The Nice Guy: Lee Dong-wook’s gangster heart and bookish soul set the new K-drama on fire

When Lee Dong-wook walks into a scene, the air shifts before your eyes catch him. In The Nice Guy, he becomes Park Seok-cheol, a mob heir with fists as sharp as his mind and a quiet longing that fills every silent moment. He possesses a devotion to his family legacy along with a secret passion for books and the delicate phrases yearning to escape.

Debuting on July 18, 2025, on Disney+ and JTBC, The Nice Guy is set to have a gradual and intense pace, reflecting the experience of reading a timeless novel during the night, with every scene revealing itself like a page drenched in remorse, every look beats with longing and unvoiced decisions.

Lee Sung-kyung and Park Hoon enhance intensity and complexity, crafting a realm where every feeling pierces more profoundly than a knife. Ready your emotions and refine your perceptions. In this drama, poetry and violence will coexist, with love finding its way in the most subtle spaces.

Lee Dong-wook’s new face of danger

Park Seok-cheol lives between two worlds that rarely meet. He inherits a violent empire shaped by old debts and silent codes, yet he clings to books like lifelines. Each chapter he reads feels like a quiet rebellion against his family’s history. Each page signifies a subtle act of resistance, a reminder that his thoughts stay unharmed even as his hands bleed.

Lee Dong-wook is an actor who imprints his raw and thoughtful intensity to his characters, whose gaze dances with unspoken thoughts, and whose actions imply a person always gauging the significance of his next move. No need for loud pronouncements; his sorrow and longing will become evident in how he hovers near a bookshelf or softly caresses a faded notebook.

Viewers who watched Lee Dong-wook in Tale of the Nine-Tailed or Goblin will know what to expect and notice remnants of his earlier intensity, yet Seok-cheol seems different. In this moment, he is reduced to raw instinct and silent desire, more human than legend, more tormented than valiant.

A story that breathes through books

The Nice Guy treats books as more than accessories. In Seok-cheol’s life, literature acts as a sanctuary, a confession booth, and a weapon all at once. Each novel on his shelf mirrors the choices he wants to make and the ghosts that haunt him.

The show will invite viewers to lean in and listen rather than rush to conclusions. Instead of showcasing explosive confrontations, it lingers on scenes where Seok-cheol reads alone at dawn or scribbles thoughts that may never become a novel.

This narrative choice makes each act of violence feel sharper, more consequential. When Seok-cheol returns to the streets, every fight carries the echo of unfinished sentences and stolen quiet mornings. The result is a world where words and wounds share the same breath.

Romance as a dangerous inheritance

Mi-young does not appear merely as a love interest to Lee Dong-wook's character. She carries her own burdens, her own fractured dreams. As a singer caught between stages and survival, she meets Seok-cheol at the fragile intersection of what could have been and what still aches to be reclaimed.

Their connection feels immediate yet impossibly heavy, like two characters from different novels forced to share a single ending. Each encounter tastes of nostalgia and danger, each glance suggests an entire chapter left unsaid.

Park Hoon adds another layer to this dynamic, not simply as a rival but as a catalyst. His presence reveals the deep cracks in Seok-cheol’s emotional armor. Together, the three form a constellation of loyalty, longing, and unresolved choices, pulling viewers into a story that refuses to offer easy resolutions.

Lee Dong-wook’s haunting journey back to romance

Lee Dong-wook has spent the last few years drifting through characters who devour the screen with quiet menace. In Strangers from Hell, he embodied a chilling dentist whose soft smile concealed a violent and unhinged soul. His portrayal captured the horror of intimacy turned inside out, making every interaction feel like a trap hidden behind immaculate teeth.

He later stepped into roles that explored moral shadows rather than clear heroism. In Bad and Crazy, he played a detective spiraling through his own ethical fractures. Even in quieter appearances he leaned into characters shaped by secrets and unresolved violence.

With The Nice Guy, Lee Dong-wook brings that same layered darkness but folds it into a softer, aching core. Park Seok-cheol is not a monster lurking in hallways or a detective trying to outrun his own guilt. Instead, he is a man torn between fists and sentences, loyalty and longing.

This return to romance feels earned rather than forced. It carries echoes of his earlier romantic roles, yet each gesture now trembles with history, each glance bears the weight of past violence. Watching him hold a book feels as dangerous as seeing him raise a weapon.

Lee Dong-wook emerges here as a performer who no longer needs to choose between warmth and danger. He carries both, making each moment feel as intimate as a whispered confession and as sharp as a hidden blade.

Disney+ and JTBC’s strategic turn

With The Nice Guy, Disney+ and JTBC signal a bold shift toward deeper, character-driven stories. While many K-dramas dazzle with bright city lights and witty banter, this series moves in shadows and slow silences, choosing to explore the spaces between violence and vulnerability, creating a mood that feels closer to a whispered secret than a headline.

This is a story for those who savor heavy pauses, layered expressions, and characters who bleed in private before they ever bleed on the street. It resonates with the audience that loved Peaky Blinders, My Name, or the tragic elegance of Vincenzo. By placing this series on a global stage, Disney+ shows confidence in narratives that trust us to lean into ambiguity and emotional weight rather than just spectacle.

Who will fall for The Nice Guy?

Those who love ethically intricate characters, gradual tension, and subtle emotional turmoil will become captivated by this new K-rama with Lee Dong-wook. Readers who have jotted down incomplete thoughts in the wee hours will recognize aspects of themselves in Seok-cheol’s subtle defiance.

Fans of Peaky Blinders might identify the same intense atmosphere and principles of allegiance molded by brutality and verse. Audiences who appreciated the poignant sophistication of Vincenzo or the raw endurance in My Name will find themselves at ease in this intricate underworld. The series also appeals to those who enjoyed the grim and sophisticated noir style of Countdown, where every choice seems deadly and every connection conceals unexpressed obligations.

Fans of Lee Dong-wook and those in search of love stories infused with sorrow and affection will find a romance that resembles an injury that won't heal rather than a dreamlike assurance, which will also resonate with those who understand that love frequently presents itself as both a blessing and a burden, and that the strongest connections often come with wounds.

In Seok-cheol’s reality, each decision holds weight, every look has a price, and each solitary moment with a book seems like a fight for survival.

The Nice Guy promises a violent poem

The Nice Guy offers a story that moves like a poem whispered in the dark. Lee Dong-wook invites you to trace the life of a man who collects words as carefully as he collects bruises.

Lee Dong-wook will command the screen with depth, every movement infused with narratives he will never openly share. This series will linger well beyond the end credits, reverberating in your thoughts like an incomplete narrative or a partially overheard revelation. Every scene will heighten your awareness and constrict your chest, intensifying your longing for something both gentle and perilous.

Prepare your heart and sharpen your senses. Here, violence and poetry move side by side, and love emerges in the quietest corners.