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Uncle Samsik

Uncle Samsik (Korean: ์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ) is a 2024 South Korean television series written and directed by Shin Yeon-shick, and starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Yo-han, Lee Kyu-hyung, Jin Ki-joo, and Seo Hyun-woo. It is Song's first drama series since his debut. It was released worldwide on Disney+ and on Hulu in the USA from May 15, to June 19, 2024.[5][6]

Synopsis

Set amid the turbulent backdrop of the 1960s, the series depicts the passionate desire and bromance between Uncle Samsik, who ate three meals a day even during the Korean War, and super-elite Kim San, who both write a story of love, trust, or doubt.[7]

Cast and characters

Main

  • Song Kang-ho as Park Doo-chil / Uncle Samsik: a person with his own iron rule of not starving three meals a day even while living in a turbulent era.[8][9]
  • Byun Yo-han as Kim San: top elite graduate of the Korean Military Academy who dreams of making Korea an industrial country.[10]
  • Lee Kyu-hyung as Kang Seong-min: Liberal Party assemblyman who is a candidate for the next leader.[10]
  • Jin Ki-joo as Joo Yeo-jin: Kim San's lover and Joo In-tae's daughter.[11]
  • Seo Hyun-woo as Jung Han-min: an elite soldier from the Military Academy who dreams of reforming the military.[10]
  • Oh Seung-hoon as Ahn Ki-chul: Ahn Yo-seop's youngest son and director of Segang Textiles.[12]
  • Joo Jin-mo as Ahn Yo-seop: Chairman of the Cheongwoo Federation and CEO of Segang Textiles.[13]
  • Tiffany Young as Rachel Jeong: younger sister of the director of the Albright Foundation.[14][15]
  • Yoo Jae-myung as Jang Doo-sik: Major General of the Military Logistics Command.[13]

Supporting

  • Kim Min-jae as Yoo Yeon-cheol: a self-made businessman and president of Daemyeon Construction.[16]
  • Jasper Cho as Michael Jeong: Ahn Yo-seop's secretary, Rachel's older brother and director of the Albright Scholarship Foundation.[17]
  • Kim Yool-ho as Baek Hyun-seok: Colonel of the Intelligence Department at the Army Headquarters, in charge of interrogating Kim San.[18]
  • Oh Kwang-rok as Joo In-tae: a politician who insists on the national prosperity and peaceful coexistence. Loosely based on Cho Bong-am.[19]
  • Roh Jae-won as Han-soo: the leader of the Seodaemun faction.[20]
  • Koo Seong-hwan as Gu Hae-jun: a member of the Seodaemun faction.[21]
  • Moon Jong-won as Yoon Pal-bong: the leader of the Dongdaemun faction. He carries out orders for Kang Seong-min.
  • Lee Ga-sub as Kim Kwang-min: CEO of Sanae Corporation, Kim San's friend and Albright classmate.
  • Park Hyuk-kwon as Choi Min-gyu: Minister of Home Affairs who collaborates with the Liberal Party. Based on Choi In-gyu [ko].
  • Ryu Tae-ho as Choi Han-rim: a prestigious general who takes care of Kim San. Based on Lee Han-lim.[22]
  • Ryu Joo-han as Ahn Min-chul: Ahn Yo-seop's eldest son who was a Liberal Party assemblyman in 1946.
  • Ji Hyun-joon as Cha Tae-min: a person who helped Kang Seong-min in the past and leader of the Sineui Alliance.
  • Do Jeong-hwan as Lee Soo-il: Captain of the 55th Howitzer Regiment, in charge of interrogating Han-min.
  • Choi Hong-il as Professor Hwang.
  • Ryu Sung-hyun as Hong Young-ki: Head of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).
  • Choo Sang-rok as Park Ji-wook: Liberal Party assemblyman and former police officer during the Japanese occupation.
  • Kim Jong-goo as Seon Woo-seok: Democratic Party member.
  • Lee Hyun-kyun as Oh In-woo: a reporter for Aemin Ilbo, who is Yeo-jin's senior in college.[23]
  • Lee Ho-seok as Lee Ho-seok: an activist university student.[24]

