairman Kang” raises that question through the form of a succession war. At the center of it, Kang Bang-geul presents the image of a successor for a new era. The Kang Bang-geul created by Lee Ju-myeong is not merely the youngest daughter of a chaebol family. She is one person trying not to lose her humanity within the world of power, and she is the new face of an era that opens a crack in the old chaebol narrative.