Lee Dong Wook, Jung Yoo Mi, and Jeon So Nee Eye Netflix's Love Affair

The director who made Korean TV history with an extramarital affair storyline is back, and he has assembled a cast that should make everyone nervous in the best way possible. Lee Dong Wook (이동욱), Jung Yoo Mi (정유미), and Jeon So Nee (전소니) are all in talks for Netflix's upcoming drama Love Affair, helmed by director Mo Wan Il (모완일) of The World of the Married fame.

A Dangerous Triangle in Korea and Madrid

The setup is deceptively simple. Kim Ji Hoon is a government worker in his early 40s with a stable career and a genuinely happy marriage. Then he meets a woman in Madrid. What follows, according to production company FNC Story, is a love that arrives "like a bolt of lightning on a clear day" and leads his once-stable life toward complete destruction.

Lee Dong Wook has been offered the role of Kim Ji Hoon. Jung Yoo Mi is in talks to play Lee Sun Hee, Ji Hoon's wife and a popular at-home YouTuber who has to reckon with her husband's unraveling. Jeon So Nee has been tapped for Gong Hoo Kyung, an architect who resents her home country and crosses paths with Ji Hoon during his time in Spain.

The World of the Married Director Returns

Mo Wan Il's last major work, The World of the Married, aired on JTBC in 2020 and peaked at a 28.4% viewership rating, making it the highest-rated cable drama in Korean television history at the time. The show depicted the psychological fallout of infidelity with an unflinching, almost clinical precision. It was the kind of drama that had people canceling plans to watch new episodes.

After directing the Netflix series The Frog (2024) and stepping away from a separate project titled Insiders due to undisclosed circumstances, Love Affair marks his return to the territory he knows better than anyone working in Korean television right now. Reports indicate the new series will incorporate thriller elements alongside the psychological drama, which should distinguish it from his 2020 landmark.

A Cast That Plays Against Type

The casting is generating real conversation precisely because of what it asks these actors to do. Lee Dong Wook has built his career on roles that lean into his natural warmth. Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (also known as Goblin), My Mister, Tale of the Nine Tailed. He is a reliable romantic lead. Playing a man who dismantles his own marriage through a forbidden affair requires a different register entirely.

Jeon So Nee, similarly, is not typically cast as the person who walks into someone's life and sets it on fire. The contrast between her known screen persona and this role is part of why the casting news landed with such impact on social media.

For Jung Yoo Mi, this would be the first project under her new agency Noon Company, having parted ways with Management SOOP after nine years earlier this year. It would also mark the first time she and Lee Dong Wook have appeared together on screen.

Netflix, Madrid, and What Comes Next

FNC Story is producing the series for Netflix global distribution, which guarantees the kind of international reach that The World of the Married never had when it originally aired on JTBC. Filming is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2026, with Spain's capital serving as the setting for the central affair.

No official confirmation from all parties has been issued yet, and casting negotiations remain ongoing. But with Mo Wan Il's track record and a premise this combustible, Love Affair is already one of the most-watched casting situations in Korean drama this year.