Background and production

Main historical events depicted in Uncle Samsik

  • The March 1960 South Korean presidential election: Also described as the March 15 Election Fraud, the election saw the re-election of President Syngman Rhee, who had been in power since the establishment of the First Republic of Korea in 1948. The elections were heavily rigged in Rhee's favor, and widespread allegations of corruption and manipulation of the results sparked protests which spiralled into the April Revolution.[25]
  • The April Revolution: A series of protests and demonstrations driven by students and ordinary citizens who demanded democratic reforms and Rhee's resignation. The intensity of the protests eventually forced Syngman Rhee to resign on April 26, 1960, ending his 12-year rule.[25]

Development

A media article reported that the drama is being discussed for release on Disney+. It was initially reported that it was scheduled to be broadcast in the second half of 2023, but it is expected that a decision will be made only after the programming is finalized.[26]

Release

On April 1, 2024, Disney+ revealed Uncle Samsik's release date. It launched with a five-episode premiere on May 15, 2024 exclusively on Disney+ internationally and on Hulu in the U.S. The 16-episode series will then have two episodes per week until a three-part season finale on June 19.[6]

Accolades

Awards and nominations

Name of the award ceremony, year presented, category, nominee of the award, and the result of the nomination
Award ceremony Year Category Nominee / Work Result Ref.
Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards 2024 Best OTT Original Uncle Samsik Nominated [27][28]
Best Newcomer Actress Tiffany Young Nominated
Blue Dragon Series Awards 2024 Best Actor Byun Yo-han Nominated [29]
Best Supporting Actor Lee Kyu-hyung Nominated
Best Supporting Actress Tiffany Young Nominated
Seoul International Drama Awards 2024 Best Actor (International) Song Kang-ho Won [30]
Outstanding Korean Drama Uncle Samsik Nominated [31]

Listicles

Name of publisher, year listed, name of listicle, and placement
Publisher Year Listicle Placement Ref.
South China Morning Post 2024 The 15 best K-dramas of 2024 12th place [32]

