Power, Heirs, and Gray Morality: Inside 'Climax

What happens when the hero wants power just as badly as the villain?

That's the central tension ENA is betting on with 'Climax', its upcoming legal-political thriller—and the newly released stills of Oh Jung Se in character make one thing immediately clear: this is not a drama about good versus evil. It's about who gets to the top first.

The Setup: No Clean Hands

Ju Ji Hoon plays Bang Tae Seob, a prosecutor who doesn't just investigate a power-driven cartel—he infiltrates it, deliberately, to climb South Korea's political ladder. He's not the reluctant hero dragged into corruption. He walks in with his eyes open.

Opposite him stands Oh Jung Se as Kwon Jong Wook, a second-generation chaebol heir whose goal isn't to inherit his father's business empire—it's to take it over. The distinction matters. Inheritance implies patience and legitimacy. A takeover implies aggression, strategy, and a willingness to treat family as competition.

The newly released stills show Oh Jung Se in a composed, almost cold stillness—a stark contrast to the emotionally raw performances he's known for in Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Squid Game. The deliberate restraint in his expression signals that Kwon Jong Wook operates differently: calculating where others emote.

Why These Two Actors, Why Now

The casting of Ju Ji Hoon and Oh Jung Se together is not an accident of scheduling. Both carry significant international weight.

Ju Ji Hoon built a pan-Asian fanbase through Netflix's Kingdom, where he played a crown prince navigating political conspiracy and a zombie apocalypse simultaneously—not unlike a prosecutor navigating a cartel, come to think of it. Oh Jung Se, meanwhile, earned global recognition through two of the most-watched Korean titles in streaming history. His range—from the gentle father figure in Woo to the menacing Deok Su in Squid Game—has made him one of the most watched character actors in the industry.

For ENA, the calculus is straightforward. The channel had a breakout moment with Extraordinary Attorney Woo in 2022, a title that went from domestic sleeper hit to global phenomenon almost overnight. Since then, the pressure to replicate that success has been real. 'Climax' is the channel's answer: take two internationally recognized names, place them in a genre—legal thriller meets chaebol drama—that travels well across cultures, and let the tension do the work.

The Formula That Keeps Working

It's worth stepping back to ask why this particular combination—power struggle, chaebol, morally compromised protagonist—keeps appearing in Korean drama.

Partly, it reflects genuine social preoccupation. South Korea's relationship with its chaebol conglomerates is complicated in ways that don't map neatly onto Western corporate culture. These are family dynasties that built the country's economic infrastructure, and also entities that have repeatedly been at the center of bribery scandals, political influence operations, and succession battles that play out in courtrooms and boardrooms simultaneously. When a drama depicts a chaebol heir trying to wrest control from his own father, it's not pure fantasy—it rhymes with headlines.

But there's also a streaming-economy logic at work. As global platforms invest more heavily in K-content, the incentive structure quietly shifts. Larger budgets mean larger risk aversion. Proven formulas get greenlit; experimental formats get harder to fund. The gray-morality power drama is, at this point, a known quantity with a demonstrated global audience.

What Global Fans Should Watch For

For international viewers, 'Climax' offers an entry point that doesn't require deep knowledge of Korean legal or corporate culture. Power struggles are universal. But the drama's specificity—the particular texture of how prosecutors and chaebol dynasties interact in Korea—is where it could distinguish itself from generic political thrillers.

The question is whether the show will use that specificity or smooth it over for broader accessibility. The best K-dramas in recent years have done the former: they've trusted audiences to follow the local detail, and that trust has been rewarded. The ones that flattened their cultural context to appeal to everyone often ended up appealing to no one in particular.

Oh Jung Se's transformation into a chaebol heir is visually convincing. Whether the writing gives him—and Ju Ji Hoon—the complexity their performances clearly intend to deliver is the real question that won't be answered until the show airs.