Peninsula: From a Supporting Actor to the Best Actor in Chungmuro

A convenience store in Seoul at 3 a.m. in 2013.

When Kang Jae-hoon was feeding stray cats with fish cake skewers, he was spotted by actor Hwang Jung-min.

Since then, there has been an "outlier" in the entertainment industry of the Peninsula -

he was the young man who woke up the extras with a real slap in "International Market", the drama geek who secretly learned Yoo Ah-in's micro-expressions on the set of "Veteran", and the Go Hwan who made the audience cry in "Reply 1988".

From the double-layer refrigerator in the shared house to the red carpet in Chungmuro, Kang Jae-hoon's road to advancement is full of absurdity and passion:

the sharp-tongued roommate Lee Sung-kyung hid expired rice cakes while calling him a "defective product";

the nation's first love Bae Suzy anonymously donated her salary to the family of the trainee who committed suicide, but showed him the AA bill;

the perfect goddess Im Yoona knocked on his door late at night just to confirm whether her mascara was smudged during the kissing scene.

Huang Zhengmin sneered with a cigarette in his mouth: "Kid, remember this - actors are either commodities or lunatics."

When Jiang Zaixun held up the Blue Dragon trophy, the camera swept across his yellowed notebook, and the last page read:

"The camera does not lie, but the audience will never know that I learned rock climbing so that I could carry Yoona out of the fire, I took the motorcycle license so that I could carry Suzy away from the illegitimate fans, and I practiced vacuum belly... just because the Bible said I looked like a pregnant raccoon."

This is a story about a "defective product" that became a specimen of the times.