Lee Min-jung's Comeback After 6 Years Hits a Critical Wall with 0% Viewership

Actress Lee Min-jung's return to the small screen after a six-year hiatus is facing a more disappointing report than expected. Despite featuring a lead cast of Lee Min-jung and Kim Ji-seok, along with veteran director Joo Seong-woo, the production saw viewership ratings stall in the 0% range from its very first broadcast. Analysts suggest that this is the result of a combination of a broadcasting environment and platform competition that makes it difficult to recover through the actress's name value or acting skills alone, coupled with the inherent narrative limitations of the work itself.

'Let's Get Divorced' made its debut on KBS Drama and GTV last month on the 19th. According to Nielsen Korea, the viewership ratings for the first episode were 0.4% for KBS Drama and 0.2% for GTV. Considering that this is the first TV drama work for Lee Min-jung since her appearance in the 2020 KBS2 drama 'Once Again,' it is a significantly disappointing start.

Looking at the basic premise of the work, there were many elements that could have targeted mass appeal. The story follows Baek Mi-young (Lee Min-jung) and Ji Won-ho (Kim Ji-seok), who jointly operate the wedding dress shop 'J& White,' as they decide to divorce after a long marriage and reflect on their mutual wounds and relationship in the process. Writer Hwang Ji-eon explained that she focused on depicting the specific processes of divorce litigation and the emotional changes of the couple.

In the early stages, conflict structures were presented that went beyond simple marital disputes. The two experienced a rapid distancing in their relationship after suffering a miscarriage in the past, and their emotional rift deepens with clashes surrounding company management issues and appearances on couple-themed variety shows. Baek Mi-young eventually decides to divorce by throwing her wedding ring into a river, and her relationship becomes even more complicated as she reunites with her former lover, Calvin (Lee Hyun-jin).

The problem lies in whether these conflict devices are accepted by viewers as a fresh type of relationship drama. The subject of divorce itself has already been repeatedly consumed in Korean dramas. Therefore, it is difficult to capture the interest of today's viewers simply by arranging devices such as suspicion of infidelity, the appearance of an ex-lover, or the intervention of a new romantic interest. In the actual broadcast, misunderstandings are amplified as Ji Won-ho (Kim Ji-seok) becomes entangled with Ahn Hee-joo (Lee Jin-yi), leading to developments that overlap with the relationship between Lee Min-jung and Lee Hyun-jin.

It is also difficult to conclude that the acting skills of the actors are the problem. Kim Ji-seok has been evaluated as expressing the temperature difference of his character, oscillating between his professional appearance as a wedding dress designer and the image of a husband exhausted by divorce litigation. In recent episodes, he has been serving as the central axis of the drama, handling psychological warfare surrounding the divorce and even a kidnapping incident.

Lee Min-jung also carried great symbolic weight by returning to her main profession after a long hiatus. After greatly increasing her public recognition through the 2009 KBS2 drama 'Boys Over Flowers,' she moved between romantic comedies, melodramas, and serious dramas through works such as 'Midas,' 'Big,' 'The Shameless Single Woman,' 'Wonderful Life,' and 'Fate and Fury.' In particular, in the 2020 drama 'Once Again,' she delivered realistic emotional acting at the center of a family drama revolving around divorce, leading to a hit with a peak viewership rate exceeding 30%.

For Lee Min-jung, 'Let's Get Divorced' was a comeback work that carried a kind of irony even from its title. While past works depicted the recovery of a family through the lives of characters who experienced divorce, this time it puts the catastrophe and renegotiation of a couple deciding to divorce at the forefront. However, it is painful that the mass appeal and topicality proven in her previous work are not properly connecting in this production.

Furthermore, Lee Min-jung appeared in the TVING original 'Villains' during this period, but the release of the work was delayed longer than expected, resulting in a long practical gap in her acting career. With external variables beyond her control overlapping, a considerable amount of time passed before she could reappear before viewers as the actress Lee Min-jung. In the meantime, she maintained contact with the public through her personal YouTube channel, 'Lee Min-jung MJ,' sharing her daily life and tastes.

Therefore, this comeback held significance beyond simply appearing in a single work; it was a test to see if Lee Min-jung could return to the center of TV dramas. However, the issues of platform and scheduling were cold. 'Let's Get Divorced' met viewers with an 11 PM scheduling on KBS Drama and GTV, which is removed from the prime-time competition of terrestrial or general programming channels. The mass-market channels through which viewers interested in the work could naturally flow were limited. The fact that the viewership ratings for the two channels were only 0.4% and 0.2% respectively in the first broadcast clearly demonstrates these structural limitations.

However, it is also necessary to be cautious about attributing the low viewership entirely to 'scheduling luck.' This is because if a work is good, there is room for it to rise in popularity through word-of-mouth and online buzz even on limited platforms. Whether 'Let's Get Divorced' sufficiently varied the heavy subject of divorce and provocative relationship settings into a new dramatic language from the beginning is a separate issue.

In particular, recent viewers demand more than a simple good-versus-evil structure even in works dealing with adultery and divorce, requiring an in-depth look at character psychology, social context, and the specific process of a relationship collapsing. Competitiveness is gained by three-dimensionally showing the legal procedures, property, family, wounds, and responsibilities surrounding the divorce, or by presenting a perspective that differentiates it from existing couple dramas. Since the work puts 'divorce' at the forefront from its title, how deeply it approaches this point is crucial.

Nevertheless, there remains room for a reversal in the work. In current broadcasts, as the truth of past events is revealed one by one, the fact that Baek Mi-young and Ji Won-ho were in a relationship that could not be simply divided into perpetrator and victim is being highlighted. In particular, as it is revealed that Ji Won-ho was injured while trying to protect Baek Mi-young in the past, the interpretation of the conflict between the two has also changed. The scene where Baek Mi-young breaks down in tears upon learning that Ji Won-ho almost died because of her is a device that transforms the simple marital conflict of the early stages into a more complex relationship drama.

The chemistry between Kim Ji-seok and Lee Min-jung is also a part of the work that can be expected until the end. While playing a couple in sharp emotional conflict, the two actors are giving persuasiveness to their respective characters. As the legal procedures and emotional relationships surrounding the divorce begin to entangle in earnest, there is a possibility that the density of the narrative will increase in the latter half.

Ultimately, the biggest disappointment of 'Let's Get Divorced' lies not in the actors, but in the fact that both the environment surrounding the work and the competitiveness of the content itself are being tested. For Lee Min-jung, who returned after six years, it was a golden opportunity to prove her mass appeal once again, but the combination of low accessibility, limited scheduling, and the familiar grammar of the early narrative prevented it from creating as much of an impact as expected.

However, it is still too early to define Lee Min-jung's comeback itself as a failure. Viewership is just one indicator for judging the success or failure of a work, and especially in the case of non-prime cable programming, there are limits to evaluating the value of an actor or a work based solely on absolute numbers. What is needed now is a cold evaluation of how well the work builds its own narrative in the remaining episodes, rather than the symbolism of a 'comeback after 6 years.'

For Lee Min-jung, who stood before the camera again after waiting six years, the most bitter part is not the performance of the work itself, but the fact that the fact 'Actress Lee Min-jung has returned' is not being sufficiently connected to widespread buzz. The extreme temperature difference from being the lead in a work with a peak viewership of over 30% to being the lead in a cable drama with 0% viewership is not an issue of the individual actress, but a reflection of the scheduling of today's drama industry.