The actor banked a two-year supply of season’s greetings before reporting for duty and even from the barracks, he’s still No.1.
Most actors disappear from public view the moment they enlist. Lee Jun-young planned ahead. Before trading his wardrobe for an army uniform, he quietly prepared two full years of gifts for the fans he knew he’d be leaving behind a gesture that says as much about his relationship with his audience as any red-carpet appearance ever could.
On October 8, his agency Billions announced the launch of his first-ever season’s greetings package: LEE JUN YOUNG 2027-2028 SEASON’S GREETINGS ‘STILL ARCHIVE : 08.’ The timing is the whole story. Currently serving his mandatory military duty, Lee can’t promote, appear, or shoot anything new. So he front-loaded the affection, pre-producing not one but two years of merchandise so fans would have something of his to hold onto across the length of his service.
A Two-Year Gift, Built for Absence
The package is split into two distinct concepts, one for each year. The 2027 edition leans vintage and intimate relaxed, snapshot-style photography capturing Lee’s everyday ease and personal hobbies. The 2028 edition widens the lens to showcase his range: from quiet composure to striking, iconic energy, from boyish charm to an unguarded sense of freedom. Together they function almost like a time capsule a curated portrait of the actor meant to carry fans from one year to the next while he’s away.
The physical contents reinforce the collector’s appeal: a desk calendar anchors the set, joined by a mini photobook, mini posters, and a photocard set. For a fandom bracing for a long wait, it’s less a product drop than a care package. The thoughtfulness is the point and it’s precisely the kind of gesture that deepens the bond between an idol-turned-actor and the following he’s spent a decade building.
From U-KISS Idol to ‘Joker of Korea’
That decade is worth revisiting, because Lee Jun-young’s trajectory is one of K-entertainment’s more striking reinventions. He debuted as “Jun” of the K-pop group U-KISS in 2014, then won first place on KBS’s survival program The Unit (2017–18), becoming the center and main vocalist of the project group UNB. When his U-KISS contract ended in 2021, he chose not to renew it, and in 2022 co-founded a new agency to pursue acting in earnest.
The pivot paid off handsomely. Across Class of Lies (2019), Netflix’s D.P. (2021), Love and Leashes (2022), Mask Girl (2023), When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025), and Weak Hero Class 2 (2025), Lee transformed from a stage performer into one of his generation’s most respected screen actors. His chilling villain turn in Weak Hero Class 2 even earned him an unofficial fan title the “Joker of Korea” a testament to how fully audiences now accept him as a dramatic actor rather than an idol dabbling in television.
A Final Role, Then the Uniform
Lee’s most recent work was tvN’s weekend drama Four Hands, Two Sonatas (포핸즈), which wrapped on October 4. In it, he played Choi Jung-yo, a conductor and former prodigy pianist a demanding role that required him to portray a ten-year arc, aging from a 17-year-old boy to a 27-year-old maestro. It was a fitting capstone: the drama was his deliberate choice as a final project before enlistment, and it paired him with Song Kang, who was making his own return from military service. One actor coming home, one heading out meeting across a piano.
Lee enlisted as an active-duty soldier on July 21, 2026, and is currently serving in a military band, with a discharge date set for January 20, 2028. Yet even in uniform, his cultural footprint hasn’t shrunk. On October 7, data firm Good Data Corporation’s FUNdex rankings placed him No.1 in the TV-OTT integrated drama cast buzz category for the first week of October his sixth consecutive week at the top. For a performer who can’t lift a finger to promote himself, holding the No.1 spot for six straight weeks is a remarkable display of pure, residual star power.
The Payoff of Playing the Long Game
There’s a quiet strategic brilliance to all of this. Military service has historically been the great interrupter of Korean entertainment careers a two-year gap that can cool momentum and loosen fandom ties. Lee Jun-young’s response was to refuse the premise entirely: finish a career-defining drama, then leave fans a two-year supply of himself on the way out the door.
The buzz charts suggest it’s working. By the time he returns in early 2028, Lee will have spent his service not fading from view but lingering in it on screen, on calendars, and in the small, deliberate gestures of an artist who clearly intends to pick up right where he left off.