The drama that first went viral as actor Lee Jun-hyuk’s debut foray into the occult is finally lifting the veil.
Set to air on SBS in the first half of next year, the new drama Awakening dropped its first high-definition stills on the 2nd, showcasing Lee Jun-hyuk’s intense aura.
In the stills, Lee wears a neat cassock with red blood smeared across his face — a striking image that grabs attention in an instant.
Awakening is set in the heart of South Korea’s brutal exam hellscape, a pressure cooker of jealousy and desire. Chasing better grades, students fall for a mysterious “awakening” pill and unlock a horrifying ability to hear the voices of the dead. As their school turns into a playground for demons, an exorcist priest throws his very soul on the line to save the kids in this occult exorcism thriller.
Lee Jun-hyuk plays Antonio, a newly assigned guidance priest at Holy Spirit High School. While he stirs both curiosity and unease among students, he’s actually an officially authorized exorcist ordained under the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Dispatched undercover to investigate demonic activity, he confronts a string of bizarre incidents and puts everything on the line to hunt down the mastermind dragging the students into a race toward death.
Witness accounts of Lee filming in a cassock had already spread across online communities and social media, building hype among would-be viewers. Now that the first official stills are out, reactions are on fire: “The K-drama scene is finally doing it right,” “Just seeing him in a cassock makes me smile,” “He’s holiness itself,” and “It already feels epic from visuals alone.”
With its daring premise, Lee Jun-hyuk’s dramatic transformation, and a fresh synergy between powerhouse actors like Yoon Se-ah, Won Kyu-bin, and Kim Tae-young, Awakening is slated to greet viewers in the first half of next year.