Lee Jun-young Is the Reason 'New Employee Chairman Kang' Keeps Climbing

JTBC's Saturday-Sunday drama New Employee Chairman Kang (신입사원 강회장) opened at a 3.7% rating and hit 8.2% by episode four — a climb that almost never happens this fast in the current landscape. The show is a body-swap, second-chance-at-life story: Choi Sung Group chairman Kang Yong-ho (Son Hyun-joo) and soccer player Hwang Jun-hyeon (Lee Jun-young) collide in a freak head-butt accident, and the chairman's soul ends up in the younger man's body. Kang Yong-ho — now wearing Hwang Jun-hyeon's face — joins his own company as a new employee and starts quietly taking the board apart from the inside.

The premise has obvious pedigree. The original web novel was written by author San-gyeong, the same writer behind the Reborn Rich (재벌집 막내아들) source novel — the JTBC drama that peaked at a 26.9% rating (Nielsen Korea, national paid households) and became a genuine cultural moment. That connection had people paying attention before the first episode even aired, and the show has been delivering on the expectation: the pacing is relentless, the chaebol succession war subplot keeps escalating, and the "sider" moments — where the chairman-in-disguise outmaneuvers people who think they're dealing with a clueless rookie — land exactly the way they're supposed to.

But the real story here is Lee Jun-young. Playing a 72-year-old chairman's consciousness inside a young athlete's body is the kind of dual-register performance that can fall apart fast if the actor isn't precise about it. Lee Jun-young is precise. Before the soul swap, Hwang Jun-hyeon reads as loose, spontaneous, physically confident — a guy who lives in his body. After the swap, the same face carries a completely different weight: the pauses before he speaks, the way his eyes settle on a room before he moves through it, the low-register delivery when he's done playing nice. It doesn't feel like an impression of Son Hyun-joo's performance as the original chairman — it feels like the same soul filtered through a different instrument.

The scenes opposite Lee Ju-myung, who plays Kang Bang-geul, are where the tonal range really shows. Their bickering scenes are genuinely funny — Lee Jun-young has a gift for deadpan physical comedy that doesn't undercut the character's authority. Then a scene will pivot, the chairman needs to make a point, and the warmth drains out of his face in real time. The episode four confrontation where he lays out his plan to take down Kang Jae-seong while Kang Bang-geul pushes back — low voice, no smile, full stillness — is the kind of scene that gets clipped and shared.

This performance isn't coming out of nowhere. Lee Jun-young had a small but memorable role in When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다) as the love interest to IU's character Geum-myeong — short screen time, lasting impression. He's also worked across romance comedy (I Openly Dream of Cinderella, Melo Movie, 24-Hour Health Club) and heavier material (Royal Roader, Weak Hero Class 2). New Employee Chairman Kang is the role where all of that range lands in one character at the same time.

The drama is 12 episodes total and four have aired as of this writing. The rating trajectory — 3.7%, then climbing to 8.2% by episode four — suggests the word-of-mouth engine is already running. If the succession war plot keeps escalating and Lee Jun-young stays this locked in, the back half of the run could get loud.

New Employee Chairman Kang airs on JTBC every Saturday at 10:40 PM and Sunday at 10:30 PM.