5 things to know about Love and Leashes star Lee Jun-young: the former U-Kiss K-pop idol plays the lead in Netflix’s racy new film alongside Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun
A man with a secret love of BDSM (Jung Ji-hoo) and the female colleague who discovers his secret by accident (Jung Ji-woo) drive the storyline in Netflix’s hotly anticipated Korean film Love and Leashes, due for release on February 11.
So what do we know about him?
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He actually joined U-Kiss six years after the team launched
While he is most famous for being part of K-pop group U-Kiss, few realise that Jun was not part of the original line-up. The group, which originally debuted in 2008, started facing trouble when several members left in 2011 to 2013, citing health reasons, study commitments and other issues.
To help fill the gap, Jun was recruited and debuted with the group in 2014, making him the maknae (youngest) of the group. He eventually explained on The Unit that the move was “in hopes of helping the members” and that “a lot of people said things like, ‘Why did you join U-Kiss when you could’ve had a fresh start?’” However, the idol insisted he joined because he wanted to do it.
He won an idol reboot show to re-debut as a member of UNB
To refresh his image, Jun joined a KBS survival show called The Unit: Idol Rebooting Project in 2017, in which K-pop idols that have already debuted compete to be part of a new idol group.
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He’s won awards for his acting talent before
Around the same time that he joined The Unit, Jun also made his acting debut on television series Avengers Social Club. Soon after, he was cast as the second male lead in the K-drama Goodbye to Goodbye, for which he won the award for best new actor at the 2018 MBC Drama Awards.
He has since starred in other series such as Good Casting and Imitation, which helped him take home the Choice Actor award at last year’s Asia Artist Awards.
He is a talented painter, and even painted the cover art for his album, “Gallery”
Beyond being an accomplished singer and actor, Jun has also garnered attention for his impressive art skills. He is clearly a talented painter, even taking part in art exhibitions where several of his pieces sold.
As a result, he is also fond of painting his own cover art: his painting entitled Co-existence served as the artwork for his single album, “Gallery”, and he also hand-painted the artwork for his 2020 single Amen, as seen in a Singles Korea YouTube video.
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Fans are going crazy for Love and Leashes before it’s even been released
Even before Love and Leashes was released, fans were already buzzing about Jun and Seohyun’s performances. Teaser images and videos of the pair with leashes, collars and ropes wit the labels “dominant” and “submissive” have unsurprisingly gone viral on social media sites – not least because this will be the first time that both actors have been in a film with such, ahem, adult themes.
- Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun plays Jung Ji-woo, a woman who discovers her colleague Jung Ji-hoo’s kinky secret by accident in Netflix’s new film, Love and Leashes
- But can co-star Lee Jun-young hold his own in the film after his successes with Goodbye to Goodbye and Avengers Social Club? His awards suggest he can