Heo Nam-jun

Heo Nam-jun is a South Korean actor whose recent screen work includes Netflix’s monster-apocalypse drama Sweet Home and MBC’s romantic mystery When the Phone Rings. In Sweet Home 2, released on December 1, 2023, he plays Kang Seok-chan, a soldier attached to the surviving human forces operating after monsters have transformed Korea. The series is adapted from the webtoon by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan; its second season moves beyond the original apartment-centered catastrophe into a militarized world of shelters, experiments, infected people, and changing monsters.

Kang Seok-chan’s scenes are part of the conflict between people who retain their humanity and those whose transformations have made them dangerous. Heo does not merely appear in a standalone monster story: the character enters an ensemble already defined by Song Kang’s Cha Hyun-su, Lee Jin-wook’s Pyeon Sang-wook, and Go Min-si’s Lee Eun-yu. This context matters because the later Sweet Home installments bring soldiers and organized authority into a narrative that began with isolated residents of Green Home apartment building.

In When the Phone Rings, Heo plays Ji Sang-woo, a psychiatrist who also runs a YouTube channel. The 12-episode MBC drama premiered on November 22, 2024. Its central couple is presidential spokesperson Baek Sa-eon, played by Yoo Yeon-seok, and Hong Hee-joo, played by Chae Soo-bin. Although Sa-eon and Hee-joo have been married for three years, their relationship is presented publicly rather than intimately; a caller who has Hee-joo hostage forces Sa-eon into a crisis. Ji Sang-woo is woven into that plot as someone close to Hee-joo and increasingly concerned with her circumstances.

The series is based on the Kakao web novel The Number You Have Dialed by Geon Eomul Nyeo. Ji’s profession is not incidental: conversations about memory, fear, and personal history are built into the drama’s investigation of the threatening calls. Heo shares the production with Jang Gyu-ri, who plays television announcer Na Yu-ri.

These two credits identify a particularly clear stretch of Heo’s television work: a uniformed figure in Sweet Home’s post-disaster setting and a medically trained figure in a contemporary suspense melodrama. The contrast comes from the actual functions of the roles, not from a vague label of versatility. Kang Seok-chan belongs to a group confronting the external consequences of monstrous change; Ji Sang-woo is positioned within the interpersonal mystery surrounding an abducted woman and an anonymous caller. Both roles are tied to Korean television productions released in consecutive years, 2023 and 2024, for global audiences.