It is a hard watch. Honestly, calling The King of Pigs (2022) "dark" feels like a massive understatement. It’s a descent into the absolute worst parts of human nature, specifically the kind of trauma that starts in a middle school hallway and ends in a bloodbath twenty years later. But the reason this show stuck with people wasn't just the gore or the depressing realism of South Korea's class system. It was the acting. The cast of the King of Pigs managed to take characters who could have easily been one-dimensional villains or victims and turned them into something much more haunting.
Trauma is loud. It’s also very, very quiet. To pull off a live-action adaptation of Sang-ho Yeon’s (of Train to Busan fame) original 2011 animation, the actors had to balance a weird line between 90s nostalgia and modern-day horror. They nailed it.
Kim Dong-wook as the man who couldn't forget
Kim Dong-wook plays Hwang Kyung-min. You might know him from Find Me in Your Memory or Coffee Prince, but this is a completely different beast. Kyung-min is a man who has lived with a "monster" inside him for two decades. When his business fails and a specific trigger sets him off, he decides to hunt down the people who bullied him in school.
What’s wild about Kim Dong-wook’s performance is the stillness. He doesn't play Kyung-min like a typical slasher movie killer. He plays him like a man who is already dead. There’s a specific scene early on where he’s looking at himself in the mirror, and you can almost see the shift in his eyes from a struggling adult to a terrified child. It’s unsettling. He carries this heavy, suffocating sadness that makes you—not exactly root for a serial killer—but at least understand why he’s doing it.
Most people think revenge stories are about empowerment. Here, it’s about exhaustion. Kim shows that Kyung-min isn't enjoying the violence; he’s just finishing a job that started twenty years ago.
Kim Sung-kyu: The detective caught in the middle
Then you have Kim Sung-kyu playing Jung Jong-suk. If you’ve seen Kingdom on Netflix, you know he has this incredible physical presence. In The King of Pigs, he plays a detective who was actually Kyung-min’s best friend back in school. He was there. He was a victim too.
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This is where the show gets messy in the best way possible. While Kyung-min chose violence, Jong-suk chose to bury his past and become a cop. Kim Sung-kyu has to play a man who is literally vibrating with suppressed anxiety. He’s trying to catch a killer, but he’s also trying to stop his own secrets from coming out.
The chemistry—or lack thereof, since they are often playing a cat-and-mouse game through phone calls and crime scene notes—is the engine of the show. Kim Sung-kyu’s face often looks like it’s made of stone, but his eyes are constantly betraying him. He’s terrified that he’s not the "good guy" he’s spent his adult life pretending to be.
The supporting players and the "pigs"
Chae Jung-an plays Kang Jin-ah, the detective who is actually trying to solve the case without all the emotional baggage. She’s essentially the audience’s surrogate. She’s the only one asking the logical questions while the two leads are spiraling into their shared trauma. Chae provides a necessary groundedness. Without her, the show might have felt too nihilistic to finish.
And we have to talk about the bullies.
The adult versions of the bullies are played by actors who make you hate them instantly. They aren't "cool" villains. They are mediocre men. They are doctors, teachers, and business owners who "forgot" they ruined someone’s life because, to them, it was just a Tuesday. This choice by the casting director was brilliant. It highlights the banality of evil. The horror isn't that these men are monsters now; it's that they are perfectly normal members of society.
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The younger cast of the King of Pigs: The real heavy lifters
Usually, when a show relies heavily on flashbacks, the child actors are the weak link. Not here. The younger versions of the main trio are arguably the most important part of the entire series.
- Lee Chan-yoo (Young Kyung-min)
- Sim Hyun-seo (Young Jong-suk)
- Choi Hyun-jin (Kim Chul)
These kids had to film scenes that were physically and emotionally grueling. The bullying depicted isn't just "shoving someone into a locker." It’s systemic, psychological, and brutal.
Choi Hyun-jin, who plays Kim Chul, is the standout. Kim Chul is the "King of Pigs." He’s the one kid who decides to fight back against the "dogs" (the rich, popular kids). He tells his friends they have to become monsters to survive. Choi plays this role with a chilling, tragic intensity. He’s a middle schooler who has the soul of a cynical 80-year-old. When he speaks, the other boys—and the audience—actually believe him. It’s some of the best acting from a minor I've seen in years.
Why this specific cast worked where others fail
The "revenge thriller" is a dime a dozen in K-Drama. We’ve seen it in The Glory, Taxi Driver, and Weak Hero Class 1. But The King of Pigs feels different because the cast doesn't play for sympathy.
They play for honesty.
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In many dramas, the victims are saints. In this show, the cast of the King of Pigs shows that trauma often makes people ugly. It makes them selfish. It makes them make terrible decisions. By allowing the characters to be unlikeable at times, the actors made them feel like real people rather than tropes.
There's a lot of discussion about the "social hierarchy" in Korean schools (and society at large). The show uses the metaphor of "Dogs" (the elite) and "Pigs" (the commoners). The actors lean into this. You can see the hierarchy in the way they stand, the way they avert their eyes, and the way they speak to one another. It's a masterclass in body language.
Misconceptions about the show’s production
Some people think the show is just a scene-for-scene remake of the 2011 movie. It’s not. The drama expands the adult lives of the characters significantly. This required the adult cast to create a brand-new history that wasn't fully explored in the original animation.
Kim Dong-wook reportedly spent a lot of time internalizing the specific brand of "stagnant" grief required for the role. He didn't want Kyung-min to feel like a "cool" vigilante. He wanted him to feel like a ghost. That’s a subtle distinction that makes a massive difference in how the story lands. If you go into this expecting John Wick, you’ll be disappointed. If you go in expecting a character study of a broken soul, you’ll be floored.
What you should do next if you're interested
If you haven't watched it yet, brace yourself. It's available on various streaming platforms depending on your region (often TVING or international partners like Viki).
- Watch the 2011 film first. It’s only 90 minutes and gives you a raw look at the source material. It will make you appreciate the live-action cast's nuances even more.
- Pay attention to the lighting. The show uses color palettes to distinguish between the "cold" present and the "dusty, yellow" past. The actors' skin tones even seem to change to match the era.
- Look up the director, Kim Dae-jin. His work here is incredibly precise, and he clearly gave the actors a lot of room to breathe in long, uncomfortable takes.
This isn't a show you "binge" on a happy weekend. It’s a show you process. The cast ensures that even after the credits roll, you’re still thinking about those kids in the hallway and the men they eventually became. It’s a haunting reminder that while we might leave the past, the past rarely leaves us.
Check out the first two episodes to see if you can handle the intensity; the shift in Kim Dong-wook's performance between the opening scenes and the end of the first hour is enough to tell you everything you need to know about the quality of this production.