Ahn Jae-wook Returns to Hwang Shin-hye's Show — His Wife's Confession Steals the Scene

Nearly thirty years have passed since Ahn Jae-wook and Hwang Shin-hye played husband and wife on Korean television. This week, KBS 1TV gave viewers a chance to see them share a set again — and the real love story that emerged from the episode was not theirs.

Ahn Jae-wook appears as a guest on the April 8 broadcast of Hwang Shin-hye's Let's Live Together, the KBS 1TV lifestyle show hosted by actress Hwang Shin-hye. The episode marks a nostalgic reunion for longtime Korean drama fans: Ahn Jae-wook and Hwang Shin-hye were famously paired as the lead couple in the 1997 drama Star in My Heart (별은 내 가슴에), one of the early wave of Korean television productions that drove Hallyu interest across Asia, particularly in China, in the late 1990s.

Their on-screen marriage, though fictional, became one of the most memorable partnerships of that era. The show's affectionate references to Ahn Jae-wook as Hwang Shin-hye's "drama husband" — and her as his "drama ex-wife" — have circulated warmly in Korean entertainment media for decades, and the episode makes the most of the material.

Ahn Jae-wook Brings His Cooking — and His Real Marriage Story

The episode's first chapter belongs to the kitchen. Ahn Jae-wook, invited to the show's setting, opens the refrigerator, surveys the remaining ingredients, and cooks. He works efficiently, without a recipe, producing something the cast finds immediately impressive. His competence in the kitchen is not performed for the cameras — it traces back to a specific memory.

He describes the time his wife, actress Choi Hyun-joo, suffered severe morning sickness during pregnancy. The food she could tolerate kept changing; the food she could not tolerate grew longer. Ahn Jae-wook found himself going out, repeatedly, to find the specific things she could eat on a given day. It became routine. He learned to cook from necessity, and the habit stayed.

Married since 2014 — twelve years — Ahn Jae-wook and Choi Hyun-joo have built a marriage that has drawn consistent warmth from Korean audiences. Choi Hyun-joo is an actress in her own right, and the couple's relationship has been described in Korean entertainment media as genuinely close.

The Phone Call That Made the Episode

Hwang Shin-hye, with the confidence of a host who understands what makes good television, arranged a phone call during the episode. Ahn Jae-wook, sitting in the studio with his longtime drama co-star, found himself on the phone with his actual wife.

Choi Hyun-joo's contribution to the broadcast came in the form of a confession: "At first, I didn't see him as a man." She said this with apparent ease, which made it funnier. Ahn Jae-wook, for context, has said he fell for her immediately — "at first sight" is a phrase that appears in the coverage. The gap between these two accounts of the same relationship's beginning is the kind of detail that Korean variety television handles with particular warmth, and the episode reportedly delivers on it.

The three-way dynamic — drama ex-wife hosting, real wife on the phone, Ahn Jae-wook navigating between them — produced what multiple media outlets described as "a strange triangle" (묘한 삼자대면). The phrase is meant affectionately, and the episode's tone throughout is clearly that of three adults who understand how funny the situation is.

Hwang Shin-hye at the Center

The show is, ultimately, Hwang Shin-hye's. The actress and host has carried Let's Live Together since its premiere earlier this year, and her management of an episode built around her most famous on-screen partner says something about how comfortable she has become in the format. She is credited in coverage as the architect of the phone call, the person who decided the three of them should have this particular conversation on television.

Hwang Shin-hye debuted in 1988 and spent decades as one of Korea's most recognizable actresses. Her post-acting career as a television host has given her a second chapter with its own audience, and her willingness to lean into the nostalgic aspects of her history — including her Star in My Heart legacy — has been warmly received.

In early April, Hwang Shin-hye posted a photograph with Ahn Jae-wook on social media ahead of the broadcast. "Met Jae-wook after a long time," she wrote. She described him as "always fun, lively, and comfortable to be around — always the same." The image spread quickly, partly because of what it was, and partly because of how straightforwardly affectionate it was.

Why Star in My Heart Still Matters

For younger Korean drama fans, Star in My Heart is history — the kind of production their parents watched. For international audiences who followed Korean pop culture's early global expansion in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ahn Jae-wook is a foundational figure. He was among the first Korean male celebrities to attract significant fanbases in Japan and China during the period now retrospectively identified as the first wave of Hallyu. His poster was on bedroom walls in Beijing and Tokyo at a time when Korean entertainment had almost no formal international distribution infrastructure.

Seeing him return to a show hosted by his most famous on-screen partner, cooking for the cast, talking about his marriage, and fielding a phone call from his wife — it is, by any standard, a much gentler kind of television than the dramas that made him famous. That seems to be the point. The episode is not asking the audience to remember Star in My Heart. It is showing them what came after it, for the people who made it.

Hwang Shin-hye's Let's Live Together airs Tuesdays on KBS 1TV at 7:40 p.m. KST. The Ahn Jae-wook episode broadcasts on April 8, 2026.