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Director Lee Seung Young of Agent Kim Reactivated has broken silence on the controversy surrounding product placement, concerns over how far the drama pushed the limits of on-screen content in the current television production environment, and the use of AI in the series.
On July 30, an interview with director Lee Seung Young was held at a café in Seoul to commemorate the conclusion of the SBS Friday-Saturday drama Agent Kim Reactivated.
Agent Kim Reactivated follows an "ordinary" father who becomes the "most dangerous" man in the world as he fights to save his one and only daughter. So Ji Sub plays the lead role.
When asked about the controversy surrounding the product placement featured in the drama, director Lee Seung Young candidly spoke about the challenges facing the current drama production environment.
"It's an action series airing on a terrestrial broadcaster, and productions like this require a substantial budget. But the current drama industry is under extremely difficult conditions," adding, "Under those circumstances, product placement was unavoidable. There was simply no way around it. Since we couldn't avoid it, we did our best to integrate it into the story as naturally as possible."
However, he acknowledged, "I do think there were aspects that may have made viewers uncomfortable, and that's something [we] need to work harder on going forward." He added, "Just because the drama became a success doesn't mean [we] approached the direction or production however we wanted."
He also spoke about the careful consideration that went into managing the drama's level of violence and overall intensity. Director Lee Seung Young said, "From the very beginning of filming, there were [broadcasting] review standards, and [I] studied [them] thoroughly. Throughout the directing process, we made every effort to comply with the standards by reducing explicit depictions — for example, using techniques such as mirror reflections or [framing scenes] with tighter camera angles."
He continued, "The core of this story was the desperation that 'my daughter could die.' While staying within the guidelines, I spent a great deal of time thinking about how to maximize that desperation," adding, "If viewers found it uncomfortable, then I think that's something we need to reflect on and carefully consider how to portray more effectively in the future."
Agent Kim Reactivated also became the first Korean commercial drama to incorporate a three-minute, fully AI-generated sequence.
Talking about it, director Lee Seung Young said, "In the script, the focus was primarily on Agent Kim as he is in the present. The fact that he had once been a killing weapon was only conveyed through dialogue.
However, we felt it was necessary to actually show what he was like during his active years. From the outset, our goal was to portray him [at the height of his abilities] as a killing machine, and doing so on the scale and with the level of complexity [that role demanded]."
He continued, "Trying to film it in live action would have turned it into such a huge sequence that it risked overshadowing the main story. At one point, [I] even wondered if we would have to abandon the idea because our resources were limited. That's when [I] thought about using AI."
He recalled, "But at the time, even just six months earlier, the technology simply wasn't [advanced] enough to achieve it properly. As the technology was being updated almost every week, we closely followed those developments and embraced the evolving technology as we built the sequence. It was a gamble that could have ended without a finished result, but both the AI team and the directing team approached it with a clear intent and a strong sense of responsibility."
He also shared So Ji Sub's reaction to the AI-generated sequence: "I asked him whether he was uncomfortable with the idea of his [performance] being replaced by AI-generated footage instead of himself. But So Ji Sub simply said, 'It's okay.' He was very positive about it overall."
Agent Kim Reactivated is streaming on Netflix.
Source: Star News