References

  1. ^ Kim, Saet-byeol (January 3, 2024). ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ์ฒซ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', 2024๋…„ ์ƒ๋ฐ˜๊ธฐ ๋””์ฆˆ๋‹ˆ+ ๊ณต๊ฐœ (in Korean). The Fact. Archived from the original on January 3, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2024 – via Naver.
  2. ^ Conran, Pierce (May 18, 2024). "Disney+ K-drama Uncle Samsik: Song Kang-ho makes K-drama debut in evocative political series set after the Korean war". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on October 7, 2024. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j ํ•˜๋ฃจ ์„ธ ๋ผ [Three Meals a Day]. Uncle Samsik. Episode 1 (in Korean). May 15, 2024. Disney+.
  4. ^ [๋‹จ๋…] ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ๋ฐ๋ท” ํ›„ ์ฒซ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ๋””์ฆˆ๋‹ˆ+ ํŽธ์„ฑ ์œ ๋ ฅ. November 21, 2023. Archived from the original on November 21, 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  5. ^ Moon Ji-yeon (January 3, 2024). [๊ณต์‹] ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ ๋ฐ๋ท”์ž‘ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ๋””์ฆˆ๋‹ˆ+ ํ†ตํ•ด ์ „์„ธ๊ณ„ ๊ณต๊ฐœ [[Official] Song Kang-ho's drama debut, 'Uncle Samsik', released worldwide through Disney+] (in Korean). Sports Chosun. Archived from the original on January 3, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2024.
  6. ^ a b Brzeski, Patrick (April 1, 2024). "Song Kang-ho's Disney+ Series 'Uncle Samsik' Gets Release Date". The Hollywood Reporter. Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on May 5, 2024. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  7. ^ Ha Soo-jung (October 11, 2022). "'์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ๋ณ€์š”ํ•œยท์ด๊ทœํ˜•ยท์„œํ˜„์šฐ, ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ๋งŒ๋‚œ๋‹ค '๋ฏฟ๋ณด๋ฐฐ' ์™„์„ฑ [๊ณต์‹]" ["Uncle Samsik" Byun Yo-han, Lee Kyu-hyung, Seo Hyun-woo, and Song Kang-ho meet. Casting is completed. [Official]] (in Korean). Osen. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  8. ^ Tae, Yu-na (August 30, 2022). "[๊ณต์‹] ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ, ๋ฐ๋ท” ์ฒซ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ ์ง„์ถœ...์ž‘ํ’ˆ์€ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ" [[Official] Song Kang-ho, debuting in drama for the first time... The work is 'Samsik Uncle] (in Korean). Ten Asia. Archived from the original on August 30, 2022. Retrieved August 30, 2022 – via Naver.
  9. ^ Jeong Yu-jin (January 3, 2024). "์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ์ฒซ ๋„์ „ ์‹œ๋ฆฌ์ฆˆ๋ฌผ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ์˜ฌ ์ƒ๋ฐ˜๊ธฐ ๊ณต๊ฐœ ํ™•์ •" [Song Kang-ho's first challenge series, 'Uncle Samsik', confirmed to be released in the first half of this year] (in Korean). News1. Archived from the original on January 3, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2024.
  10. ^ a b c Han Hae-sun (October 11, 2022). "์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ 32๋…„๋งŒ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ๋ณ€์š”ํ•œยท์ด๊ทœํ˜•ยท์„œํ˜„์šฐ ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜ [๊ณต์‹]" [Song Kang-ho joins drama 'Samsik Uncle' for the first time in 32 years, Byun Yo-han, Lee Kyu-hyung, and Seo Hyun-woo [Official]] (in Korean). MT Star News. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved October 11, 2022 – via Naver.
  11. ^ Song Min-joo (February 9, 2023). "์ง„๊ธฐ์ฃผ, ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ์ฒซ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ์—ฌ์ฃผ์ธ๊ณต ์ถœ์—ฐ [๊ณต์‹]" [Jin Ki-joo, Song Kang-ho's first drama 'Uncle Samshik' appeared as the female lead [Official]] (in Korean). TV Report. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved February 9, 2023 – via Naver.
  12. ^ Kang Hyo-jin (March 15, 2023). "'๋…์ „2' ์ฃผ์ธ๊ณต ์˜ค์Šนํ›ˆ, ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜...์žฌ๋ฒŒ๊ฐ€ ์•„๋“ค ๋œ๋‹ค[๊ณต์‹]" ['Believer 2' protagonist Oh Seung-hoon joins Song Kang-ho in the drama 'Uncle Samshik'... Becoming the son of a chaebol [Official]] (in Korean). SpoTV News. Archived from the original on March 15, 2023. Retrieved March 15, 2023 – via Naver.
  13. ^ a b Jeong-bit (May 8, 2024). "'์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ์œ ์žฌ๋ช… "์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ์— ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ ๊ฐ€๋ฅด์ณ ์ฃผ๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ๋‹ค"" ['Uncle Samsik' Yoo Jae-myeong "I wanted to teach drama to Song Kang-ho"] (in Korean). Chosun. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024. Retrieved May 26, 2024.
