The Trunk

Viewers called it prostitution. Gong Yoo still wanted the shadows.

Netflix put The Trunk up on November 29, 2024. Two days later allkpop was quoting Korean forums that had the series at number one at home and also calling the NM contract a prostitution plot with extra paperwork. Some people said they would not have touched it without Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin. latestnetflix.com's read is that Others called it one of the most boring dramas they had seen in months.

The pitch is already a fight. NM sells a one-year temporary marriage. Jeong-won, a music producer, becomes In-ji's fifth husband after his ex-wife signs him up so they can spend a year with other people and then, in her plan, remarry. A trunk washes up. The company starts leaking.

Gong Yoo did not pretend this was Goblin 2. At a Seoul press sit-down he said audiences prefer gentle stories, then admitted he keeps noticing the shadows inside a real relationship. He wanted this one to sit in those darker facets instead of offering escape. Seo Hyun-jin, playing NM deputy Noh In-ji, went the other way on volume. If the character's emotion is 100, she wanted one-tenth of it on camera, kept minimal. Director Kim Kyu-tae said he took the job because of the two of them, and that they exceeded what he expected.

The kiss they made him watch twice.

Netflix's own promo video is the messier document. The staff queued their kiss scenes while Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin sat there. Gong Yoo went, "Oh, here we go again! They never miss an opportunity, do they?" Seo Hyun-jin reminded him the director had praised his kissing on the take with cars going by. She said Kim Kyu-tae was excited to have captured it. In another clip he yelped that Jeong-won changes lanes without blinkers. She called him ahjussi.

That is the other half of the discourse. Koreaboo logged kitchen and bedroom scenes for Jung Yun-ha's Seo-yeon in the first two episodes that Korean viewers did not expect from a Gong Yoo title, plus a later bed scene for the leads. The pair still had to sell a tango that turns into a kiss In-ji did not see coming. Soompi ran the kitchen-to-living-room tease the day of the drop, with Jeong-won putting on music and In-ji saying it takes two to tango.

Same agency, six months, a lake.

This is the first time Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin, both at Management Soop, worked together. Netflix confirmed them in July 2023. Kim Kyu-tae of Our Blues directed. Park Eun-young of Hwarang wrote. The source is Kim Ryeo-ryeong's novel. Wikipedia, citing Ten Asia, has cameras wrapping in February 2024 after about six months, with a Yeouido wrap party. The limited series is eight episodes. Cha Seung-won, Uhm Ji-won, Lee Jung-eun, and Jung Kyung-ho all took specials.

Tudum later spelled out the nasty joke inside the contract. Seo-yeon does not just leave. She books both of them new spouses for a year, waits for Jeong-won to repent, and meanwhile gets involved with her younger hire. Jeong-won is on sleeping pills. In-ji is his new wife whether he wants one or not. The official trailer still sells the trunk on the shore more than the forum fight. Watch it. The argument about what NM is selling is the thing people actually argued about.