Let’s Take a Look at How Lee Sung-kyung Nailed the Role of Baek In-ha!
Baek In-ha is a character from the popular webtoon from South Korea, Cheese in the Trap. She is the second female lead in the webtoon and she is described as the antagonist of the main character, Hong Seol. As Cheese in the Trap had huge popularity in South Korea, and also gained a lot of fans outside the country, the webtoon turned out into a drama that was aired on tvN, in January 2016. And the character Baek In-ha was portrayed by the gorgeous actress and model, Lee Sung-kyung.
Are you curious about how Lee Sung-kyung played as Baek In-ha? Well, wait no more, we will provide you with some moments of Baek In-ha in the drama Cheese in the Trap. But before that, let’s take a look at a glimpse of the webtoon version of Cheese in the Trap, as well as the character Baek In-ha!
Cheese in the Trap: Webtoon
Cheese in the Trap is a webtoon by the illustrator, Soonkki, that was released for the first time in 2010, on Naver Webtoon. The webtoon not only has an online version, but as a result of its huge popularity in South Korea, in 2012 its first printed copy was released as well. Shortly after that, Cheese in the Trap was translated into English and was released on Line Webtoon in 2014, and again, the webtoon gained a lot of international fans which made it even more popular. Cheese in the Trap started in 2010 and after 4 seasons the webtoon ended, in 2017.
It tells a story about a university student named Hong Seol that has to live a hard-working life such as doing a part-time job and even taking a leave for a semester only to work full-time in order to raise money to pay her college tuition. She meets Yoo Jung, her senior that has a mysterious personality, which she suspects is a sociopath. Yoo Jung is involved with the Baek Siblings, In-ha the older sister, and In-ho the younger brother.
The Baek siblings are orphans since they were kids. Both In-ha and In-ho got taken care of by their grandfather after their parents died. But then their grandfather died as well, they got their aunt as their guardian after that. Unfortunately, the aunt was violent and abusive to In-ha since she was jealous of her beautiful face. She had a lot of scars when she was a kid due to the beating from her aunt. Thankfully, Yoo Jung’s grandfather saw this. As In-ha was crying for help, the Baek siblings got taken care of by Yoo Jung’s grandfather.
Okay, enough! We’re not going to talk about the whole story, but we’re going to talk about one of the powerful Baek siblings, which is Baek In-ha, the manipulative yet seductive one. Scroll down to see the detail about Baek In-ha’s characteristics!
Meet Baek In-ha
Baek In-ha is the second female lead in the story. She is described as an aggressive woman with a bad-tempered personality. It is due to her traumatic past with her aunt that was abusive to her. She grew as a manipulative person that will get anything she wants and doesn’t mind if she has to manipulate anyone to get her will. As she has a beautiful figure and half-foreigner face, she is very confident with her looks and often uses that to her advantage to manipulate people.
Although sometimes she dates rich guys to get money and luxurious brands from them, she has had a long time crush for Jung. She has always bullied Jung’s girlfriends or a girl that has been close to Jung, ever since they were kids. That’s why she doesn’t like Seol, the main female character who is soon to be Jung’s girlfriend.
She doesn’t care about the public’s opinion about her, even though some people call her scary. She also can stand on her own since she has left the country once and lived on her own. This makes her relationship with In-ho get worse. She doesn’t like it when In-ho continues to pursue his dream to be a pianist, as she already gave up her dream to be a painter.
Even so, both In-ha and In-ho are powerful siblings that although both have a dreadful aura, deep down inside, they still love and care for each other.
Cheese in the Trap: Drama
In 2015, people got very excited by the news that Cheese in the Trap would get a drama version on tvN. As this webtoon was very popular and had a lot of fans both nationwide and worldwide, people were curious and couldn’t wait to see how well the actors and actresses can portray their favorite characters from their favorite webtoon series.
Park Hae-jin, as the first actor that was confirmed to be Yoo Jung made people get even more excited. As you can see, Park Hae-jin had already played various type of characters before he played Yoo Jung. And as a character that is a sociopath, who sometimes has a scary aura, people believed that Yoo Jung would be successfully portrayed by Park Hae-jin.
