Oldboy Cast Play Movies Again In In Our Prime, Become A Genius Who Defected From North Korea

JAKARTA - South Korean actor Choi Min-Sik, best known for his leading role in the film Oldboy (2003), will return to the big screen for the first time in three years in director Park Dong-hoon's In Our Prime.

Quoted from The Korea Herald on Wednesday, the film was originally planned to be released in the first quarter of last year, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Monday, February 7 local time, the film's distributor Showbox finally confirmed that In Our Prime will hit South Korean theaters on March 9.

In In Our Prime, Choi plays a character named Lee Hak-sung, a school security officer but actually a math genius who defected from North Korea.

Hak-sung meets Ji-woo (Kim Dong-hwi), a student who has difficulty adjusting at school due to his different social background.

Ji-woo asks Hak-sung to teach him math. Through that lesson, the two became close to each other. But one day Ji-woo is framed in an incident at school and Hak-sung's past risks being exposed.

Through In Our Prime, the film's distributor said audiences would find Choi acting in a North Korean accent again, 22 years after he appeared in the film Shiri, which is about espionage between the two Koreas.

The veteran actor's 33-year career was marked by many major films, such as Park Chan-wook's iconic film Oldboy (2003), Kim Jee-Woon's film I Saw the Devil (2010), Park Hoon-Jung's New World (2013), and Kim Han-min's The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014).

The historical drama Forbidden Dream which was released in 2019 is Choi's latest project before the drama In Our Prime. In Forbidden Dream, he plays Jang Yeong-Sil, a scientist who lives during the Joseon Dynasty.