Lee Jung-jae Movies and TV Shows Beyond Squid Game

Explore Lee Jung-jae movies and TV shows beyond Squid Game: choose Hunt, Il Mare, Chief of Staff or The Acolyte by role, mood and how much time you have.

Lee Jung-jae — public-event photograph (2021-12-17). Photo: ELLE TAIWAN / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0. Original source. Scaled for display; no additional crop.

CELEBPEDIA / BEYOND THE GAME

A spy. A correspondent.
A strategist. A Jedi.

Four doors into Lee Jung-jae’s screen work, with a different viewing rhythm behind each.

If Squid Game introduced you to Lee Jung-jae, your next choice can take you well outside a survival drama. His filmography offers political calculation, a romance carried by letters, intelligence-agency suspicion and a place in the Star Wars galaxy.

This selective guide compares two movies and two series. Choose by the experience you want tonight rather than treating the titles as a homework list. None requires you to finish Squid Game first, and the descriptions stay with starting premises.

Title	Lee’s role	Start here for
Hunt	Park Pyong-ho	A dense spy movie
Il Mare	Sung-hyun	A quieter fantasy romance
Chief of Staff	Jang Tae-jun	Political maneuvering over a series
The Acolyte	Jedi Master Sol	A science-fiction mystery

Hunt: choose suspicion and momentum

Lee plays Park Pyong-ho, the KCIA’s Foreign Unit chief, opposite Jung Woo-sung’s Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do. A search for an infiltrator turns their attention toward each other’s units. The official distributor’s synopsis establishes that pressure; it also credits Lee as the film’s director.

This is the route for viewers who like a thriller to keep rearranging their assumptions. Pay attention to which unit people belong to and what information each side possesses. You do not need to solve everything immediately: uncertainty is part of the premise.

Pick Hunt when you want a feature film with institutional conflict and forward drive. Save it for an evening when you can follow names and competing agendas without constantly leaving the room.

Il Mare: choose a change of emotional pace

In this 2000 film, Lee’s Sung-hyun exchanges messages with Eun-joo, played by Jun Ji-hyun. They occupy different timelines, two years apart, connected through a seaside home’s mailbox. That central device is explained in the Korean Film Council’s feature on Korean fantasy cinema.

The question here is how people become close when ordinary contact is impossible. Letters give the relationship a different tempo from an urgent face-to-face encounter. Watch the objects, spaces and pauses as well as the dialogue; the setup makes small exchanges matter.

Choose Il Mare if your next Lee Jung-jae watch should feel more intimate than confrontational. It is also an accessible way to sample an earlier film without committing to another television season.

Chief of Staff: choose ambition behind the scenes

Lee’s character at the beginning of Chief of Staff is Jang Tae-jun, a senior aide working for assemblyman Song Hui-seop. JTBC’s official character profile describes a highly capable strategist whose ambition extends beyond serving someone else’s office.

Here, the useful thing to track is who needs whom. A conversation can be a negotiation, and a professional favor can create an obligation. If you enjoy workplace hierarchies but want the stakes redirected toward political influence, this is the strongest fit of the four.

Start with the first season and let Tae-jun’s position develop in order. Later-season character summaries can reveal changes that the first episodes are still building toward, so avoid those pages before watching.

The Acolyte: choose a different screen universe

For an international turn, Lee plays Jedi Master Sol in The Acolyte. StarWars.com’s cast introduction presents Sol through his empathy and commitment to protecting others. He enters a story shaped by a dangerous mystery within the Jedi’s world.

This choice suits viewers interested in how Lee’s presence works inside a franchise ensemble, with science-fiction settings and physical combat alongside investigation. Follow the opening episodes before looking up Sol’s full character history: retrospective profiles can give away developments.

If you are new to Star Wars, a basic understanding of the Jedi as an order connected to the Force is a helpful starting point. You can then decide whether the show’s world and mystery invite a longer visit.

Quick questions before you pick

Which is the biggest change from Squid Game? Il Mare offers the clearest shift toward romantic fantasy. Choose Hunt instead if you want to retain tension while moving into espionage.

Is this a required viewing order? No. The four works are separate. A practical route is one movie first, then whichever series premise interests you most.

Continue with our spoiler-light Squid Game viewing-order guide or explore another actor’s range in our Lee Byung-hun movies and TV shows guide.