Korean Media News

Is there ANY occupation that hasn’t had a flower boy version of it? That’s going to be the lasting mark of Hallyu, isn’t it — the flower-boy-ification of all things? This time it’s going to be flower boy spy, in the upcoming movie Alumni, featuring an undercover agent at a high school. Idol-actor TOP (Into the Gunfire, IRIS) is rumored to star, though that guy’s rumored to star in everything under the sun, so who knows what the final verdict will be.

The film is the next project from director Park Shin-woo (Into the White Night), and though the premise sounds like it would make for a much better comedy, it’s a dark action-drama. The main character is a young boy whose father is a sleeper agent — a North Korean spy living in the South — and for reasons that will probably make no sense to me, when Dad gets framed for something, the boy has to become a North Korean spy in order to protect his little sister. Huh? But, as a teenager?

And the reason he can’t be a grown man-spy who goes undercover as a high schooler is…? (Now I’m thinking it would be so awesome if they did an update of the Kim Sun-ah movie She’s on Duty — it’s like Never Been Kissed-meets-Alias.) Anyway, so spy boy then enrolls at a high school like a normal kid, and even meets a girl, but then also has to massacre all the Northern agents sent to kill him. Hm. Maybe it’s more fantasy-based, like Girl K, which would make a LOT more sense. Either way, this plot does not seem like it’ll hold under much more scrutiny, so I’m gonna stop squinting at it, and just wait for the blood ‘n’ guts.

If TOP does sign on, he’ll be going head-to-head with Kim Soo-hyun’s flower boy spy movie, Covertly, Grandly, where he plays a North Korean agent undercover as an idol. Guess even flower boy secret agents need to come in pairs.

Alumni plans to start shooting in July.

Via Star News