Jeon Jae-hong on *The The Scarecrow*, His Father Jeon Guk-hwan, and Learning to Listen

With *The Scarecrow* wrapped on ENA, actors Jeon Jae-hong and Kim Eun-woo sat down to talk through the drama that gave each of them one of their most visible roles to date.

The show's title was never just about a serial killer. The corrupt cops who framed innocent people, the prosecutors who covered up crimes, the bystanders who saw the truth and did nothing — the scarecrow was all of them. Jeon Jae-hong played Jang Myeong-do; Kim Eun-woo played Do Hyeong-gu. Both auditioned urgently for the parts and came to set with what they described as a heavy sense of responsibility.

On watching ratings come in each week — Kim Eun-woo: "There's a prayer group chat — the three of us pray together every week. Every Monday and Tuesday my heart was pounding." Jeon Jae-hong: "On broadcast nights Eun-woo would put on the *The Scarecrow* team jacket and send a message saying 'Ready.'" Kim Eun-woo: "It was our uniform. We dressed properly to watch it."

On playing cops who cross into crime — Kim Eun-woo: "Up through episode ten they're just doing their jobs, but the job grows into something unmanageable. The challenge was figuring out how to show that escalation in our own way." Jeon Jae-hong: "Myeong-do is in chaos, but he grabbed the rope and just kept pulling — that's the choice I showed."

Neither actor knew the killer's identity from the start. Both received scripts only through episode six. Kim Eun-woo: "I was completely shocked. I kept guessing from the pages alone. I figured it might be a famous actor in a surprise cameo — someone who would land as a real shock." Jeon Jae-hong: "Even when I got close to the production team and asked, it was always 'classified.' We speculated the whole shoot. I found out in episode seven. My first guess had been Moon-seong."

On the atmosphere at the Gangseong Police Station set — both credited Baek Hyun-jin for setting the tone. Jeon Jae-hong: "I'd admired him for a long time — great actor, genuinely artistic. I expected someone with a strong personal style, but on set he kept saying 'let's find it together' and pulled everyone along." Kim Eun-woo: "That ensemble instinct might just be this cast's thing. A lot of us came from theatre, so we were already wired to think about the group sound."

On his father, veteran actor Jeon Guk-hwan — Jeon Jae-hong: "He doesn't ask much about my work. Maybe it's a father-son thing. He watches everything, though. He told me this one was good. Lately my respect for him has gotten deeper — what he says actually lands now. I was watching my own performance back and I could see all the gaps. I brought that up over dinner and he said, 'A few more of these and it fills in — don't fixate on it.' As an actor you never know when you'll get chosen. Watching the drama air felt like being in an audition. I was that much more tense because I know I'm still unproven."

Kim Eun-woo credited his wife for keeping him steady through the solitude that comes with stage work. "There were long stretches of loneliness in daily life. Getting through that wasn't easy, but I got through it because of her."

On what *The Scarecrow* means going forward — Jeon Jae-hong: "Every time I act I try to go in thinking 'this is the last one' and 'I'll never get a project this good again.' That mindset pushes you to give everything today. Before, I used to feel like I was executing assignments. Now it feels like I'm building something together. *The Scarecrow* doesn't feel like a last project anymore — it feels like a first."

Jeon Guk-hwan is a respected character actor with decades of film and drama credits; Jeon Jae-hong being his son is a known industry fact that shapes how the younger actor's career is read by Korean audiences.

literally "scarecrow"; used in the drama as a metaphor for those who stand in place of justice without ever acting on it