Shin Hyun-jun recalls getting slapped at a signing event for playing villain Hayashi in 'The General's Son'

Shin Hyun-jun got slapped in the face at a signing event. The person who did it had actually appeared in the film.

The actor showed up on MBN variety program Kim Ju-ha's Day and Night on June 13. Host Kim Ju-ha opened by noting that both his role as Hayashi in The General's Son and General Hwang in Ginkgo Bed were performances he gave in his 20s.

Shin traced the Hayashi casting back to university. He had been reading The General's Son and found himself drawn not to Kim Doo-han but to Hayashi. When auditions were announced—the production planned to cast entirely new actors—he went without telling his parents and arrived almost last in line. Director Lim Kwon-taek, An Sung-ki, and Kang Soo-yeon were all in the room. Everyone else came in saying they wanted to play Kim Doo-han. Shin said he wanted Hayashi. "They said 'Really?'" he recalled. Lim then asked whether he could speak Japanese. By coincidence, Shin's university had a Japanese sister school and he had studied the language. He spoke some basic Japanese on the spot. Lim loved it. He was cast as Hayashi from that first audition.

The role came with consequences at fan events. At a signing in Busan, the crowd was so large he couldn't make eye contact and was moving through signatures quickly when someone hit him hard across the cheek. The person turned out to be one of Kim Dong-hae's real-life associates who had appeared in the film. "He said 'you bad guy,'" Shin said. "He was so immersed in watching." (Getting cursed out by elderly attendees, he added, was a regular occurrence.)

After that, bodyguards were stationed beside him at every signing event.