LEE YEON-HEE and Hong Jong-hyun appear in the Lee Dong-yoon-directed Korean drama RACE, which has been made available on Disney+. Set against the backdrop of a public relations (PR) firm in South Korea, the series aims to give viewers a peek into the realities of the industry while highlighting the challenges of regular employees. Moon So-ri and Jung Yun-ho are also stars in this series.
The protagonist of RACE, Park Yoon-jo (Lee Yeon-hee), is hired for a contract role on the PR team of a large corporation. She previously worked at a smaller PR firm, but now is involved in a hiring dispute and she needs to establish her credibility to the company.
Director Lee and the cast members recently participated in a virtual press conference where we learned some extra details about the show.
“Research, Action, Communication, and Evaluation”, are four concepts that are frequently used in the PR and marketing fields, and that is exactly what RACE stands for according to Director Lee. In this series, a varied set of working professionals are developing their individual career trajectories, he claimed. He continued by saying that rather than compete with each other for the same goal, everyone has a unique tale and is running their own RACE at their own speed.
Since this was Lee Yeon-hee’s first workplace drama, she said that it accurately depicted the difficulties and hardships of workers in her age group.
When asked how was it playing a character with that profession, she responded: “The creator of the series provided me quite a few books on what this job is about and on what individuals in this sector are like. I read quite a few of those. I discovered the difficulties they faced and how dedicated those working in this profession were.”
RACE is also, by Hong Jong-hyun’s account, his debut workplace drama. He expressed his opinions on his workplace drama by saying: “Filming so many sequences in one location was pretty intriguing.
“I found it to be a novel and revitalising experience to put myself in the position of an office worker.”
Moon So-ri, who is well recognised for her diversified and successful parts in a number of series, says that the idea of the PR industry is quite appealing. By turns, the group members expressed their gratitude for having the gifted Moon So-ri on their team.
When Jung Yun-ho first presented his character, Dong-hoon, he described him as having absurd objectives for building a company where the workers are content. Additionally, he mentioned that he had a range of feelings when working with other cast members.
He added: “The realisation that I got to connect with so many people once I started acting after spending years as a singer getting the spotlight on stage caught my attention as I got ready for filming. Working with many people on set allowed me to experience a wide range of emotions, which was a tremendous learning experience for me.”
When asked what his primary goal is for the series, director Lee responded: “PR and marketing ultimately targets the general public. And it deals with a lot of current affairs. I paid great attention to the details. PR with the traditional newspapers or other outlets in the media is important, but PR that targets ordinary people, general consumers, or employees of a company also matters very much because digital marketing and PR has become a norm. And another aspect was how PR as a profession can look different depending on what kind of organisation you are in.”
theSun later had an exclusive online interview with the four talented cast members –Lee Yeon-hee, Hong Jong-hyun, Moon So-ri and Jung Yun-ho – to learn more about their experiences.
We questioned the cast about the challenges they had while filming theshow. Speaking and remembering their English dialogue was the toughest obstacle, according to Yun ho and So-ri. Fortunately, though, Yun-ho was able to study English as a result, and he is still studying.
Since she is the most experienced actor of the three, So-ri had to make sure she didn’t put her co-stars under undue strain, and gave them as much support as possible in order to fit in with the crew, in addition to learning their English lines.
Making his character compelling and realistic, according to Jong-hyun, was something he struggled with up until the very end.
“You know, our drama series is not something that is extremely dramatic; it’s more of slice-of-life scenes where it really has to come off as something realistic, convincing, and above all, relatable to the viewers, and obviously this is a subject matter where I don’t actually have personal experience, that was one of my personal challenges,” the actor said.
Since Yeon-hee’s character works in public relations, she had to research the various facets and components of what PR entails. She considers PR to be a very difficult profession, and the biggest issue was figuring out who she was as a person and where her passion came from.
Throughout his career, Jong-hyun has built up a loyal following. When asked what viewers might anticipate from this show, he responded: “It has been a very long time since I shot a lengthy series, and this is also an office drama, which I have not done before, despite the fact that this is not my first project after leaving [military service]. I am both anxious and excited. I tried my best, and I hope all of you can enjoy [it].”
RACE is available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar, with new episodes released every Wednesdays.
