Lim Ji-yeon: The Glory’s ‘angelic face with a devil heart’

CEBU, Philippines — When “The Glory” screenwriter Kim Eun-sook first met with Lim Ji-yeon, she thought the South Korean actress perfectly embodied the physicality of someone “who was angelic on the outside but had a devil’s heart.”

“She had never played a villain, and I thought I wanted to be the first one to damage her image as a villain, so to speak. Her role here as Yeon-jin is a weather reporter, and we needed someone who also had that image and fit that role,” said Kim, the brain behind such megahit K-dramas “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God”, “Descendants of the Sun”, and “Mr. Sunshine.”

“And when I met her, she indeed smiled like a true angel but told me that she would do her absolute very best to be the most evil villain she could be.”

Lim, 32, debuted on the big screen in 2014’s “Obsessed”, earning recognition at the Grand Bell Awards (the Korean equivalent of America’s Oscar awards) and a nomination at the Baeksang Arts Awards (regarded as one of the most prestigious and comprehensive entertainment awards in South Korea) for her performance.

She went on to star in the films “The Treacherous” (2015) and Spiritwalker (2021), as well as in the TV series “High Society” (2015), “Blow Breeze” (2016), and “Welcome 2 Life” (2019).

Lim got her highest profile role to date in Netflix’s revenge drama “The Glory”, which will release its highly anticipated Part 2 episodes on March 10 after debuting its Part 1 to positive acclaim last December.

In the series, Lim makes audiences blood boil with her wickedness as Yeon-jin, an extreme bully during school to Song Hye-kyo’s Dong-eun, who as an adult is living a picture perfect life of a glamorous television weather reporter, with the perfect husband and adorable daughter.

“When I first read the script, it came as a big shock to me. What is this? I was totally immersed. At first, I thought, wow, this is what writer Kim Eun-sook is. And then I thought to myself, is this really something that she wrote? Because it diverged from what she usually does,” Lim says during a virtual press conference when “The Glory” was launched.

“It’s a genre show, not a melodrama. This is the first time for me taking on a villain, and I always wanted a character who is a villainess. I wanted to take up the challenge.”

Detailing her character, Lim says, “She is at the center of perpetrators who inflicted extreme pain and school violence on Dong-eun. And there is absolutely no reason for her villainous acts. She was born into a world that’s all on her side. Born into wealth and a powerful family, and she didn’t need to envy anyone or anything else.”

“And she married well, had a child, and then later finds out that Dong-eun is the homeroom teacher of her daughter. All her life has been like a long winter night where the sun never set like a midnight sun. But now, she met Dong-eun. She wanted to live a sparkling, dazzling life until the very end, so she struggles to keep that.”

Lim initially tried to understand where her character was coming from and what led her to be how she was. She thought really hard for some sort of justification and even debated with herself.

“But the answer that I found was that Yeon-jin was oblivious. She didn’t know why it was wrong to be mean to others, why it was wrong to inflict pain. Because she grew up in an environment like that. She didn’t have to try to earn anything, and there was absolutely no sense of guilt that came when she hurt and inflicted pain upon others,” she says.

“In the beginning, I tried to refer to, I thought about maybe a charming villain that we see, ones that are endearing. But as time went on, I realized that I wanted to create Park Yeon-jin that only I can portray.”

On that memorable scene where she meets her high school victim once again at the school gym and they slap one other, Lim shares, “It was very tough to portray the emotions of Yeon-jin because I was wondering, how would this woman feel? She came face to face with someone she was so mean to and she had bullied as a teenager.”

“And I remember director An Gil-ho said, we cannot make mistakes in this scene, let’s do it in a single take. Let’s just go in one go. So I remember Hye-kyo and I, our faces were pretty red afterwards.”