'Landlord' Cast Picks Their Most Unforgettable Moments

With just two episodes left before the curtain falls, the cast of tvN's breakout thriller-comedy How to Become a Landlord in Korea — known to fans simply as Landlord — is looking back at the moments that defined the show. The series finale arrives across Saturday and Sunday this week, with Episode 11 airing on April 18 and the concluding Episode 12 on April 19, both at 9:10 PM KST on tvN.

The send-off couldn't be bigger for a drama that has dominated Korean television discussions for the past month. According to data from GoodData Corporation's FUNdex, How to Become a Landlord in Korea has topped the buzzworthy rankings for Saturday-Sunday dramas four consecutive weeks — a remarkable streak for a show blending courtroom-level tension with sharp, darkly comic twists. On streaming platform TVING, the series ranked first overall and first in the drama category during the second week of April, cementing its status as one of the most-watched shows of the season.

Ha Jung-woo: The Chaotic Start That Made Everything Possible

For lead actor Ha Jung-woo — who plays Gi Su-jong, a somewhat ordinary man who finds himself swept into a series of increasingly outrageous crimes — the scene that stands out most is the one that kicked everything off. In Episode 2, his character and the volatile Min Hwal-seong (played by Kim Jun-han) launch a clumsy, improvised kidnapping of Jeon Yi-kyung (Krystal Jung), setting the entire plot in motion.

"It all started there — the moment a perfectly average guy gets pulled into chaos he never saw coming," Ha Jung-woo said. "Two overly confident friends, completely unprepared, trying to pull off something neither of them actually thought through." He described the on-set collaboration as a highlight of his work on the show. "Jun-han and I went through every beat of that scene together — the action sequences, the dialogue, everything. The result was this beautifully mismatched chemistry. Looking back, those hours we spent making that work are some of my favorite memories from this production."

It's a scene that crystallizes what makes Landlord so disarmingly watchable: the chaos feels genuine, not staged. The writing by Oh Han-ki and direction by Im Phil-sung — the same filmmaker behind the acclaimed 2012 film Masquerade — pushes these characters into impossible situations while keeping their reactions grounded in something almost uncomfortably human.

Im Soo-jung: When the Affair Got Out — and the Couple Teamed Up Anyway

If Ha Jung-woo's pick anchors the show's explosive beginning, Im Soo-jung's points to what makes it impossible to turn away: its emotional contradictions. The actress, who plays Kim Seon, the wife whose affair is discovered at perhaps the worst possible time, chose Episodes 4 and 5 as her most memorable — specifically, the moment when she and her husband decide to work together despite everything falling apart.

"Kim Seon and Gi Su-jong becoming a team while facing Oh Dong-ki — every single scene of that dynamic was fascinating to film," Im Soo-jung said. "What makes those episodes work is that the genre's fun and its real emotional stakes arrive at the same time. These are people doing something genuinely wrong, and somehow, that's also when their relationship finally makes sense."

The performance has drawn considerable attention. Critics and viewers have praised her ability to inhabit a character who could easily tip into either full villainy or pure sympathy — but consistently lands somewhere more complicated and compelling than either. With previous acclaimed appearances in films like 거미집 (Cobweb), Single in Seoul, and Pine, Im Soo-jung has long been one of Korean cinema and television's most trusted performers, and Landlord adds another chapter to that reputation.

Krystal Jung's Overnight Wire Work and Shim Eun-kyung's One-Day Action Sprint

Episode 10 — the episode just before the two-part finale — clearly left the deepest physical and emotional marks on the cast. Both Krystal Jung and Shim Eun-kyung named scenes from that episode as their most memorable, for very different reasons.

Krystal Jung, who plays the increasingly unstable Jeon Yi-kyung, pointed to the climactic rooftop confrontation at Se-yun Building — a sequence that required wire work and, according to the actress, an entire night of shooting.

"Every character I'd been watching throughout this whole story ends up on that rooftop. Getting that scene right took everything," she said. "The wire sequences were physically demanding, and on top of that, I had to portray Yi-kyung's emotional state in that moment — someone burning with something between revenge and grief. The fact that it took so long to film only made it feel more real when we finally got it."

For Shim Eun-kyung, who brings an almost terrifying calm to assassin character Yona, the standout moments are two action sequences that showcase very different sides of the role. The first is Episode 4, in which Yona kills a character named Morgan (played by Japanese actress Miyabi) — the first time the show reveals just how dangerous Yona truly is.

"That scene took months of preparation. It's the most choreographically intensive thing I've filmed on this show," Shim Eun-kyung revealed. "Everything about that moment had to be precise. Yona's ruthlessness lands with full force there for the first time, and I wanted viewers to feel the weight of it."

But it's her second choice that may raise the most eyebrows. The follow-up action sequence in Episode 10 — Yona calmly approaching police officers after committing a murder — was filmed with just a single day of action rehearsal before cameras rolled.

"I honestly didn't know what to expect going into it," she admitted. "One day of practice, then we're on set. And when it came together, it exceeded every expectation I had. The scene turned out more striking than I imagined it could."

Kim Jun-han's Most Heartbreaking Scene: An Urn, an Empty Goodbye

Among all the cast's picks, Kim Jun-han's stands out as the most emotionally devastating. The actor, who plays Min Hwal-seong — a man whose desperate desire for validation ultimately unravels everything around him — chose a scene from Episode 10 that has little action and everything to do with grief.

In the scene, Min Hwal-seong meets his ex-wife Jeon Yi-kyung one last time, carrying an urn containing the remains of the child they lost. The two characters, who appear together surprisingly little throughout the series despite having shared a life, face each other in the wreckage of everything they built and destroyed.

"There was an intimacy in that moment that I hadn't expected," Kim Jun-han said. "Yi-kyung and Hwal-seong don't share many scenes together throughout the drama, but here they're carrying this loss between them that never fully healed. Watching two people push each other away because the pain of staying close is too much — that stayed with me."

What to Expect From the Finale

The cast's reflections point toward a finale that isn't trying to wrap things up neatly. The emotional threads left loose — Yi-kyung's spiral, the long-buried tensions between characters, and the moral reckonings deferred across twelve episodes — now arrive all at once.

Produced with a hybrid of genre elements rarely attempted in Korean television at this scale, How to Become a Landlord in Korea uses its black comedy framework not to deflect from difficult emotions but to expose them from an unexpected angle. That combination has resonated with audiences: the show's strong performance on TVING, where it ranked first overall in mid-April, reflects an audience appetite for drama that doesn't fit neatly into established molds.

Episode 11 of How to Become a Landlord in Korea airs this Saturday, April 18, at 9:10 PM KST on tvN. The final episode follows on Sunday, April 19, at the same time. All episodes are available on TVING for subscribers.