Kim Hye Soo opened up about the passing of director An Pan Seok and the delays surrounding the highly anticipated drama The Second Signal during an interview on August 13th.
Kim Hye Soo sat down with Sports Chosun to discuss her upcoming Coupang Play series The Affair Was Just the Beginning, a dark comedy about two popular influencers whose fake happy-family image unravels when they get entangled with their messy, divorcing doctor neighbors. Kim plays Kyung Hee, a successful influencer and interior design CEO caught in the middle of the chaos.
Before the actual talk about her upcoming series, she shared her condolences for director An Pan Seok, whom she worked with from 1994 to 1998 on the classic drama Jjak (literal title).
“I worked with Director An Pan Seok for three full years,” Kim shared. “He was the second director, and the feel of the show definitely changed when he took over. At the time, it was a groundbreaking Sunday morning drama, and we had so many discussions about trying to create a different kind of narrative. I was stunned for a long time after hearing the news yesterday. It made me realize that you can never truly know life, and my heart felt incredibly heavy. Even at his very last moments, he didn’t let go of his role as a director, which brings about complex feelings. I felt a sense of respect for his dedication to drama until the very end of his life.”
She also addressed the sudden release delay for The Second Signal. Filming wrapped in August 2025 for a planned early 2026 premiere to mark tvN’s 20th anniversary, but a past controversy involving lead actor Cho Jin Woong forced executives to shelve the release. Rumors point to a potential November air date, though nothing is official.
Kim offered a grounded perspective on the situation rather than showing frustration. “I don’t think anything in life is a given,” she observed. “When we take things for granted, they are indeed taken for granted, but aren’t there always variables? Even as I’m speaking now, I don’t know what will happen. That seems to be the nature of life.” She reflected further on the human side of such setbacks. “Everyone faces the worst situations in life, don’t they? Sometimes only you know about it, and sometimes public figures inadvertently cause trouble and hurt to many people. Looking at life as a whole, it’s not just that one thing that’s the problem—that’s just life. Don’t I also have my own unseen storms? That’s what life is like.”
>> Lee Je Hoon Addresses ‘The Second Signal’ Delay and Cho Jin Woong’s Exit
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