Ji Jin Hee should be used to the reactions he gets from drama viewers. When he played a Joseon-era government official in love with the court's first female physician in Dae Jang Geum, he became an international Hallyu star.
And the roles he is most popular for have involved romance. In the 2010 drama "Dong Yi," he played King Sukjong, a king who falls in love with a palace maid.
The actor noticed a difference in the way people react to him based on his actions in the current SBS weekend drama "I Have A Lover." The reactions improved based on recent plot developments.
The 44-year-old actor plays Choi Jin Yeon, a man who grows apart from his wife and cheats on her with a graduate student, played by Park Han Byul. When the character cheated, people he did not know criticized the actor. His real-life wife did not like it. And he admits that he had a difficult time playing a man who cheats.
When he appeared on the TV program "One Night Of TV Entertainment," he spoke about the challenges involved in playing a cheating husband.
"He's someone that's really impossible to understand. How could a person do that?"
Ji Jin Hee could only imagine that his character was swept away by the need to protect a person who was hurt.
"He didn't love her."
But lately, as the plot has reunited him with his estranged wife, the reaction to his character has become more favorable.
"I met a group of ladies in the elevator of my apartment a few days ago and they looked at me differently," said Ji in an interview with the Korean media outlet Sports Donga. "They told me they were watching my drama. Even my wife scolded me for cheating in the drama but now she enjoys it."
Now that Choi Jin Yeon's drama wife has amnesia, the character has forgotten all about what separated the couple and only remembers that she loves him. And she is the only person that he ever loved.
"He only loves one woman," said Ji. "He was fed up with the way his wife changed and the affair just happened."
Despite this new drama chance at displaying his talents as a romantic actor, Ji says he is not really good at it.
"I don't know how to act out romance, but I am getting better at it and I will get even better. It's not easy for someone my age to be in a romantic drama."
Ji Jin Hee played another cheating husband in "One Warm Word" and a villainous vampire doctor in "Blood." From 2014 to 2015 he also starred in three Chinese films, "On The Way" with Eva Huang, "Bad Sister" with Ivy Chen, and "Helios," a crime thriller.
