An Embassy for Gumiho: Lee Junho's New tvN Drama

tvN has confirmed the leads for its new drama 'Juhan Iguk Daesagwan' — literally Embassy of Otherworldly Nationals in Korea. Lee Junho and Hong Hwa-yeon are attached. The premise is unusual enough that it drew more attention than the casting itself.

There is an embassy that administers the non-human beings living in South Korea. A human rookie diplomat posted there by mistake meets an ambassador who turns out to be a dragon. The genre is fantasy romantic comedy.

At a glance

The only empty cell is the broadcast slot. Title, genre, writer, director and both leads are locked; when it airs is not. An unannounced slot at this stage is routine inside Korea — but for anyone watching from outside, that blank is the one cell that decides whether what time can I watch it is even a question with an answer yet.

The pun in the title

The 이국 (iguk) in the Korean title is not the ordinary word for "foreign country." It swaps in the character 異, meaning different or other. Normally 주한○○대사관 means the embassy of a foreign country located in Korea. Here it is the mission of a different species.

So the people this embassy administers are not foreign nationals but haechi, mermaids and gumiho. The story starts from the assumption that they, too, need residency administration.

The premise twists a very real Korean bureaucratic texture. Alien registration, visa status, an assigned civil servant handling your file — anyone who has lived in Korea knows the procedure, and the show applies it to mythological creatures. That is where the comedy comes from.

A field guide to the creatures involved

Miss this and half the drama is invisible to you. These are the beings named in the announcement.

What makes this mix interesting is that all four have different temperaments. The dragon carries authority; the haechi judgement; the gumiho transformation and seduction; the mermaid strangeness. Put those four inside one embassy and every case file becomes a different kind of problem — the comedy material is already sitting in the premise.

Who is making it

The creative pairing says a good deal about what to expect.

The script is by Shin Ha-eun, who wrote Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and Love Next Door. Both ran on the temperature of relationships rather than on plot events; her strength is calibrating the distance between people. A writer with that profile attached to a fantasy premise suggests the dragon-and-human romance will be handled as a relationship story rather than a showcase for the setting.

Directing is Bae Hyun-jin, who co-directed Big Mouth and directed Hierarchy. Neither is anywhere near romantic comedy — both deal in tension and hierarchy of status. That combination raises the possibility of something tonally tighter than a soft fantasy rom-com.

Lee Junho and Hong Hwa-yeon as a pairing

Lee Junho is a member of the group 2PM who established himself as an actor. He played King Jeongjo in The Red Sleeve (2021), and proved himself as a romantic comedy lead with King the Land (2023). Here he plays Cha Yeon, the dragon who heads the embassy.

There is one more thing worth noting about his record. He is an idol-turned-actor — a route that carried real prejudice in Korea for years. "The singer is acting now" was a loaded remark, and plenty of careers ended under that scrutiny. Which is why his Best Actor win in the TV category at the 58th Baeksang Arts Awards in 2022 for The Red Sleeve was covered so heavily: he was the first male artist from a singing background ever to take it. That single role brought him seven award wins that year. He now sits past that argument.

Hong Hwa-yeon has a much shorter public profile. Born in 1998, she studied educational technology at Konkuk University. She signed with BH Entertainment after passing their rookie audition in 2021, and made her acting debut in tvN's Mental Coach Jegal in 2022. The role that put her name in circulation was Yeo Eun-nam in SBS's Bomulseom (Treasure Island) in 2025 — her first lead on terrestrial television. Here she plays Go Mi-woo, the rookie diplomat posted to the embassy by accident.

But the newer name is not the only one with something riding on this. A proven rom-com lead opposite an actor on the way up is a common configuration in Korean drama, and for the newer name a single title like this can redirect a career — while the proven one is put back in the position of proving the same thing again.

What this means where you are

No broadcast slot has been announced, so the only fixed fact is that it is a tvN show. Even that supports some prediction: knowing which hours tvN tends to fill lets you pin an approximate time before the announcement lands — the map of Korean broadcast slots.

One thing to add. This drama is one where not knowing the mythology costs you half the jokes. A subtitle track will render 해치 as "Haechi" and move on; it will not stop to tell you the statue stands in front of the main palace gate and doubles as the city emblem of Seoul. Save the field guide above — doing what subtitles cannot is the point of this piece.

Still unannounced

• Broadcast timing, day and slot
• International platform deals
• Episode count
• Supporting roles, and whether the series has source material

The moment a slot is announced, a time-conversion table gets added here.

Read next

• What on earth is ENA — Korean drama channels sorted into four layers — which layer tvN sits in
• From webtoon to tvN drama — why it takes a year and a half from announcement to air — how long the wait after a casting announcement usually runs
• 'Cider' and 'sweet potato' — two words that explain Korean drama — other things subtitles cannot carry

Sources

• Etoday — Lee Junho's next project confirmed: fantasy romance 'Embassy of Otherworldly Nationals' (Korean)
• Newsis — 'Rom-com king' Lee Junho opposite Hong Hwa-yeon in 'Embassy of Otherworldly Nationals' (Korean)
• Viva100 — Lee Junho and Hong Hwa-yeon confirmed for tvN's fantasy romance (Korean)
• MBC News — Lee Junho sweeps seven awards for 'The Red Sleeve' (Korean)
• Wikipedia (Korean) — Hong Hwa-yeon