Lee Byung Hun’s agency, BH Entertainment, said on November 25, “The drama ‘Diplomat Kuroda Kosaku’ will begin airing from January next year on Fuji TV. Lee will appear in a Japanese drama for the first time, and his appearance was decided by Fuji TV’s ardent request.” Fuji TV said, “The character that Lee Byung Hun will play is a very important character with strong impact. He holds a key to solving the case, so we had thought that actor Lee Byung Hun, who is actively performing all around the world and who has a strong and predominant image, might be the perfect actor for the character.”
The drama “Diplomat Kuroda Kosaku,” which had already been produced as a movie with the same title and gained huge popularity before, will be about mysterious cases happening to diplomats. Its recreation as a drama has become a hot topic with the appearances of Japanese star actors such as Yuji Oda and Kou Shibasaki, and the drama will add more episodes about the past story of the protagonist Kuroda and his honest emotions as a human being, which the movie could not fully present. Lee Byung Hun will play an old friend of Kuroda who is a Korean-American, and he will speak every line only in English. Lee Byung Hun said, “I have been curious about the drama production process in Japan, and I found out that it was very similar to that of Korean dramas. I had thought that Japanese dramas have particularly unusual characters with unique jobs and peculiar personalities, and this drama is no different. This drama is not like an ordinary drama, so I am very excited.”
source: KBS Global