The character Hong Seol was played by actress Kim Go-eun, that later on got popular with her role in Goblin, Ji Eun-tak. Even though playing Hong Seol was the first time for her to appear on the small screen, Kim Go-eun proved that she is a talented actress that can portray Hong Seol with exactly the same vibe as the webtoon version.
The second male lead, Baek In-ho, was portrayed by Seo Kang-jun. Just like Baek In-ho, Seo Kang-jun successfully showed us the annoying-yet-still-caring side of Baek In-ho, especially towards Hong Seol. The interesting fact is, Seo Kang-jun could also play piano, so the parts where he plays piano in the drama are actually played by him.
Now we’re going to talk in detail about Baek In-ha after this, so, keep on scrolling!
Lee Sung-kyung as Baek In-ha
In the drama, Baek In-ha is portrayed by Lee Sung-kyung. Although she was popular as a model from YG K+ agency, she has proven to everyone that she is also qualified as an actress with her brilliant acting as Baek In-ha. Besides, this is not the first time that she has starred in a drama. She starred in It’s Okay It’s Love in 2014, and Flower of the Queen in 2015. Even so, the characters that she portrayed before were not as ‘crazy’ as Baek In-ha, since Baek In-ha herself is definitely something else.
Since Baek In-ha is a half foreigner, Lee Sung-kyung dyed her hair to light blond. And to match with Baek In-ha’s style in the webtoon series, Lee Sung-kyung was filled up with luxury brands for her style from head to toes. The makeup applied on her is so wild and bold, just like Baek In-ha’s is in the webtoon, that was always drawn with an eye-catching fashion style.
Let’s take a look at some clips of Lee Sung-kyung when she portrayed Baek In-ha!
The Baek Siblings
Even though they always fight as siblings, Baek In-ha and Baek In-ho have a deep relationship since they went through hard times when they were kids. Knowing their interesting plot like that, you must be curious about what are they going to be like in the drama?
Well, both Lee Sung-kyung and Seo Kang-jun, fortunately, could play the character really nice. Not only both of them could portray the fierce characters, but they also got some similar figures that could fit as real siblings. Seo Kang-jun that has natural hazel eyes match with Lee Sung-kyung’s who also has pretty brown eyes.
As Baek In-ha and Baek In-ho always get into a fight, the actor and actress successfully amazed people by their brilliant acting of the Baek interactions in the drama.
We couldn’t agree more that Lee Sung-kyung and Seo Kang-jun have really good chemistry. Let’s take a look at a short clip of Baek In-ha and Baek In-ho from Cheese in the Trap drama.
Netizens’ Reactions
Even though the drama version of Cheese in the Trap got so hyped at the beginning, people were getting disappointed by the drama, as the drama continued airing. Most of them didn’t really like the fact that Yoo Jung’s scenes got less compared to Baek In-ho’s scenes. Also, the fact that the ending was not as good as expected, and just like a cliffhanging.
And the bad reactions from netizens were also thrown at Lee Sung-kyung that portrayed Baek In-ha. Although she perfectly dressed up as a real-life Baek In-ha, most people on the Internet said that her acting was a bit exaggerating, and even criticized her that she’s a model that couldn’t do a proper act as an actress.
A lot of netizens also said that Baek In-ha is supposed to be a rude psycho gal with a depression inside that made viewers felt empathized with her when they know her past, but netizens said that Lee Sung-kyung only acts as the character of an expensive girl. However, a lot of people agreed that Lee Sung-kyung showed exactly the same looks as Baek In-ha in the webtoon.
With this bad reaction from some viewers, Lee Sung-kyung gave a response when she was invited as a guest in MBC Radio Star. She said that it is indeed the character that she played was very forceful and she also agreed that at some parts she got to exaggerated her act. But still, she had to take responsibility for the character that she played, which is Baek In-ha. “If I didn’t take responsibility, I would have blamed others like a child,” she answered with sincerity.
But still, there are a lot of people that support and love Lee Sung-kyung’s acting as Baek In-ha as well. They are amazed by her looks and the fierce acting when she portrays Baek In-ha, making them love Baek In-ha more and more.