  14. ^ Lee, Gyu-lee (June 30, 2023). "Tiffany to join Song Kang-ho's small screen debut series". The Korea Times. Archived from the original on August 6, 2023. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  15. ^ TOI Entertainment Desk (May 2, 2024). "Tiffany Young shines as a charming director in 'Uncle Samsik'". The Times of India. Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited. Archived from the original on May 3, 2024. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  16. ^ Choi Yoon-na (February 20, 2023). "๊น€๋ฏผ์žฌ, '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ์ถœ์—ฐ ํ™•์ •...์ตœ๋ฏผ์‹ ์ด์–ด ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ์™€ ํ˜ธํก[๊ณต์‹]" [Kim Min-jae confirmed to appear in 'Uncle Samshik'... Choi Min-sik followed by Song Kang-ho [Official]] (in Korean). Sports Donga. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
  17. ^ Lee Seong-ho (December 18, 2023). "[๋‹จ๋…] ์กฐํƒœ๊ด€, ์†Œ์†์‚ฌ์™€ ๊ฒฐ๋ณ„...FA ์‹œ์žฅ ๋‚˜์™”๋‹ค" [[Exclusive] Cho Tae-kwan breaks up with his agency... appears on the free agent market] (in Korean). Central World News. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024. Retrieved May 26, 2024.
  18. ^ Kim Hyeon-rok (March 14, 2023). "๊น€์œจํ˜ธ, '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜...์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธโ€ง๋ณ€์š”ํ•œ๊ณผ ํ˜ธํก" [Kim Yul-ho joins 'Uncle Samsik'... Working with Song Kang-ho and Byun Yo-han] (in Korean). SPOTV News. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  19. ^ Lee Seul-bi (March 17, 2023). "์˜ค๊ด‘๋ก, '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜ [๊ณต์‹]" [Oh Gwang-rok joins 'Uncle Samsik' [Official]] (in Korean). Sports Donga. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  20. ^ Lee Joon-hyeon (March 8, 2023). "๋…ธ์žฌ์›, '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜...์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธยท๋ณ€์š”ํ•œ๊ณผ ํ˜ธํก" [Noh Jae-won joins 'Uncle Samshik'... Working with Song Kang-ho and Byun Yo-han] (in Korean). Ten Asia. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  21. ^ Lee Yoo-min (March 31, 2023). "๊ตฌ์„ฑํ™˜ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜...์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธยท๋ณ€์š”ํ•œ๊ณผ ํ˜ธํก[๊ณต์‹]" [Koo Seong-hwan joins 'Uncle Samsik'... Working with Song Kang-ho and Byun Yo-han [Official]] (in Korean). Sports Kyunghyang. Archived from the original on March 31, 2023. Retrieved March 31, 2023 – via Naver.
  22. ^ Ahn Byung-gil (March 17, 2023). "๋ฅ˜ํƒœํ˜ธ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜" [Ryu Tae-ho joins 'Uncle Samshik'] (in Korean). Sports Kyunghyang. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  23. ^ Yoo Jung-min (March 29, 2023). "์ดํ˜„๊ท , '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜..์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธX๋ณ€์š”ํ•œX์ง„๊ธฐ์ฃผ์™€ ํ˜ธํก" [Lee Hyun-kyun joins 'Uncle Samsik'...Song Kang-ho X Byun Yo-han X Jin Ki-joo] (in Korean). Ten Asia. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved March 29, 2023 – via Naver.
  24. ^ Jang Ah-reum (April 5, 2023). "์‹ ์˜ˆ ์ดํ˜ธ์„, ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธยท๋ณ€์š”ํ•œ ์ฃผ์—ฐ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ' ํ•ฉ๋ฅ˜" [Rookie Lee Ho-seok joins Song Kang-ho and Byun Yo-han in 'Uncle Samshik'] (in Korean). News1. Archived from the original on April 5, 2023. Retrieved April 5, 2023 – via Naver.
  25. ^ a b Kim Ji-hye (June 3, 2024). "[๋น…ํ”ฝ์ฒ˜] '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ์‹œ๋Œ€๋ฅผ ๊ด€ํ†ตํ•œ ์—ด์ •โ€ฆ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ์˜ '๋จน๊ณ ์‚ฌ๋‹ˆ์ฆ˜'" [[Big Picture] 'Uncle Samsik', a passion that permeates the timesโ€ฆ Song Kang-ho's 'Eating and Living'] (in Korean). Seoul Broadcasting System. Archived from the original on June 25, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  26. ^ Kim Bo-ra (November 21, 2023). "[๋‹จ๋…] ์†ก๊ฐ•ํ˜ธ ๋ฐ๋ท” ํ›„ ์ฒซ ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆ '์‚ผ์‹์ด ์‚ผ์ดŒ', ๋””์ฆˆ๋‹ˆ+ ํŽธ์„ฑ ์œ ๋ ฅ" [[Exclusive] Song Kang-ho's first drama since his debut, 'Uncle Samsik', likely to be aired on Disney+] (in Korean). Osen. Archived from the original on November 21, 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
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