K-drama Police University: Krystal Jung’s trainee cop attracts Jin Young’s unmoored hacker in show that is part procedural, part classroom drama
- K-pop stars Jin Young and Krystal Jung appear in 16-episode KBS2 series about the trials and tribulations of young recruits at a police academy
- The show has been saddled so far with a cliched set-up and overly familiar characters, but individual storylines may start to gather momentum in time
Veteran actor Cha Tae-hyun returns to TV screens as the gruff instructor in Police University. The 16-episode series from Korean broadcaster KBS2, which airs on Mondays and Tuesdays, follows the trials and tribulations of young recruits at a police academy and their contentious relationships with their instructors, especially one assigned there against his will.
Cha plays Yoo Dong-man, a prototypical middle-aged Korean detective who locks horns with his superiors and gets too invested in his cases. His latest assignment is to break up a criminal organisation fuelled by cryptocurrency.
Undercover at an illegal gambling den, he stakes and loses 100 million won (US$85,000) of his own money, yet despite protestations from his partner Park Cheol-ji (Song Jin-woo), he continues on the trail with the help of a hacker known as Yoon, who he meets, and can only communicate with, on the dark web.
Yoon is actually Kang Sun-ho (Jin Young), a high schooler with a gift for programming who has been living with his foster family – friend Seung-beom (Choi Woo-sung) and father Yoon Taek-il (Oh Man-seok) – ever since the death of his parents as a child.
During a judo competition, Sun-ho uses his hacker skills to help Seung-beom confess to a crush he has, but he’s suddenly lovestruck by the sight of Oh Kang-hee (Krystal Jung), another competitor. Flustered, he unintentionally puts up Seung-beom’s confession on a screen with Kang-hee’s face.