The people writing Korea's most dreaded exam are about to get their close-up. Newly released character stills for the comedy film Ugly Duckling Ms. Maeng introduce Yoo Jae-myung as Moon Joo-yeol, the commanding head of the committee charged with setting the questions for the Suneung, South Korea's college entrance exam. Few institutions in Korean life carry more weight than the Suneung, the single-day exam that largely decides university admissions for hundreds of thousands of students each year.
MHN Sports reporter Kim Hyun-sook reports that the new stills catch Moon Joo-yeol in his element, presiding over the question-setting team from the head of a long conference table with a firm, decisive gesture. Another image shows the committee head with his hand resting on a stack of books by Kant — a quiet tell that his character holds a particular attachment to the German philosopher's passage in the Korean-language section of the exam.
Speaking about the role, Yoo said he drew on the everyday figures around him: "I wanted to naturally portray the kind of adults and members of the older generation who are always around us." He added that the film aims for something broader than workplace farce: "This film strives to humorously portray the many different kinds of people in our world who fight with one another, compromise, resort to underhanded tactics to protect their positions, and yet, amid it all, lead lives guided by sincerity."
Ugly Duckling Ms. Maeng is billed as a mission comedy built around one of the most pressure-cooker institutions in Korean life. Lee Sun-bin stars as Maeng Bo-ram, a Korean language teacher from a small provincial town who is swept into the exam's question-setting headquarters through an administrative error. Once inside, she finds herself sealed off with the committee for 40 days, tasked with producing "problem-free questions" for the national exam — a lockdown where tempers, secrets and rivalries collide. The film's Korean title, 수능, 출제의 비밀 — "Suneung, the Secret of Setting Questions" — promises a look behind one of the most secretive doors in Korean public life.
The pairing puts two of Korea's most reliable screen presences at the center of the story. Yoo Jae-myung is known to international audiences from the dramas Reply 1988, Stranger and Itaewon Class, as well as Love Me, and his film credits include Voice of Silence, The Land of Happiness, Harbin and Firefighters. Lee Sun-bin joins him as the unlikely newcomer whose small-town perspective upends the sealed-off world of the exam writers.
Ugly Duckling Ms. Maeng opens in theaters across Korea on October 28.
Source: MHN Sports
