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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Park Ji-hoon, Han Dong-hee, Lee Sang-yi
Latest Nielsen rating: 6.25 per cent
Fresh from the record-breaking success of the period drama The King’s Warden, which has become the second-most-successful Korean film of all time, Park Ji-hoon looks to have another hit on his hands with the food-themed military comedy The Legend of Kitchen Soldier.
Based on the Naver webtoon Kitchen Soldier by J Robin, this thoroughly diverting series features Park as Kang Seong-jae, a new recruit in the army who is assigned to the seaside Gangrim barracks after completing boot camp.


Seong-jae aced basic training, but having recently lost his father and after exhibiting some peculiar behaviour, he is flagged as a cadet with potential mental health issues – and identified to fellow recruits with a patronising smiley-face pin on his uniform. Rather than send him into the field, his new superiors assign him to kitchen duty.
In the kitchen, he joins Yoon Dong-hyeon (Lee Hong-nae, The Uncanny Counter), the beefy military cook whose dreadful culinary skills strike horror into the mess hall when the soldiers sit down for their three square meals.
Seong-jae’s conduct only becomes stranger as he grapples with an onset of auditory and visual hallucinations, which soon take shape as a kind of virtual reality game complete with voice-over instructions and floating touch-activated menus.
The object of this game is to become the “Legendary Chef” by completing tasks that range from cleaning the storeroom to prepping increasingly elaborate dishes.

Although everyone on base expects Seong-jae to mess things up, he continually surprises them with kitchen skills he never knew he had.
When Dong-hyeon is absent during a commander’s surprise visit to the mess hall one morning, Seong-jae is forced to improvise in the kitchen, whipping up a seaweed soup with unusual ingredients. The commander’s taste buds are blown away; unfortunately, his sensitive allergies are also triggered thanks to a mystery ingredient.
Captain Hwang Seok-ho (Lee Sang-yi, Bloodhounds), having not tried the dish himself, decides to transfer Seong-jae to another unit for sending his superior to hospital. To continue his journey towards becoming a legendary chef, Seong-jae must convince him otherwise.
The Legend of Kitchen Soldier benefits from a snappy premise, but what really sets it apart is its wry sense of humour and shrewd execution.

When army life is depicted on South Korean screens, harsh hierarchy and bullying tend to be foregrounded, but whether filmmakers focus on those pressing themes, the stories that really pop are those that lean into the rigid rules of army life and the paradoxes they create.
From Park Chan-wook’s Joint Security Area all the way to the Netflix series D.P., the most memorable military narratives have often focused on characters whose experiences on base have deviated from the norm.
Tonally, The Legend of Kitchen Soldier is most aligned with the big-screen comedy 6/45, a surprise Covid-era hit about the clashes between North and South Korean soldiers when a winning lottery ticket blows across the military demarcation line.
While Seong-jae’s fantastical video-game-esque predicament sounds like a winner on paper, the truth is that recent Korean stories that have tried to gamify their narratives, including last summer’s box-office flop Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy, have met with muted reactions.

To this show’s credit, it pulls off the premise exceptionally well. The concept is cleanly rendered on screen, does not get bogged down with complex gameplay and is accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike.
Bolstering this fantastical element of the show is its heightened comedy style. Seong-jae may be the only character caught in a fantasy game, but all the characters frequently drift off into reveries, each vividly realised on screen.
One recruit who is particularly offended by Dong-hyeon’s cooking keeps imagining himself in a beach landing battle zone whenever the cafeteria food touches his lips. If it is a spoonful of bean sprout soup, the soldiers fighting alongside him may be toting bean sprout rifles.
Anchoring the series is an emotional core. It is quickly suggested that whatever Seong-jae is experiencing is connected to the recent passing of his beloved father, a kind neighbourhood chef whose dishes Seong-jae ate as a child now make up some of the in-game missions.

The show also benefits from an ensemble of performers who share strong comic chemistry. Park is a compelling, easy-to-root-for lead, while Lee Hong-nae sells the sympathetic undercurrent of his meathead character, and Lee Sang-yi is a scream as the overbearing captain who keeps sprinkling his orders with English.
Also rising to the occasion are Han Dong-hee (Climax) as the frustrated First Lieutenant Cho Ye-rin and Yoon Kyung-ho (The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call) as the avuncular Sergeant Major Park Jae-young.
The Legend of Kitchen Soldier is streaming on HBO Max.


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Park Ji-hoon as Kang Seong-jae in a still from HBO Max K-drama The Legend of Kitchen Soldier. Han Dong-hee and Lee Sang-yi co-star.

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Han Dong-hee as First Lieutenant Cho Ye-rin in a still from The Legend of Kitchen Soldier.

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Yoon Kyung-ho as Sergeant Major Park (left) and Lee Sang-yi as Captain Hwang in a still from The Legend of Kitchen Soldier.

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Park Ji-hoon stars as an army recruit who has hallucinations and is assigned to kitchen duty, where he shows unusual cooking talents


Park Ji-hoon stars as an army recruit who has hallucinations and is assigned to kitchen duty, where he shows unusual cooking talents.


HBO Max K-drama The Legend of Kitchen Soldier: Park Ji-hoon leads winning military comedy

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Park Ji-hoon stars as an army recruit who has hallucinations and is assigned to kitchen duty, where he shows unusual cooking talents

Park Ji-hoon stars as an army recruit who has hallucinations and is assigned to kitchen duty, where he shows unusual cooking talents